Community Power Podcast Series 2 Episode 3: Regenerating the riverside in Gateshead

Episode 3: Regenerating the riverside in Gateshead

Chris Allen

Hello and welcome to another Community Power Podcast, a weekly series brought to you in partnership with Local Trust. My name is Chris Allen, and in this series, we’re showcasing some incredible projects, focusing in particular on what happens when you give local people the resources, the power and the assets to make a difference to their own neighbourhoods. With me, as ever, is series producer Beth Lazenby. What are we going to be hearing about this week, Beth? 

Beth Lazenby

So this week we are going up to the north east, and we’re meeting Chris and Lawrence, who are going to be chatting to us about their local cycling scheme. And it’s not only helping the mental health of local residents, but it’s also opened some opportunities for them to become part of a really exciting local regeneration scheme. 

Chris Allen

And so first of all, I asked Lawrence why this project was so important to so many people? 

Lawrence

Well, the social side’s a big part of it for a lot of the riders. Most of the riders that are coming and joining now are coming from recommendations from other people, and most of them are over 65. So the other day we had nine pensioners and three other riders that were in their 30s, 40s. 

Chris Allen

You’re giving me hope here, you give me hope. 

Lawrence

Somebody’s 76. I’m 70. And it keeps them fit, getting them out in the fresh air, and they’re making new friends as well. And we’ll always stop halfway and have a coffee and a sandwich somewhere, you know. So it’s a good social side as well. 

Chris Allen

And I suppose the first message from that is, ​“never say never. You know, people think, ​“I’m past it”, you know. 

Lawrence

We’ve always asked them. They fill a form in to see if they’ve got any medical problems and nearly every pensioner has, you know, and all the same. They’ve got back problems, leg problems, all sorts. But they come in and would just joke about it, you know, it’s good fun. 

Chris Allen

Yeah, yeah. And the far North East, if I describe you that way, the story notorious in terms of poverty and disadvantage is, would that be typical of Gateshead Big Local area? 

Lawrence

Very much so yeah. They’re queuing outside the door for the shop at half past 12 – it doesn’t open till two o’clock – to get the bargains at the beginning of the beginning of the shop. But some of them come in there, then they’ll go to another charity somewhere else to get some of the next day. And everybody’s struggling around that area, a lot of unemployment. There’s a lot of problems with drinking, drugs. 

Chris Allen

I can see from look on your face, this lies heavy on your heart. 

Lawrence

Yeah, it does. It’s one of the worst things you can find out about your area is that there’s more people committing suicide in that area than anywhere else in the country, and that’s one of the things. Reason is when they get depressed, they head towards the river, and you’ll see flowers on different reels, and that where someone’s committed suicide. They’ve gone in there, and their families come and put some flowers there. And it’s happening quite regular, you know. And it’s going to get worse. 

Chris Allen

And Chris is that one of the driving forces for the project for you? You know, is it thinking, ​“actually we can, we can save lives, not just improve lives with this project? 

Chris

Oh, yeah, definitely, definitely, yeah, it can have an enormously beneficial impact on your mental health, your life prospects, and, you know, your social outlook. It can help with so many things. 

Chris Allen

And bringing people together in whatever way, especially during the most difficult times, is, is particularly, is particularly valuable. Chris, one of the main things you try to do is get new people back in, maybe people returning people who were sort of saying, ​“I’m past it now”, but you’re saying, ​“No, you’re not. No, you got, we’re going to help you.” 

Chris

Yeah, that’s it. I think that’s sort of the main focus of the club, really, is, is new riders. It’s returning riders. It’s people who who don’t feel capable to go out and just hit the tracks, do 30–40 miles in a day, you know. And we’ve got, like, a whole support network there to help people get in and as gently as they like, you know. We do offer adult cycle confidence classes, and we do basic bike maintenance or walk people through how to maintain their own bike, fix, punctures, things like that. It gives people a great sense of achievement, coming in at a ground level and then working their way up to doing big distances. 

Chris Allen

And you talked a bit about the technical side of it, obviously is important to do. Someone else can do that for you. Confidence, though, that’s got to come from yourself. 

Chris

Yeah, and it does give you a big sense of confidence if you know that you can fix something on your bike, even just the simple stuff. You know, changing the tire or fixing the chain like that, helps a lot. 

Chris Allen

And in terms of funding, obviously, Big Local Gateshead has been able to help you on that. Any other funders come in and support this? 

Chris

Yes, we’ve got a lot of support from Cycling UK. They have regional reps all over the country who help set up community clubs, and all their focus is on community cycling. There’s also British Cycling, who previously did have more of a focus on on competitive cycling, whatever form that may be, that they support cyclists right up to Olympic level, but they’ve started to take more interest in community cycling and start to fund more community cycling projects. So they’ve both been great support. 

Chris Allen

And Lawrence, you know, you kindly gave away your years earlier, and what kind of impact has it had on you, you personally in terms of you know your health in its rounded sense, but also your your role in the community? 

Lawrence

When I first started, I used to go up one once a week on the bike. I’ve got to go out three times a week now, because that’s my time. And it’s good. Some people chill out in different ways, but mine is riding the bike and get 25–30 mile, it takes up half a day. And I get just as much out of it if I do 10 mile with a new rider, is what I do 30 mile with the older riders, you know, the experienced ones. Because we’ve had a couple of new, new ones. And a young girl, she’s only 32, or three. She says, she says, ​“I’ll not be able to go very far. I only went three, three mile each way to work on a bike when I did ride”. So I took her out 10 Mile and then 14 mile, and now she’s doing 26. 

Chris Allen

Wow.

Lawrence

In three rides. And she’s so she’s high as a kite, because ​“I can do 26 miles, wait till I tell me friend”, and they go and tell their friend, and they bring their friends back. So you end up with another new member. 

Chris Allen

But even you said there, the three rides a week you do is for yourself. It’s your space your time. Sounds like you get a real buzz, though, a bigger buzz probably out of getting other people involved. 

Lawrence

Oh, it is, it is I like helping people in whatever I’m doing, but I wouldn’t be involved with Big Local if I didn’t probably. 

Chris Allen

Yeah, and Chris, obviously, safety is a big thing within cycling, and we know that cities are adapting and places they’re adapting. But again, parents with children, again, they worry, don’t they? What’s the kind of thing you you do in terms of safety in supporting people? 

Chris

Well, first and foremost is the confidence that we talked about before. You know we can support people to to get used to riding on the road. The vast majority of of the cycle rides that we do are on no-traffic cycle paths, things like that. We’re kind of spoiled for choice where we are up north, but the cycling on the road where we are isn’t great. There’s not a lot of very good cycle lanes, and the infrastructure is kind of old and patchwork. But the confidence is the biggest thing. 

We also offer like first aid training and things to our ride leaders. So almost all of our ride leaders are qualified as ride leaders through Cycling UK, and then they’ll come and do first aid training as well. We offer quite a lot of equipment as well. We’re often giving out bike helmets and things like that. 

We’re sort of starting to take steps into cycle advocacy to try and improve the area where we are. We managed to get a cycle path fixed up, didn’t we, a few months back that was really badly damaged from tree roots. We had a rider come off there. I think two or three members of the club have come off in the same place. So we managed to get that fixed. That was a nice little win. But Cycling UK also have, like, a cycling advocacy network, so they can connect you up with others in the area that want to help improve, and they can give a lot of support with that. So I think there’s a couple of members of the club that’d be interested in in that as well. 

Chris Allen

But there is a bit of a culture change coming along. Has that been happening in Gateshead? Can you see that over the years, Lawrence? 

Lawrence

There’s government funding at the minute, and we had a big meeting atGateshead Civic Centre with the all the people that mattered regarding transport. Now they’re trying to get people to encourage people to walk or use a bike. And they’re looking at the infrastructure of the paths and cycle ways. And we were involved in that to give our views on it. They were going to send staff out with her, but we’ve got one member of staff did half a ride, and then they just took our reccy as the regular one. But it opened up doors as well, because when you get somewhere like Gibside, it’s National Trust. Now to get in there, you’ve got to be a member, right? And it’s expensive. So we started the talk with Mick, who’s in charge of National Trust, and we said ​“You’re a cyclist yourself”, and said, ​“Would it not be best if cycles cyclists could get in free so they could use the cafe? Because they’re not going to go around the whole site. They just want to go to the cafe.” And because we started on him, we got three entrances for some of our groups from Big Local didn’t we? 

Chris

Yeah, we had a visit. We took 50 residents up there to go for the day. 

Lawrence

And it didn’t cost a penny. 

Chris Allen

So the message, you know, think about cycling. Don’t put it in the too hard box. You know, it is possible. You know, take some time building the relationships. But the impact quite spectacular, in terms of the health, both mentally and physically as well. Now, how do you think the cycling club might help people as they face up to, you know, some of the difficulties of, you know, paying for the heating, paying for their food? 

Chris

Well, first, I guess it’s cheap transport, isn’t it? I mean, my bike that I ride most often… 

Chris Allen

I hadn’t thought, you know, that was the most obvious thing of all.Indeed, Chris. 

Chris

Yeah, the bike that I ride, my sort of everyday bike was 30 pounds off eBay, and it’s still going strong, you know. I think I’ve changed the inner tubes on it once in about three years. Maybe it’s brilliant. And that’s it. That’s the total cost that it would have been that, plus a helmet. Sorted. You don’t need special clothing, you don’t need any bells and whistles. You can just have the basics and off you trot. You’re ready. You can, you can, you can transport 10–15, miles easily, on a bike like that. 

Chris Allen

And you mentioned a good point there. You don’t have to think, I’ve got to spend a few 100 quid on a top bike. I can actually, you know, can find one second hand. I can do it up a bit. And you give support there as well. Lawrence, what you know, you you chair the Big Local area there. You’ll be aware a lot of the social needs in the area as well. Again, how does the bike club contribute towards that? 

Lawrence

Spread the news I’ll tell you that because we will have a pop up shop on every Friday. We’ve had it running for over three year now, the money we’ll get from that goes back into the community. So especially on the summer holidays, we’ll have trips for the families. The bike club members when they come in and they see flowers and everything from Marks and Spencers, which we got free, they’ll see, ​“oh, can I take some flowers?” So they’ll put a fiver in, or something, you know, whereas the residents might put a pound in, but they take them home, and they’ll take free bread from Marks and Spencers or whatever. And we’ve got stuff from Fare Share, which we pay for, yeah, that’s why I’ve asked for contributions, just to help pay for what we’ve already paid for, you know. 

Chris Allen

Right, right. So, and you’re building a new centre. How you, how do you come about that? What’s the story of that one? 

Chris

Well, for a long time, we’ve been working out of a, it’s a school caretakers bungalow, and it’s, we’re quite away from the cycle tracks, so it’s probably about half a mile or so to get onto the cycle tracks. It’s a bit of a winding route, so we’ve been keeping an eye out for spaces closer to the riverside, which is where we do most of our cycling. We were actually we went to look at a piece of land to expand our horticulture work, and the council turned around and said, ​“Oh, and this building is attached to it. This building comes with it.” There’s a school on the same, another different primary school on the same site. There’s community midwives work out of there. So there’s, there’s almost the makings out of an entire community hub that we can just sort of drop into, you know, and help expand. 

Lawrence

Another thing we got involved with is the Riverside project, which Riverside Park on the Gateshead side, which is a big development that’s going to happen. And they’ve got us as Big Local and the Wheelers. They want that building as part of the the project, the building that we’re going to move into. What they’re going to do is build art projects along there. They’re going to put a running track around the car park. It’s not a car park anymore. It’d be a park. And like a steam engine as a piece of art there. And off the bank, it’s quite steep the bank coming up from the river. They’re going to put six pods into the side of the of the bank with, like, big legs at the front and a glass front right, looking straight onto the river. And they’re going to be to let, so like holiday lets so five of them will be to let, and one of them will be a artist studio with the artists can let. 

Chris Allen

I believe you’re hoping that perhaps you’ll give a bit of return on investment do you? 

Lawrence

Well, we’ll not be investing in it. It’s all going to be money that comes in from this group that have formed, have spent about a million pound coming up with ideas and looking at how they could develop the Riverside and bring more people to the teams area. So they wanted to, they want feedback from the local community. So they got us involved, because we’ve got a membership scheme, and we’ve got 540, odd members who we can just get in touch with via emails or telephone. 

Chris Allen

And so if people want to know what local people think, they come to you first. They should do anyway. 

Lawrence

So what’s happened is they’ve ended up cooping us. In the end of the last meeting, they said, ​“Can you two stop back cos I need to talk to you?” And whatever board or directors, or whatever they’re going to have, we’re going to be part of it because, because we’re on the ground and we know what’s happening. But what they’ve said is there will be a return on like the pods and the if they rent them out and they want to put the money back in the community. Then rather than start a new charity or a company, their preference is the money goes to Big Local Gateshead because they know it’ll go back into the community. 

Chris Allen

And you’re going to do a bike hire offer around there, I presume for people on holiday? That’ll be good. 

Chris

Hopefully yeah, that’d be perfect. Yeah. We keep talking about expanding how we use the bikes and what bikes will have available. 

Lawrence

Because we’d love to have some more, some three wheel bikes, electric ones, because we’ve got three residential homes in our area. And then you could just go up to the home, take a member of staff and an elder person, and just put a blanket around them and take them down by the river, and they’ll love it, because they love coming to our allotment, you know. And just sitting with their school children when they come in. So if we take them for a ride and get the wind in their face, they’ll love it. 

Chris Allen

So that was the chair of Gateshead Big Local. That’s Lawrence O’Halloran. And before that, we heard from Chris Falwell. Really interesting project Beth, that starts off, obviously, with a relatively simple idea, but it sounds quite exhausting to me of doing some bike riding, and then leads on to regeneration in the area, and the partnership becomes that kind of go to place for local authority to sort of listen to the community. 

Beth Lazenby

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really reassuring and exciting to see Big Local partnerships holding that sort of influencing space, because they really do know what’s going on in the ground, in their communities, and it’s great to see that they’ll be part of the legacy of that area as it just gets stronger and stronger. 

Chris Allen

Yeah, and they’ve now seemed to have a bit of an income coming along as well investment from others, but then at the local authority, perhaps recognising some of the work that they’ve done by saying, yes, we want money to go back into the community. 

Beth Lazenby

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the way it should be. And you know, you heard from Lawrence and Chris, both really passionate about making the lives of their residents a better place, but also thinking about the bigger picture, as well as how they can be involved in these sorts of decisions, 

Chris Allen

Indeed. Now, okay, what we’re going to do next week? 

Beth Lazenby

So next week, we’ve got a really special episode which is going to be featuring some of our Creative Civic Change areas. So Creative Civic Change is our sister programme, and it looks at what happens when you give people funding to explore art and creativity as a way of making change in their area. So we’re going to be chatting to a couple of people who have been involved about the changes that they’ve seen since they’ve taken part in CCC. 

Chris Allen

Thanks, Beth. And yeah, we look forward to you joining us next time on the Community Power Podcast, brought to you by Local Trust, discovering what happens when you give local people the money, the power and the assets to make a difference to their neighbourhoods.