News

Local School Opens its Doors to Community Sport

Thanks to Thames View Junior School and its new Headteacher, James Smith, more community football will soon be offered to local residents, particularly girls and young people in the local area.

Thames Ward Community Project and its local delivery partner, Creative Wellness, have had a problem for several months which we just couldn’t seem to resolve. After supporting Creative Wellness and its founder, Barking Riverside resident Khushnood Ahmed, in running a number of very successful girls football sessions via the Barking Sports For Change Coalition supported by Nike, the GLA and Laureus Sport, we couldn’t seem to find the group an appropriate, accessible and affordable space for this activity to continue to take place locally. Having run a number of successful sessions on the Thames View Playing Fields in the summer the group needed to find a playing surface that was levelled, marked out with proper goals for their sessions to be able to continue.

TWCP staff explored a number of different options which all seemed to present barriers that were impossible to overcome be it due to cost, availability or lack of clarity over who owned and operated the space and could give permission.

A fortunate turn of events came via social media when staff realized that a local football club, Premier Kids Soccer, who were tagging the @ThamesWardCP account into lots of the excellent activity they were running at the Thames View Junior School presented an opportunity to connect with the club director and later the school headteacher. Both of these meetings were a breath of fresh air as the PKS Chairman and Club Manager, Bank, also works within the school and was able to introduce us to James Smith, the new headteacher. Mr Smith welcomed the opportunity to connect the school to the wider community with open arms and couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about the opportunity for his students to gain more opportunities to play football outside of school as well as offer up the school facilities for use by the wider community outside of school hours. For TWCP and Creative Wellness this has been the culmination of countless emails and phone calls and so to have such an outcome was really incredible after encountering so many obstacles.

TWCP will continue to explore the possibility of improving the surface of the Thames View Playing Fields to increase the organised sport that can take place there but, in the meantime, we want to send a massive shout to Premier Kids Soccer for the excellent work they do and thanks to Thames View Junior School for their commitment to the wider community it serves! We look forward to working with you both in the future.

It's a great breakthrough after countless efforts from myself and TWCP for the girls of Thames Ward. After a successful pilot, the girls wanted to carry on but due to lack of space we couldn’t continue. Their families noticed that they had increased in confidence and physical activity. The girls that attended didn’t get a chance to play in school because either they were not selected or lacked confidence. I am thankful to Thames View Junior School for giving a chance to our girls to learn, play and thrive.

Khushnood Ahmed Tweet

Inside TWCP: A Year in Post – Zainab Jalloh

Last week, it was my 1-year anniversary as Communications & Outreach Officer here at Thames Ward Community Project, and I couldn’t quite believe it. We choose jobs for a variety of reasons, but I remember vividly late 2020 hoping to take a risk to find a job that gave me time for family, and a job that was closer to what moved me, serving community. I believe in circumstances being timely and purposeful so when I was offered this role, even though changing careers was frightening, a smaller team more exposing, and the initial short-term contract precarious, I took it because it was what I wanted.

It has since been both challenging and incredibly exciting. I sit in my role as a worker but most importantly a local resident of Barking Riverside who emphatically wants to see our area thrive and people really be at the centre of decisions that affect their lives and TWCP exists for that. The heart of Thames Ward Community Project is residents coming together to create action groups and make change: Arts & Culture, Environment, Health & Wellbeing, Housing, Skills & Enterprise, and Young People, and comms plays a huge part.

I’ve been able to heavily support our Barking Food Forest project and seen how important sharing the journey of a project is in building momentum and engaging residents. Even whilst in lockdown, we created social media pages to share our ethos, co-design session plans, and more recently people getting stuck in at events! And I’m learning that that’s what people care about seeing. Real people, real stories, real community building. So my focus this new year is doing more of that.

As a team we’re creating spaces that promote honest dialogue with major stakeholders; the Resident Planning Forum, Community Resilience Project, the Healthy Thames Project, to get our resident voices a seat at the table. And a key vehicle for me to champion real stories is through our now resident-led, community newspaper, “Riverside News.” If you haven’t read it yet take a moment! This is us. The community managing green spaces, supporting local entrepreneurs, building resilience, enjoying street parties and getting behind our young people! We’re a little closer today it seems to having the community we are happy to have our children grow up in, but I don’t just want to sell you positive press.

I want us to have some hard conversations too and to make sure those get heard. At TWCP, I like that we’re not afraid to do that. I’m excited to spend more time this year getting out of my house and meeting you. Collaborating and creating impactful content that turns heads, and gets resources.

Zainab Jalloh

Communications and Outreach Officer at TWCP

Director blog February 2022 – #newpower – why outsiders are winning, institutions are failing and how the community sector will win the day!

The world is changing, faster than ever it seems. I grew up without computers and mobile phones, without the internet – now those things define us, our data is mined and sold back to us.

I was asked to lead on some group discussions with COMPASS, an independent think tank, on how the new power of tech impacts on communities and neighbourhoods.

A new book had come out, entitled #newpower by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans. Books like #newpower try to articulate the zeitgeist, to explain why our times are as they are. They have a big idea and even bigger hype so I am usually sceptical. The basic idea of #newpower is that for much of history things were straightforward – you knew who had power and who did not. But now it’s changing. For once the underdogs are winning. Just not always the kind of underdogs you might want. So as a community worker working in the community sector I know something about underdogs so I’m interested in changing the rules of the game.

Evidence of this change might include the #metoo movement, Black Lives Matter but also ISIS and Q Anon. In the hyper-connected world ideas and actions spread very quickly and this can force change. How do we use that for good? How do we make it easier to do good? The harm and downsides will be obvious, but this new world is coming ready or not.

One of the examples I liked most was Lego, the company. It was in decline and had run out of ideas. They talked to their longstanding fans and ran meet-ups for them over weekends where people indulged their childhood nostalgia but then soon ended up as an R&D arm, making successful products overnight. Lego in effect gave up control and handed over production and creativity to the people who cared most.

See where I might be going here? Council – control – community groups – new way of working. What would happen if we turned local services and democracy inside out like Lego did? That is the kind of thought process the book invites. And more to the point, it illustrates examples of cutting-edge business practice that does exactly this, underlining the point that far from being fantasy it is sound market practice that larger charities and public sector organisations have yet to catch up with.

What #newpower seeks to do is spread power much more widely to millions of people (crowds) and as much as possible, take it away from power holders altogether. Because power holders don’t have the answers or the insights and can’t grow anything. And now their power is flowing away from them by entrepreneurs who can code and activists who can tweet, video-edit and post.

In its better moments, the voluntary and community sector spreads power more widely and deeper. It was ahead of the curve in pushing power outwards and downwards when it remembered to collaborate rather than compete, in the pursuit of more equitable outcomes and a fairer world.

The four group sessions we did included council leaders, former government ministers, charity CEOs, policy people and we had a great chat. Mostly we didn’t talk about tech at all. We talked about how people behave to each other and how power changes that. The fear and cults of personality that so-called leaders promote. How large institutions create a culture that can crush people as a matter of routine. We talked about our sense of déjà vu, of policymaking being doomed to failure because of broken promises. The need for immediate ring-fenced money and buildings placed directly in the hands of communities, independent of anyone, in perpetuity (forever). People spoke from the heart as much as the head so that was my criteria for a worthwhile discussion and hopefully something better to follow. When it gets written up I’ll be sure to share.

At the heart of #newpower is a vision of the world turned upside down. I’m not wholly sold on that. I don’t think the underdogs are winning though some demagogues are gaining traction. I’d settle for a more pragmatic view of partnership working and power shifting – where the top-down power holder can meet independent community groups and residents in the middle. That middle ground does not come easy. But we can do much better than winner takes all; we can fundamentally change the rules of the game.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Residents Finalise Community Fire Safety Action Plan

Residents have been working with each other and local organisations such as the British Red Cross and TWCP to educate themselves on fire safety, compile information packs and undertake risk assessments among other actions.

After months of outreach events, community days and two workshops – including advice and information from Fire Safety Consultants, UCL Bartletts School of Planning, Just Space, and a showcasing of local talent, the resident committee has begun finalising key actions.

Residents of the Thames Ward and Barking Riverside area met last week to discuss the finalisation of their community fire safety action plan and its submission to the major stakeholders in the area: the Council, Barking Riverside Limited, the London Fire Brigade, the Greater London Assembly and the Mayor. Following the Barking Fire of 2019, residents have expressed the need to work with local organisations to address ongoing concerns to avert a future disaster.

Local poet Romeo Murisa, the Rainbow Collective and local residents will be producing a film to convey the key areas of concern that residents would like to work with major stakeholders to address such as remediation of flammable materials, extra fire safety equipment and improved transparency and information sharing between residents, builders and developers.

Barking Food Forest: Growing Community and A New Year!

The Barking Food Forest Project has got off to a flying start. After several hurdles including underground scans, lockdowns and more, we finally got to start on site gardening sessions in August of 2021. The community got the ball rolling, preparing the site and building wooden planters to grow vegetables.

By September, school was back in and students of all ages began to get involved with weekly gardening sessions. All the way from toddlers at LEYF Nursery to secondary students at Riverside School, the younger members of the community jumped head first into all the gardening tasks.

There’s been a lovely symbiotic process, where the different groups attending the garden at separate times have been working towards a shared vision. A great example was our first batch of veggie planters. The community (residents) built the planters and got them filled up with compost, ready for planting. Then the nursery and primary groups planted them up with veggies. The secondary students and the community groups helped later on with weeding and mulching, creating a cosy blanket of grass cuttings – to help keep the young plants insulated and hydrated over winter.

Saturdays have been lots of fun and an opportunity for all the different groups to work on the garden together. We have a few junior gardeners who come with their nursery/primary group on a Tuesday and then come with their family on a Saturday.

It’s a been a whirlwind of a first season. Although, we started towards the end of the growing season, we’ve got a lot done.

Resident and student gardeners have planted a hedgerow to attract birds and wildlife and created a pond – which is happily getting filled by the winter rains. We also planted many shrubs, flowers and young trees, which are all creating a real sense of the Food Forest that we have envisioned together.

Barking Food Forest has had a couple of great events this year. Both the Pumpkin Party and the Diwali celebration had a great turn out. Residents and also neighbours from further afield in Barking and Dagenham got together to garden, celebrate and meet other like minded folks from the area. The kids had a blast playing games and doing seasonal arts and crafts. Some of the residents even brought delicious home made food to share with the community. Nothing brings people together like enjoying tasty food, in future we look forward to sharing the goods that we grow together as well.

In November, we celebrated a major win: the Mayor of London Climate Kick Start awarded Barking Food Forest and Riverside Bridge School £10K to create a Rainwater Harvesting System. The Bridge School Kitchen and Barking Food Forest, will each have a system to capture rainwater and use it for watering the garden. What’s more, it will include a solar powered automatic watering system, so that the school plants thrive even during the long hot summer holidays.

Students from Riverside Bridge and Riverside Secondary school also got to meet Mayor Sadiq Khan at an exciting award ceremony in central London. They were inspired to hear of some of the other projects by schools in London and the Mayor’s ambitious goals for nature and wellbeing in the capital. Best of all the students were recognised and celebrated for being champions of positive environmental change that will benefit all London’s residents, wildlife and ecology.

Barking Food Forest is currently taking a break for the winter and will reopen in March for our first full growing year!

We’re also using the winter break to move forward with planning applications for our proposed structure and other plans. The next year should see some major changes to the garden site, so watch this space! Better yet come along and get involved.

Community Gardening sessions are open to all and run on Tuesdays & Saturdays from 10am-12pm. The garden will reopen in mid-March.

Nikhil Rathore

Permaculture Designer & TWCP Steering Group Member

IG: @barkingfoodforest

FB: Barking Food Forest

The Healthy Thames Project: Shaping Health Services

Thames Ward is going through immense change right now as you may have noticed around you. The way health services run is also changing in a way you can’t see yet, but you can be a part of shaping it.

The Healthy Thames Project is one way you can be involved, through a collaboration between:

Thames Ward Community Project
Barking Riverside Limited
The council – LBBD
CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group – part of the NHS)

There are plans for a new Wellbeing Hub to be built in Riverside. It will form part of the New Integrated Health Service. But what does that mean? Instead of calling a GP receptionist, and waiting ages to get an appointment, you can speak to a link worker who can make direct referrals to various departments which may be able to help you with all sorts of treatment and support. At the Hub there will be so much more choice in the care you receive. You could even be the person running health and wellbeing activities!

We want local people to:

Be part of decision making on health services
Be able to run health and wellbeing activities

So, how can you get involved and what can you do now before the Hub is built?

Join the Healthy Thames Working Group

The Healthy Thames Working Group is a forum. A chance to speak on the topics that affect health services in your area. We want local people to be in a position to attend health board meetings and be part of decision making. This might mean that we need to create training, shadowing and mentoring opportunities and new local networks. This will help people feel more comfortable and knowledgeable to have a say at meetings where decisions are made around health services in the area.

You can be a part of the Healthy Thames Working Group!

We meet 4 times a year in person at the Sue Bramley Centre. We take part in workshops, hear from local people and health workers and get to know each other over food from local caterers. If you want to join the next Healthy Thames Event, or join the Working Group, send an email to Rahela@twcp.org.uk.

Director blog January 2022 – Freedom from Fear

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others’. – Nelson Mandela / Marianne Williamson

When I think of inspirational quotes this is one I frequently return to because it is so direct and relatable. Mandela used it in his inaugural address and took it from an earlier source (Marianne Williamson) so it is a mishmash. The child of God reference may mean different things to people of faith or no faith, for me that doesn’t really matter. It asks an interesting question – what are we afraid of? What holds us back? At the beginning of a New Year and after nearly two years of the pandemic with all the disruption and uncertainty that brings, the world feels strangely adrift. Plenty of things to be fearful of but where does that get us?

Fear is a universal experience but it doesn’t have to be defining; it doesn’t have to set limits. Addressing what is difficult is more often liberating. I wanted to think about this in the context of community work in Thames Ward and beyond.

One of the things I am conscious of is that for community work to be successful people need to invest in something bigger than themselves. In contrast much of the social conditioning we receive encourages us to be selfish and competitive – in order to get ahead. Community work is relatively low profile relative to footballers, tech entrepreneurs, celebrities, erratic politicians – that suck up the national conversation. If the criteria for success is money, profile, status, power – and the fear of not having those things drives us, then community work is out of step with the world, playing by the wrong rules.

Here’s the thing – recent research consistently shows happiness is something we do for its own sake, not for external goals. When we become fully immersed in something we enjoy we experience what is sometimes called ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1997). We don’t watch the clock because we are wholly absorbed and more truly ourselves. That sounds like winning to me, and along the lines of what Mandela spoke about – something liberating which spreads outwards. When I see community work in action, in its better moments, it is the same dynamic taking place.

My wider reflection is that the community sector is the cornerstone of a successful neighbourhood, ward and borough. One in four people nationally regularly volunteer – that is around 17 million people across the UK. That is a good news story that deserves much more celebration. They don’t do it individually – they do it together in groups (community groups).

I hope the community sector doesn’t continue, in the words of Mandela, to ‘play it small’. Sometimes when community groups get round the table with professionals you can feel people shrinking. The resident voice if it gets any access at all rarely sets the agenda and even rarer, do they hold money and deliver services. Billions of pounds of investment come in and out of the borough in a process that is largely invisible to most people. We are a million miles from where we need to be in terms of real empowerment to leave you with another quote: ‘The first step is half the journey’ (Aristotle).

What that means is, once enough people in the community case choose not to be afraid and come to appreciate what Mandela terms, their innate brilliance and talents – that is the ‘first step’ and it changes everything. As soon as residents and community groups stop following and start leading we are more than halfway to where we need to be.

Happy New Year everyone!

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Taking Action on Community Fire Safety

The British Red Cross began working with Thames Ward Community Project (TWCP), residents and the London Fire Brigade to create a series of workshops to develop a fire safety action plan with residents in response to the tragic fire in 2019.

On 9th June 2019, the Barking Riverside community in Thames Ward experienced a rapidly spreading fire, that affected more than 30 families, leaving those families displaced. Many community groups including the BRC and TWCP supported residents immediately after the fire.

The BRC and TWCP have recently organised a community day event, which took place on 1st October in Barking Riverside’s Rivergate Centre, and two fire action plan workshops on the 4th October and 29th November.

Each event has brought together local service providers and residents, one being the London Fire Brigade. At the community day event, families were excited to interact with the fire trucks and meet the firefighters who shared helpful advice in relation to fire preparedness. The event was also supported by the Coop at Minter Road who donated refreshments.

Both fire workshops were also well attended by local residents, with the most recent especially engaging families with local entertainment. The 29th November was a guided workshop where residents were invited to share ideas to help create the fire safety action plan for the community. Findings from the previous workshop on October 4^th, were also reviewed. The evening continued food catered by the Good Food Collective and a showcase of local providers and performers including: art work by Emmanuel Oreyeni @oreyeni_arts, an experimental art workshop by University College London, and live spoken word by local poet Romeo Murisa @spokenwithvision.

The BRC and TWCP will continue to engage and connect with the community to improve resilience-building in the community and fire safety with the hopes of finalising a Community Fire Safety Action Plan that can provide direction on reducing fire risk as well as leveraging support from housing developers, LFB and other stakeholders in the community for fire protection and prevention efforts.

Riverside News’ Relaunch as Resident-Led Paper

We end November 2021 with the re-launch of Riverside News as a resident-led local newspaper for Thames View and Barking Riverside! See the digital version of the paper below.

The Project

Previously run by Barking Riverside Limited, until having been approached by local resident and TWCP steering group member in 2015, Yasir Imran discussed with BRL the possibility of joining up the newspaper with the work being done by TWCP, which was positively received.

BRL have since partnered with TWCP and Social Spider CIC, providing funding to help transform Riverside News into a sustainable resident-led newspaper. The vision was to create a resident editorial board (REB) made up of local people who will lead in the design, production and distribution of this paper. The REB has now been established with currently three local residents; Emmanuel Oreyeni, Venilia Amorim, and Zahra Awani, being trained and supported by Social Spider to produce the current issue and next issue.

The Future

The hope is that Riverside News will be a social business that reinvests into the community and champions local voices and skills.

Riverside News will continue as a quarterly local newspaper providing local residents with updates about the latest happenings in Thames Ward and sharing community stories. If you have an idea for a story or are a local business who wants a feature in the upcoming issue please contact zainab@twcp.org.uk.

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Inside TWCP: 78 years in Barking – Allan Thacker

How did I get involved with TWCP & Why?

Well, just over four years ago, Barking MP Dame Margaret Hodge obtained lottery funding to set up a community project to ensure that residents of the rapidly developing Barking Riverside and Thames View could become involved in the changes that would affect both areas.

At the time I held the position of chair of Thames View Tenants & Residents association, so along with a colleague was invited to sit on a panel to interview candidates for the project leader. Our choice along with many others recommended Matt Scott for the position, so TWCP was born! I became a “Founders & Guardians” member and later a steering group member.

TWCP today has gone from strength to strength and its overriding aim is to involve and help residents “have a voice at the table” whether that be with Barking Riverside Limited or LBBD.

My vision for Thames View/ Barking Riverside?

Infrastructure. What I mean is that as Barking Riverside continues to expand over the next ten years, priority is given over to the pressures facing residents. The proposed “Health Hub” is coming, (long overdue), and the rail link is almost complete. We now have an excellent bus service with praise going to the young people of Riverside School for their achievements. The riverboat service to central London is coming, (well done BRL). Tunnelling the A13 is a major priority for residents who regularly have issues leaving and arriving at their homes.

Transport for London will pick up the bill (£1 billion+)! It would have been half that 10 years ago.

So as I enter my 78th year as a Barking resident, lot’s to look forward to.

Allan Thacker

Resident trustee of TWCP

Category: News