History

We were formed in 2005 from the merger of the Institute of Community Studies and the Mutual Aid Centre, creations of Michael Young, later Lord Young of Dartington. The Young Foundation has been established to re-energise the powerful combination of research and action demonstrated by Michael Young.

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 Wilmott, 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 power blocks), education (leading thinking about how to radically widen access) and poverty.

He 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.

Probably his greatest legacy was institution building. He initiated, and in some cases directly created, dozens of new institutions including:

• Open University
• Consumers Association
• International Alert
• University of the Third Age
• Economic and Social Research Council
• Education Extra
• National Extension College
• National Consumer Council
• Open College of the Arts
• School for Social Entrepreneurs
• Grandparents Plus

Other organisations he created pioneered new approaches to funerals and baby-naming, neighbourhood democracy and the arts.

He was described by Harvard’s Daniel Bell as ‘the world’s most successful entrepreneur of social enterprises’.

Michael Young left a remarkable legacy of ideas and institutions which had an enormous impact on the day-to-day lives of the millions of people who use them and on how we think about our society. Over the next fifty years the Young Foundation hopes to have an equally profound impact.