Council leader Georgia Gould

TOWN Hall leader Georgia Gould said she knew people were feeling “isolated” in their own borough or even driven out by house prices and shops they couldn’t afford to use, as more details about a new £30million community wealth fund were revealed on Thursday.

She said she wanted to bridge the gap between the big companies enjoying the benefits of growth in Camden – and those struggling. “

We all know our borough is a place of enormous wealth. It’s the fastest growing part of the UK – it’s generating a huge amount of value for the national economy,” said Cllr Gould, speaking at the We Make Camden event at Senate House.

“But so many of our residents feel that the change that’s happening around them is not only not giving them opportunities but actually pushing them out, leaving them isolated by shops that they can’t afford, homes that they can’t afford.

“We’ve been trying in so many different ways to give people a stake in the economic growth that’s been happening in Camden with jobs and apprenticeships – but when I remember a group of residents in Somers Town saying ‘oh we fell like an island of poverty in between glass’, that was heartbreaking to me.

“I know our communities and I know that they have so much energy, so much creativity, so much entrepreneurialism, as much as in all of those glass buildings.”

Mariana Mazzucato

She was referring to the transformation of the railwaylands in King’s Cross where some of the world’s biggest companies – particularly connected to tech – have moved in, while many people are experiencing the hardest edges of the cost-of-living crisis in the neighbourhoods just a few streets away.

Camden is hoping to make a splash with the new £30 million fund with residents told it will be them who decides how it is spent and which projects and start-ups are supported.

At Thursday’s event, it was suggested requirements for funding could mean something like a pledge to close gender pay gaps or to be locally-based with staff from Camden – although organisers regularly stressed it would not be the council that made these calls.

The fund follows the idea that once people are successful on the back of the support, then they would then pay back in to help new waves of projects, to the extent that at some stage it could stand alone without council funding.

The summit-style session drew together charities, community centres, voluntary groups and creative arts hubs in the same room as representatives from companies and organisations interested in supporting local projects but in need of the initial connections and introductions.

The wealth fund is due to be officially launched later this year.

Cllr Gould was speaking to a packed hall on a stage with Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, who lives locally, Mariana Mazzucato, the economist and writer who has been involved in the idea’s development, as well as Mathu Jeyaloganathan, the fund’s chief investment officer and Batuala Alexander, founder of Creators House.

At one stage, the discussion turned to how record companies might “find the next Stormzy” in Camden if they offered studio support.

But Ms Mazzucato said: “Look at music – there’s the huge amount of wealth created. This is a trillion dollar sector, huge globally, but where does the money go. It hasn’t been reinvested in the communities that created the wealth.

“We can talk about the next Stormzy but currently how the arts world works is a lottery model. Not a lot of rappers – one in a million – make a huge amount of money and become known.

“So what would it really look like to really value the collective, to see that collective wealth creation process which is valued at the source and not just in the ones that become famous and then redistribute that back into the communities – whether it is the Camden Roundhouse, arts centres, or youth centres.”