Minutes from Community centre residents working group meeting – 28th Jan 2025
Minutes
Attendees: Friedrich, Dan, Dayal, Kate, David, Karen, Vanessa
Everyone introduced themselves and we discussed where people had background with similar projects. Projects mentioned were:
- Our Yard at Clitterhouse Farm (Dayal)
- Shared Assets projects (Kate)
- Unit38 projects (David)
- Walworthlivingroom.org (Vanessa)
- pelicanhouse.org/ (Vanessa)
We had a conversation about what the gap we are trying to fill is. We need to expand on this list but the Issues raised in the meeting were:
- Lack of a ‘third’ space or public community space
- Make good use of an empty building, avoid physical decline of the building
- Support the work of existing groups:
- Meeting space
- Tool storage
- Haringey Fixers / space for repair cafes
- Central noticeboard, place to find out what’s happening
- Create a space to explore possibilities:
- Provide space for hire
- Library of Things, tool library, lend hedge cutters
- Community plant nursery, for distribution to residents and planting on the estate / in the park
- Coffee morning for elderly and toddlers
- Affordable childcare
- Public toilets
General discussion
- Desire to be ambitious but also to get started / make sure the building is used in some way.
- Questions about what the council expects from space and what they would “accept” as a proposal
- Need to quantify ‘social value’ and potential money saved to council
- Discussion about specific uses e.g. childcare, toilets, need for a core tenant
- Age UK, Citizens Advice, IntoUniversity as possible tenants
- Leases:
- In an ideal world the lease for whole building would be offered, not just ground floor
- If only short leases are offered this can constrain the uses / fundraising.
Who else would be good to get involved?
- Charities already operating on the estate
- We discussed the need to get more people involved and to get a more representative set of opinions
- Survey and flyers proposed as first action to widen engagement.
Next steps:
- David & Dayal: Surveying residents on estate and the wider ward
- Reach out to HomeStart and other charities about what involvement they would be interested in:
- Kate: IntoUniversity
- Dan: Homestart
Vanessa: Citizens Advice
- Kate: share her work on the different models of community ownership / management / use of buildings (e.g. from full community ownership on a 125 year lease to smaller ‘meanwhile’ uses)
- Karen & Vanessa: Ask for access to outside space for Great British Spring Clean
- Karen: Ask about the roof status
Next meeting (Tuesday 25th February, 7pm):
- Group to map out what the different models of community use might mean
- Figure out where we could make ourselves heard