Is it possible to create community? Can you turn an area from being a group of strangers living in adjoining houses into a place where these same people know each other, connect with each other, trust each other, and choose to spend time together?
Jane Gallagher – one of our Community Capacity Builders in the Well Together Programme – outlines how she and the residents of one area in Oxford created just such a connected community, outside of her work with CFO. We look to it as inspiration for grassroots community development!
Having lived in Florence Park in Oxford for 26 years, I’ve seen the area go through a major transition – from a place where people mostly did not know each other, to a thriving, dynamic, friendly, and sought-after place to live just a few years later. It’s a wonderful housing estate with a deep history, a beautiful park and great people, but – and this is key – when we first moved there, very few of those people got the chance to meet each other and connect.
Elderly residents reported that Florence Park was once a bustling and friendly place to live from the 1930’s onwards, where people chatted in the streets, children played out, and every morning the streets buzzed with men on bicycles going off to work in the local Morris Motors car factory. The local community centre (built by residents in the 1950s) was jam-packed with activities and people, and “everyone knew everyone”. These older residents said that the prevalence of televisions, computers and smartphones from the 1960s onwards encouraged people to stay at home, and that increases in traffic discouraged people from going out.
When we moved to the estate in 2000, there was little sense of community, and few people met up locally. There were some great community buildings with huge potential (as well as a health centre and nearby shopping centre). But the estate’s community centre was very underused by locals (“I only go there to vote,” most people said). Many parents we knew walked past the estate’s primary school to take their children to another “better” school further away. The middle school was closing down. The children’s centre in the park was a portacabin on its last legs. The local pub was quiet and spiritless. I wanted to live in a place where everyone could thrive – and this instinctively didn’t feel like that place. For years I talked to friends and neighbours about all the innate potential and promise held by each of these local buildings – could these community assets help us to bring the community together?
Then we had children, and that took up our headspace for a good few years. Over a couple of years, we talked to many neighbours, friends and even strangers in the park about maybe sending our children to the local (undersubscribed) primary school. In the end, the parents of 12 children met together, and we all agreed to send our children there, nearly doubling the intake for that year.
When the kids were a bit older, I wondered if we could look into running a youth club at the community centre. I wandered in one evening when I saw the lights on, and you know that film where people walk into a pub and everyone stops talking and turns to stare at the visitors? I swallowed and asked the men sitting at the social club bar who I should speak to about running a youth club at the centre. They laughed and said the centre didn’t do that kind of thing. I left, disheartened.
A few months later, a letter came through the door from the local council inviting Florence Park residents to the AGM of the community association that runs the community centre. There was a raffle ticket stapled to each letter, so clearly they were keen for people to come! This encouraged me. I started asking local people if they would be up for coming with me (I needed a buddy), and most people said no thanks – except one neighbour, who agreed – my heart sang. We went along that evening, and ended up on the committee, as they needed local residents to join. We got the idea that the community centre would not survive unless local people got involved.
The journey on the committee is a whole other story, but cutting the story short, it led to many positives. A few other local people joined us on the committee, so our small amount of positive energy became a wave – you can’t do this stuff on your own. We got grant support to repair the broken fence, to get new signs made and to decorate the place. The local council were also very supportive. We started to organise community events, activities and classes in the centre, including a free open day with food and taster activities to encourage people to physically come through the doors – and the place was jam-packed, just as it had been in the old days.
We needed some community glue, so we created a newsletter – it was written by residents, printed free by a local firm and delivered by a group of locals to every letterbox in the estate a few times a year. The first newsletter was one sheet of A4 with a small number of activities, encouraging people to get involved in specific tasks like running a group, helping with events or gardening at the centre (this worked better than saying “join the committee”). The newsletter has now been going for 14 years and is 8 pages, cheerfully full colour, and very positively received. “The newsletter is one of the reasons I decided to move to Florence Park,” said one new resident.
Lots of other positives happened with the other community buildings. Some neighbours saw potential in the derelict old middle school playground and worked tirelessly to create a farm where people could learn about where our food comes from – this is now Oxford City Farm. The old children’s centre was rebuilt, and despite being decommissioned a few years later, it was reborn as the community hub Flo’s – The Place in the Park, founded and managed by the local community. People took over the local pub and it’s now vibrant (if more expensive! – but the community centre’s social club bar is still very reasonably-priced.) All of the community-led activities are low-cost or free, enabling everyone to join in and be part of them. There’s now something for everyone – and if something is missing, the energy and will is there to make it happen! People are now delighted to live here.
What did we learn on the way? That community buildings are where magic happens. That free or low-cost activities organised by local people create connections. That newsletters are community glue. That you can’t do it on your own. That motivation is everything. That local history talks are a great way of bring people in. Florence Park estate’s 80th anniversary was a great opportunity to organise activities that attracted a wide range of people – celebrating your local area is more community glue. We had a 1930s tea dance, a pantomime, open doors, party in the park (which has blossomed and is now FloFest and GloFest) – all organised by a growing number of residents who wanted to create positive activities for people living nearby and beyond.
We needed a lot of support and advice along the way from other groups and organisations – and we received invaluable help from Oxford City Council, the Federation of Oxford Community Associations, Community First Oxfordshire, OCVA, Oxfordshire County Council and other local groups. It felt like a great partnership, and with one very strong and important foundation – that local residents living here had the most power over what happened here.
93-year-old resident Bert had a tear in his eye when I interviewed him for the “Meet Your Neighbour” section of the newsletter – he said, “Thank you to everyone, it’s just like it was in the past, a friendly, sociable place where you know your neighbours, and people trust each other. The laughter is back. You have made Florence Park great again.”
Jane Gallagher – Community Capacity Builder