Young Foundation
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| Formation | February 1, 1954 as the Institute of Community Studies |
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| Type | Social Innovation think tank |
| Headquarters | 18 Victoria Park Square Bethnal Green London E2 9PF United Kingdom |
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Chief Executive
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Simon Willis |
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Staff
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70 |
| Website | YoungFoundation.org |
The Young Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental think tank based in London that specializes in social innovation to tackle structural inequality.
It is named after Michael Young, the British sociologist and social activist who created over 60 organisations including the Open University, Which?, Economic and Social Research Council, and the School for Social Entrepreneurs and Language Line.
The Institute for Community Studies (ICS) was set up by Michael Young in 1954. The ICS was an urban studies think tank which combined academic research and practical social innovation. In 2005, it merged with the Mutual Aid Centre and was renamed The Young Foundation, in honour of its founder, Michael Young. In both current and previous incarnations, The Young Foundation has been instrumental in leading research, driving public debate, and implementing social innovation in the UK and abroad, with an emphasis on combining research and practical application.
The Young Foundation is still based in Bethnal Green, where the ICS started.
During the second half of the 20th century Michael Young was one of the world’s most creative and influential social thinkers and doers. After 1945 he helped shape the UK’s new welfare state. In the early 1950s he set up the Institute of Community Studies and used it as a base for research and action.
Together with collaborators including Peter Willmott, Peter Townsend and many others, he wrote a series of bestsellers which changed attitudes to a host of social issues, including urban planning (leading the movement away from tower blocks), education (leading thinking about how to radically widen access) and poverty.
Young pioneered ideas of public and consumer empowerment both in private markets and in public services, some of which are only now becoming mainstream (for example NHS Direct, the spread of after-school clubs and neighbourhood councils can all be traced to his work). One of his books coined the term ‘meritocracy’. Another radically rethought the role of the family.
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