Gannow

Securing the future of Gannow Community Centre

Gannow Big Local partnership invested in a range of assets and spaces, including improvements to local parks, playgrounds, benches and community gardens and, notably, Gannow Community Centre. 

The community centre was identified by the council for closure in 2017, however, by working with Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Council for Voluntary Service (BPRCVS), the partnership helped secure an asset transfer of the building. Big Local funding contributed to the refurbishment of the space, creating a hub that could serve the community’s diverse needs into the future. Refurbishment included general maintenance, accessibility improvements, and aesthetic upgrades to the building. BPRCVS were also awarded Reaching Communities funding in 2018 from the National Lottery Community Fund, which paid for staff and a caretaker. 

The revamped community centre hosted a regular community café, sessions with councillors and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), support sessions for residents around health and wellbeing, finances, and legal issues, and other community activities and projects. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the partnership funded work to increase the building’s storage capacity and upgrade its sanitary facilities, making it compliant with pandemic safety requirements. This meant the centre played an important role during the pandemic, acting as a local hub and food-distribution point for residents in need of support. 

The partnership felt that their investment in the centre, alongside others in local assets and spaces, helped to improve opportunities as well as perceptions of the area.

A joined-up approach to helping young people

Following the closure of local children’s centres, residents felt that there were gaps in support and services for young people and families, and that this had contributed to complex intersecting issues, including child poverty and antisocial behaviour. 

Gannow Big Local partnership felt this required a more holistic approach, through a combination of small grants for local activities, ongoing projects with schools and families, and long-term work directly with young people in the area. 

The partnership specifically wanted to work in a joined-up way to support young people and address these issues. In 2017, the Big Local worker set up regular meetings with local stakeholders (including local police, Burnley Borough council, and BPRCVS) to discuss possible interventions.

Small grants stimulated local activities and projects for young people which were delivered through groups and organisations. This included Arts 2 Heal, who ran arts-based projects with young people displaying behavioural challenges, and Burnley College, who delivered a six-week summer holiday club for teenagers.

As part of their work supporting young people, the Gannow Big Local partnership also invested in improvements to local school assets and spaces, and long-term projects with pupils. This included funding a new nurture room at a local primary school to support pupils’ emotional and social skills. One year, the partnership also contracted a local organisation, New Era, to work specifically with families with young children to deliver family support. 

They also commissioned several organisations to deliver ongoing projects working directly with children and young people. From 2017, Participation Works North West delivered a Youth Café and engagement initiatives, providing evening activities and food provision. A year later, Burnley Leisure were commissioned to deliver Active Gannow, a programme of free after-school activities. 

Towards the end of their funding, Gannow Big Local partnership felt that their interventions had improved local young people’s confidence and aspirations, raised youth volunteering numbers, reduced anti-social behaviour, and positively impacted residents’ perceptions of young people in the area. They therefore focused on the sustainability of their long-term commissioned projects, and worked with providers and their LTO to ensure that these could continue to be funded and organised. 

Getting residents involved in decision-making

The Gannow Big Local partnership wanted to create opportunities for participation and create a more vibrant and active community in Gannow. However, over time, they identified what they felt was a sense of apathy within the community and a lack of local capacity, and found these to be barriers to involving residents in their work.

The partnership tried several approaches to raising the profile of their work in the area, getting more residents involved in decisions, and making participation easier for those who became members. For example, they created a ​‘virtual email feedback group’ so that members could contribute remotely. They also worked to increase participation by asking grant recipients to sit on the partnership for the duration of their funding (though this was sometimes impractical due to the number of groups they funded).

Challenges engaging residents in decision-making processes increased when some partnership members left in the years leading up to, and during, the Covid-19 pandemic. This saw decision-making fall to an ever-smaller group of people. In order to meet the programme requirements for partnerships, they sought to address this by making meetings more informal and accessible, and increasing their consultation through community events, supported by paid workers. They also explored setting up a group specifically to bring young people into decision-making processes. 

Towards the end of the Big Local funding, they also explored how residents could contribute to local decisions after the end of the programme. As part of this, they worked to create a new Gannow Community Centre User Group that would have a say in what activity would take place in the centre into the future.