An unexpected journey to community leadership in Birchwood

Note: Yvonne Griggs very sadly passed away in September 2025. Yvonne will be remembered for her positive impact and contributions to her community in the Birchwood Big Local area.

In summer 2024, we had people from about eight different nationalities singing songs from each other’s cultures in Diamond Park. We didn’t plan the singing, it just happened.

We were having one of our usual litter picking days and a volunteer brought his guitar along to it, as he’d had a lesson before. I said: ​‘You can play that, can you?’. Soon, there were about 30 people joining in with the singing, including a Russian family and a Ukrainian one. When I got home, my neighbour told me about the race riots in the rest of England.

There’s something magical about Diamond Park. The park, and Big Local, have brought people together in Birchwood so there’s more community spirit now. 

The kids have asked for a ​‘welcome’ sign in different languages in the park and there’s less people saying ​‘Oh, those people live over there.’ Because there’s both big private houses in Birchwood as well as older social housing ones.

The park is surrounded by woods and houses and is in the most deprived area of our Big Local. We know there’s people that take and sell drugs on the estate, and there’s not that much for young people to do. Diamond Park is a safe place for the kids and anyone else to be.

Big Local has made surprise leaders out of people like me. When I had a brain haemorrhage 20 years ago, I wrote myself off. I retired early and my self-esteem was low. When I left school, I was told I was ​‘educationally subnormal’, and I’d never hold a job. I am dyslexic but they didn’t recognise it. I thought I was stupid and useless.

But other people didn’t write me off. I did some training through Local Trust, and I became part of the Community Leadership Academy, where people from other Big Local areas shared ideas. I gradually became more confident and realised that I wanted my voice to be heard.

Big Local has encouraged people to look beyond themselves to their community. Now I have a purpose. I might feel stiff when I get up in the morning, but I have to go to the park because something needs checking. I go in my mobility scooter, which normally has garden tools and black rubbish sacks in the back.

At 75, the doctors tell me that my brain is working better than ever. Health issues don’t stop you being part of your community and engaging with people. 

I got involved with Birchwood Big Local 10 years ago when I was asked to chair the green spaces subgroup. I’m known in the area as I have lived here for 35 years and was a landscape gardener on the estate. I’ve gardened since I was little. We had a concrete yard but, through the years, holes turned up and I filled them with soil and grew things.

I thought I’d join Big Local for 18 months but now my role is chair of Diamond Park and community engagement. The kids call me ​‘Mummy Diamond Park’ or ​‘Granny Diamond Park’.

When we took over the lease for Diamond Park from the church in 2017, it had rotten and dangerous wooden playground equipment. The grass was high so you could hardly see what was in the park. It was terrible.

We got a team of volunteers from our local Co-op to help clean up the land. Then we asked residents to vote for one of three designs for the new playground. Birchwood Big Local paid £94,167 for the equipment, including a separate area for under-fives and a wheelchair accessible seesaw. We also have three picnic benches that you can’t vandalise, animal-themed litter bins and garden space. 

When we held consultation events, we asked residents if they were willing to be volunteers for the park. Now we have around 20 volunteers, including three key holders who open and close the park so that it’s available seven days a week. Older people and people with disabilities from new flats are volunteering in the garden with their carers. We are registered with the GP’s social prescribing scheme, so people come to volunteer at our events or for a natter.

We hold five events a year in the park for the community. Around 50 people came to our ​‘Puppets in Charge’ day in 2024. Children learn how to make puppets and we put on puppet shows with scripts that I write. We have an annual donkey and petting farm which 300 people came to in 2024. There’s two or three big clean-up days a month and more litter picking that volunteers and residents do themselves.

If there’s trouble in the park, I talk to the community member first. One young man came to me to apologise for something he’d done. ​‘Nobody likes me,’ he told me. ​‘I’m stupid’. I listened and told him not to write himself off, like I did. He got involved in volunteering in the park and is doing better at school.

The police back us up with what we are doing. They don’t want to be giving anti-social behaviour orders out.

I feel proud to see people reach their potential through volunteering. We had another young lad who was very quiet when he joined the puppet team. He’s now training to be a scout leader. Then there was a young lady who couldn’t read, a problem for others in Birchwood too. She started volunteering and we helped her to get other support. Now she’s training to be a social worker.

About six years ago, at a meeting in Blackpool, I was asked to tell the story of someone that Big Local had helped. It was to show people from other Big Local areas how to use different ways of reaching people. I used puppets to tell the story. They’d all known me for four years, but they were scratching their heads to guess who the person could be.

It was actually my story. They said: ​‘We don’t look at you as disabled. It’s what you contribute to our meetings.’ That helped change my view of myself. I realised that the only person that was stopping me, was me. After that, I did different training in management and leadership.

Diamond Park is a legacy of Birchwood Big Local. The plan is for our volunteers to run it. A new group is being formed, with help from Local Trust, to keep the park open for the future. We have had some training about creating a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO).

We are working with other organisations, like Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and Amazing Communities Together, to keep the park going. Personally, I want to keep healthy and be of use to the community and maybe find a different challenge, like setting up a community garden.

I’ve learned not to judge people by the way they look or talk. All of us, myself included, have got potential that’s not brought out in normal life. I am a leader now. I think everybody should have the chance to be one.