Church Hill

Uniting the community through low-cost events and trips 

Church Hill Big Local partnership used funding towards low-cost or free events, trips and activities for families, to bring people together through shared experiences.

This began with investment in the Willow Trees Community Centre, a well-used existing space, to showcase to residents how the Big Local funding could positively impact their lives. This progressed to events and trips aimed at families, including Christmas, Easter and summer fetes, and subsidised family trips to the seaside.

To maintain community spirit, efforts were made to ensure that seasonal events continued in some form throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Church Hill Big Local partnership felt this programme was one of their key achievements, helping them raise their profile in the area and to achieve a good reputation by helping residents build memories with their families and the wider community.

Redeveloping Bomford Hill

Felt by the partnership to be their biggest project, this redevelopment involved funding a range of improvements to Bomford Hill, transforming an unused and relatively unknown green space into a valued community asset. These included: constructing a peace memorial with seating, a major planting project involving local schoolchildren, installing boxes for bats and birds, and developing Wendy’s Way, a new path memorialising the partnership’s former chair. A toposcope was also created, which indicated distance and directions to notable features in the local landscape.

This work was completed in phases, and to specific council requirements. The peace memorial, for example, was delivered – from planning stages through to a remembrance event – within ten months. To do this, the partnership set up a steering group to co-ordinate the project that included volunteers, local councillors and a local historian. They also drew on strong existing relationships with local councillors, helping attain initial council support and ensuring it remained throughout the construction process. 

Altogether, the redevelopments led to Bomford Hill becoming a feature of the Church Hill area. Where previously it was inaccessible and unknown to most of the community (despite being the biggest green space in the area), it became well used by the local community.

Supporting young people and parents

Improving activities for children and young people was a priority for Church Hill Big Local partnership. To achieve this, they decided to invest in existing organisations’ expertise to holistically support local children, young people, and their parents. 

One example was providing funding for Youthy – a local group based in the Willow Trees Community Centre. Youthy provided a safe youth space, and was felt by local residents to have contributed to a reduction in anti-social behaviour in the area. Another example was parent-and-toddler football sessions, which helped provide activities for parents with young children who might not have had outside space in which to play. These sessions also provided an opportunity for parents to meet, helping create connections that might otherwise not have been made.

Valuing volunteers

The partnership was able to deliver numerous events by bringing together residents to volunteer, including two significant back-to-back celebrations for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. 

The first, in April 2022, was hosting a visit from the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Portsmouth, which was included in the BBC’s national coverage. Despite the significant work required to organise this, it was meaningful to the community to be selected by Buckingham Palace to host the march, and to take part. 

This was followed with its own celebration on Jubilee weekend in June 2022, which took place for the community on Bomford Hill. An increase in volunteers helped both these events succeed, due in part to the partnership being able to spread the workload. There were useful learning outcomes for the partnership about volunteering generally – both in terms of how to get volunteers involved and stay engaged, and about the amount of work that goes into creating such opportunities and events.

Establishing community-led groups and networks for the long term

From the outset, Church Hill Big Local partnership was committed to ensuring that work was sustained beyond the programme. They supported the establishment of new local groups, empowering the community to continue delivering activities and projects in the future. This included Krafty Sew and Sew, a new group created when two existing craft groups merged, and Choirs Connected, a network of choirs supported by Church Hill Big Local partnership from their inception onwards. The group eventually expanded to run a range of choirs for many ages, including a family choir, and became a legally constituted organisation.

Both groups were supported by the partnership to network with other community stakeholders and set up formal organisations to fundraise and continue to be sustainable beyond Big Local funding. This allowed them to remain connected to a range of ongoing activity and continue to deliver projects in the area.

Creating a blueprint for community-led work

Through using their Big Local funding, the Church Hill Big Local partnership learned a lot about working together to improve and support their community. It gave them opportunities to make valuable mistakes, develop trust in each other around decision-making, and grow their confidence around what they could achieve together. 

The success of the Church Hill Big Local partnership was recognised by others looking to achieve similar things in their own areas, with the partnership feeling they were increasingly viewed as specialists on both the needs of the community and how best to serve them. 

Their resident-led response to the Covid-19 pandemic (helped by the structures and relationships they had built before the pandemic, which provided a strong foundation of support for them to shift delivery quickly) led to them being included in broader, Redditch-wide networks of voluntary organisations aimed at sharing learning and support.