Miriam Levin is Head of Community Action and Giving at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The focus of her 18 year career in central government, public, private and third sectors has been to develop and implement long-lasting, impactful community development strategies, focussing on how people can be involved in shaping the places where they live and take action on the things that matter to them. In her current role, she runs national programmes on creating active and mobilised citizens through community organising training; trialling deliberative democracy to open up local government decision-making to residents; growing place-based giving; and supporting partnerships of citizens, civil society organisations and local authorities to work together to tackle issues through social action. Prior to this she was responsible for community mobilisation around Neighbourhood Planning and Community Rights in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Miriam has also worked in the private sector at consultancy Soundings, leading community engagement and consultation programmes around regeneration schemes, and spent 8 years as Head of Outreach at English Heritage. Miriam’s postgraduate studies have taken in several disciplines from archaeology to museology, regeneration and urban design, some of which she still uses.