ClimateYouChange community funding bid for Green Infrastructure and Teaching project at Brampton Park

Last month at the East Ham Nature Reserve, we bumped into Anna Yusuf (the Community Neighbourhoods Senior Officer for East Ham) whilst she was running a council community activity. ClimateYouChange founder, Celia had already been working with Anna on the co-design for a new community garden at Brampton Park.

Anna asked whether ClimateYouChange were thinking about applying for the newly created Newham Council Community Infrastructure (CIL) funding pot*to support some of CYC’s suggestions for Brampton Park. (The East Ham Community Neighbourhood Team had some funding to create infrastructure for the community garden but not enough to achieve the degree of meaningful change for the allocated space sought by all of those involved in the co-design process, in particular ClimateYouChange.) [See post 'Let's Grow Brampton Park!']  

*Newham Council were offering £800k across the borough (£100k per neighbourhood area) of Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) funding to support resident and community group led local projects. CIL funding comes from a levy payable by developers. This money must be spent on community infrastructure which directly benefits local people. Newham Mayor Rokhsana Fiaz who together with her cabinet has been involving residents in citizens’ participatory democracy (as per her 2018 election manifesto), is now extending community decision-making to this new, citizen-led project and large-scale voting initiative.

We had thought that we would not be eligible to apply for the available CIL funds, as a few of our members were in a Newham Council working group (comprised of members of the public, alongside councillors and council officers) in another neighbourhood area where they would be vetting project proposals. Anna assured Celia that this would not be classed as a conflict of interest, if we applied for project funding in a different neighbourhood. She encouraged the group to apply for the East Ham ward.

At ClimateYouChange we had previously chosen to focus our attention on developing our Climate Change Education Programme. However, further to Celia sharing the details of her conversation with Anna it was agreed that the group would take this opportunity to apply for the Community Assembly funding to for a project at Brampton Park. By this time, the application deadline was quickly approaching, so we needed to work fast.

We had to pick from three community chosen funding priorities, one of which was ‘Parks and Open Spaces’. (ClimateYouChange had been part of the funding priority decision-making process.) As a community group we were permitted to put in for up to £20,000 worth of funding.

We costed up the different project elements which came to £15,600, including a contingency for any cost variances.

In June of this year, ClimateYouChange filled in the two stages of the grant application which were vetted by the East Ham Working Group. They approved our project which then passed through to the community voting stage, for residents to decide on the initiatives to be given funding. The voting opens on the 16^th of July and runs until the 26^th of the month.

Further to the approval of our two-part grant application, we wrote our project proposal (according to a maximum number of permitted words) to go onto the East Ham Neighbourhood projects page, for residents to view whilst they decide which projects to vote for.

Our proposal was written to build upon the community garden being planned by the East Ham Community Neighbourhood Team, further to their consultation and co-design with relevant members of the community.

Without ClimateYouChange securing additional funding, the existing Community Neighbourhood Ward budget would only stretch as far as to have the community growing areas housed in builders’ bags, which carry with them a strong risk of irreparable damage from vandalism. These bags could be easily burnt or cut, spilling open their contents. Aside from the risk posed by vandals, the plastic from builders’ bags isn’t designed to be food safe and so could potentially leach nasty chemicals into the soil being used to grow food. The bags would lose structural integrity over time. ClimateYouChange would like to create sustainable and durable, non-toxic planters.

The community garden as it stands would be reliant on the possibility of having a small rainwater butt which would barely touch the watering needs of the community gardens, creating less sustainability in a changing climate. ClimateYouChange would like to install a more substantial rainwater harvesting system to cope with the needs of the garden.

We would like to use a suitable, natural growing medium for the project’s ‘Mediterranean Garden’ which will allow local people to harvest healthily grown herbs. (At present, crushed concrete is planned for use as the growing medium which gives us cause for concern regarding the health implications.)

At ClimateYouChange we wish to include low carbon footprint, durable infrastructural measures, along with support for the natural world by including plenty of wildflowers and plants for pollinators.

We would like to use the community garden to greatly widen the degree of learning opportunities involved in installing and building climate change mitigatory infrastructure and organic food growing, whilst increasing awareness of the climate crisis. We wish to maximise the number of residents we can teach, to enhance the learning potential of the site.

ClimateYouChange’s project proposal summary on the Newham Council website is as follows:

Green Infrastructure and Teaching in Brampton Park

Aims:

To help residents of Newham find out how to grow the most food in the smallest space, sustainably and organically. Employing practical, reliable growing infrastructure and methods, we aim to show local people how this can save them money whilst lowering their carbon footprint, through reduced food miles, thus raising awareness of climate change.

This will be achieved by adding additional infrastructure to the planned Brampton Park Community Garden project and teaching local residents during and after the construction phase in several widely spoken languages and sign language. We also aim to teach a more tactile experience class on sowing and transplanting for the local blind community.

The additional infrastructure will include:

• Durable planters which provide optimum growing conditions. These would use FSC certified wood. They would be heat treated to give them added durability, without chemicals.

• A reliable rainwater harvesting system. We would aim to make the site as self-sufficient in water as possible.

To widen access further across the above groups who cannot come to Brampton Park, we would host an education section on our website: www.climateyouchange.org with downloadable fact / guidance sheets in several widely spoken languages.