Community Pride Podcast Episode 6 - How did Big Local areas aim to leave pride in their legacy?

Kayla Jones 00:05

One of my favourite parts of podcasting is just how flexible it is. In this fast-paced world where people have busy schedules and ongoing chores and responsibilities, it’s not as easy to sit down together to watch a show in front of the television as it used to be. One of the reasons I got into podcasting was how easy it was to listen whilst multitasking — doing the dishes, riding on a train, or going on a long trip with friends. Podcasting can be a way of putting out meaningful conversations, raising awareness, or the like, in the case of this podcast, telling impactful stories which leave a lasting digital footprint that people can engage with and learn from in years to come. That was the idea behind one Big Local community’s plan to create a podcast that could explore issues facing communities today and leave a legacy of community-based knowledge and experiences for future listeners. Heston West in the London Borough of Hounslow came up with the idea of creating a podcast hosted by volunteer and board member Tarek, who interviewed guests from across the world on topics such as volunteering, creative community projects, and workshops in mental health and wellbeing. 

Here’s Tarek on the Community Podcast Show interviewing a Big Local member about events like clean-up days, football, healthy cooking classes and volunteering. 

Tarek 01:23

So, when did you start Heston West Big Local? 

Interviewee 01:27

I started Heston West Big Local in 2016.

Tarek 01:30

What have you been enjoying so far?

Interviewee 01:33

Well I started off with the film club, and the reason why I joined Heston West was because of my epilepsy. My epilepsy triggers are stress and going on my phone or like on a computer, on TV, so I wanted to do stuff outside of my house. So that’s why I decided to join Heston West [Big Local]. 

Tarek 01:52

What are you currently working on with Big Local at the moment?

Interviewee 01:55

So right now, Taz gave me the opportunity to run a project called The Story Competition [fades out]. 

Kayla Jones 02:04

Digital projects like podcasting, videos, and websites are just one of the many ways areas are looking to leave a lasting footprint about their Big Local journey. Many Big Local communities I talk to are reflecting back with a bittersweet feeling. So many developed programmes and projects, some coming to an end, some continuing in other ways. As communities like Heston West come to the end of their Big Local journey, many are looking back and contemplating what their legacy will be for the future. How will Big Local be remembered in their area, and how can the experiences and skills they’ve gained during this time affect their local area for years to come? I’m your host, Kayla Jones. Join me for our final episode as we explore the future of Big Local communities and pride in leaving a legacy on the Community Pride podcast. 

Now that the programme is coming to an end, communities such as Heston West are exploring the ways of continuing on the work that is being done and building upon their Big Local experience. In October 2024, I spoke with Taz, the Project Manager of Heston West, Big Local.

Taz 03:22

Heston West is located in the London Borough of Hounslow, where there’s limited transport, so no train stations nearby. So it feels like, although you’re in London, it feels like you’re a million miles away sometimes. I think our challenges were getting people to know that we exist, I guess. I think, I think it’s a constant one, marketing, promoting ourselves. And also, you know, changing the way that we approach things. I think as the years go by, we have to continuously adapt and be agile and be responsive to the community’s ever-changing needs. So we have to learn quickly. And I think in this role, it’s been a lot of listening.

Kayla Jones 04:03

One of the area’s largest focuses has been on programmes and projects for local young residents, such as the youth filmmaking club. Some of the young people have gone on to be involved with Big Local into adulthood.

Taz 04:16

I think the most interesting thing really, is getting involved with young people in the programme, and seeing some of them join us as eight, nine, ten-year-olds, and now they’re adults, which is quite crazy for me. I joined Big Local when I was in my mid-20s, so that probably tells you my age now, but in that period of time, I’ve seen children grow into adults, and who come back and still supporting and volunteered. We set up the youth filmmaking programme in 2016, quite early.

Kayla Jones 04:42

Many Big Local areas have identified that there’s a need for better access for young people to develop much-needed skills in the arts such as acting, script writing, filmmaking, and podcasting. Heston West saw value in getting young people involved in creative projects as a way to build transferable skills and document the area’s Big Local journey.

Taz 05:03

The reason why I pushed this quite a lot earlier on, because when I was a young person, I couldn’t afford, I remember, you know, going to film school or learning filmmaking was too expensive. You know, it’s out of reach, you know, for a lot of people. And I think that spurred me on a little bit, like, if I missed the opportunity, can I create [it] for new people, for the new generation?

Kayla Jones 05:23

Heston West Big Local have made videos such as short comedies, community engagement highlights, and a 45-minute documentary on a local resident’s life through the decades, who recounted his experience as a volunteer at Heston West Big Local, before his passing at 86 years old. The Big Local Film Club has showcased so many of Heston West’s memorable moments, offering a lovely glimpse into the community’s story and providing me with a great way to revisit highlights of their journey online.

Taz 05:52

So we set up a film social enterprise called Elevate Community Productions, initially providing opportunities for people who are underrepresented in the film, media or the arts industry. So it’s very, very exciting, and that will create job opportunities as well as volunteering opportunities.

Kayla Jones 06:07

Being so media-focused has meant the Big Local Film Club has been able to involve multi-generational residents into different parts of the filmmaking experience, and that Heston West has video keepsakes for many of their community events to look back on and share with others, such as a community tree planting day, a Coronation afternoon tea party, and community volunteer awards. 

Taz 06:30

But also it wasn’t just about film. It was more about social action and volunteering, and young people gaining that experience. And so we use that as a hub. The filmmaking programme captured other activities happening in the community, so almost like they were the centrepiece of almost like creating mini case studies and documentaries and that were led by local young people. So that’s one of our key flagship programmes. For other things that we’ve done is our focus has been predominantly on intergenerational projects, programmes that enable young people, but also people from all different ages and backgrounds and abilities to come together. And some of them have been like cooking classes that we’ve done, and art clubs, creative wellbeing hubs to intergenerational walking football, which was set up by two 16-year-olds at the time to encourage people, not just older people, but families, to join as well. Because in our area, people don’t have gardens. They live mainly in flats. So you know, the chance of playing with the children in a safe space is quite limited. 

Kayla Jones 07:29

One of Heston West’s most visible members, Tarek, who I mentioned earlier, has cerebral palsy and has been a dedicated advocate for meeting the needs of residents who have disabilities in Big Local areas. What began as an invite from a friend to attend a local event has turned into a host of opportunities for Tarek at Heston West Big Local. 

Tarek 07:49

So my journey with Big Local is my friend invited me to a fashion show. He told me he was doing some sort of performance, then it turned out he wasn’t doing any performance. He just invited me to sit next to him in the fashion show. So that was quite a funny story. Then I met the man called Taz. I was telling him what I was interested in, and I told him, I’m interested in podcasts. So we opened up a project called Big Local Live: Tarek’s Community Podcast, and I’ve interviewed about 85 people, and we also did a 24-hour podcast where I put all the interviews together. We managed to get people to record and submit videos. So that’s what my project is. And the aim of it was because it was during lockdown and because I couldn’t go anywhere, because it’s not easy for disabled people to go out. I did it through Zoom. I did a few interviews in person, actually, but it wasn’t easy because it was lockdown at that time when we couldn’t go out.

Kayla Jones 08:52

Tarek’s Community Podcast Show was a great way to continue talking about local efforts and the work that was being done across Big Local communities, even when residents were in lockdown and physically apart. Listening back to the podcast now, you get to experience the great sense of resilience and determination from many of the Big Local interviewees, despite the challenges at the time.

Tarek 09:16

I’ve always had a dream to set up my own radio station, and this guy told me about Heston West…. This is to inspire other disabled people to do great things, because that will inspire people.

Kayla Jones 09:32

The online media project has introduced a multitude of benefits for Tarek, including a training programme through Big Local, and experience in interviewing, podcasting, and volunteering in the local area. It’s also created an outward-facing platform for Heston West and an example for other Big Local communities, enabling people to connect across thousands of miles and share insights into the challenges and triumphs faced by communities across the world.

Tarek 09:59

I did the Community Leadership Academy. They helped me a lot to develop the podcast, coaching, and doing the 18-months programme for leadership community was great fun, and I learned a lot. I learned confidence, how to speak up, you know, how to have confidence when doing a presentation.

Kayla Jones 10:23

For Taz, watching Tarek’s journey has been a source of immense pride and a testament to the long-term commitment to youth programmes in Heston West. It highlights how local areas can invest in their residents and invest in communities for the future. 

Taz 10:37

I think some of the key skills really is developing, number one, a session plan, actually developing plans to run a project. So let’s sit down and work on that, looking at budgets and how to allocate. But also coming up with being confidence to come up with things like ideas and obviously working with our team, but we gave them the opportunity for them to actually make big decisions, and they and they become the leaders of today, really, not just of tomorrow that young people can learn, and these skills developed over time have been around confidence boosting, working in teams, the ability to put together proposals, present to us because we had young people have to come to our board and present a pitch, like Dragon’s Den. And a lot, two years ago that we funded, made a feature film that a young person involved with us was able to pitch to us and create it with us. These are the skills they learned during our programme, and now they are today, are able to run the show, if that makes sense.

Kayla Jones 11:30

I asked Taz what he believed could be Heston West’s legacy, and he said a lot of it was in how people feel about their community. For a lot of the communities I spoke to, creating a legacy for the future isn’t about focusing on how Big Local is ending, but how they can continue on with the experiences and knowledge they acquired during their time with Big Local.

Taz 11:50

All of our projects, in some way, have made people feel connected to other people in the area. I think that’s the most important thing is, how do you feel about your neighbours or the community that you live in. Of course, people you know are concerned about the local environment, about, you know, how housing is like in the community, those sort of things that we have had some influence on, working with the local authorities, again, listening to residents and trying to put them, you know, these cases on to the councils, which you know has been positive.

Kayla Jones 12:23

The key elements that Big Local communities have been focusing on around legacy are: strengthening civil society, bringing the community together, developing resident skills and confidence, sustaining activities, and investing in future generations. Speaking with Matt Leach again (Local Trust’s former CEO), he reflected on the many ways the Big Local programme has had an impact on the 150 communities and how, from start to finish, Big Local provides years of valuable data that researchers, community managers, and policy makers can learn from in the future.

Matt Leach 13:02

There’s also been a huge amount of learning just from sharing, you know, the insights, the observations that we’ve got from being an organisation that’s worked closely with communities for getting on for nearly 15 years now. We understand a lot more about the importance of social infrastructure, of social capital, to place. We’ve done a lot of research on the links between deprivation and the strength of local social fabric, and the way in which a loss of social infrastructure or the absence of social infrastructure compounds the impact of deprivation incredibly when it comes to health, mental health, education, opportunity, the experience of crime: all the sorts of things that the new government is incredibly interested in.

Kayla Jones 13:43

Big Local shone a light on the needs and wants of deprived areas across England, and the many ways communities have been empowered to address them, through resident-led initiatives. For Matt, the local legacies of Big Local communities are in sharing their stories and possibly changing perceptions of community funding, help impact community planning and investment for the future.

Matt Leach 14:06

You know, there’s a myriad of local legacies, and they will express themselves in different ways. Nationally, I’d hope, in some ways, we will have changed the way in which people think about what’s possible when it comes to funding communities. We’re not a country that’s very good at committing to long-term funding of places. We’re not a country that naturally feels confident in devolving money or decision-making down to a local level. You know, we’ve been fussing around for over a decade about devolution and still haven’t absolutely, absolutely got there. So the sort of devolving power even further to a hyper-local level is something that is a journey still to take, but I’d hope that we’ve got an evidence base that shows that’s possible.

Kayla Jones 14:55

Throughout this podcast, I’ve interviewed a multitude of people. Volunteers, Chairs, Local Trust researchers. The person I wanted to ask most about Big Local’s legacy was Jayne, the head of research and learning, who’s been with Local Trust since its inception. She saw Big Local at its earliest stages as a concept, through to it being a plan and then a programme handed over to communities.

Jayne Humm 15:22

What I hope is that future decision makers will discover that it really works when you put communities in control of resources. I hope that we’ll be able to influence the future of community-led change through our research and evidence, because that’s my part of the organisation, really.

Kayla Jones 15:42

Now that everything is wrapping up, she hopes that their findings are a way for community deciders in the future, such as community managers, researchers, and policy makers, to learn from all the ups and downs of Big Local and adapt the useful parts of the experience for themselves.

Jayne Humm 15:58

We’ve deliberately unpacked and described every element of the programme so that decision makers of the future will be able to see how we did it and make informed decisions on whether it would work for them. Because we’re not saying it’s the only way to do things, but we want to describe properly how we’ve done it. We say what it’s like to work directly with communities. We describe how we get money into communities when we don’t work through organisations. We talk about the support that a community needs to make good decisions, and we even cover how to end a long-term programme well.

Kayla Jones 16:35

COO Rachel, who becomes Chief Executive in 2025, sees Big Local’s legacy as a way that communities work together and problem-solve for the future.

Rachel Rowney 16:48

And I think over time, partnerships have really worked out a way of communicating and making decisions as a collective in the interests of everyone. I think in the past, and especially at the beginning, there were a lot more conversations about how you could divide the money up by community, whether that’s geographical or other lines. Now, I think where communities are at is much more around partnerships, understanding working well together, but also thinking about bringing in other stakeholders to that place, to that area, and thinking about what they can do, not just now, but what will last into the future. And so I think there’s been lots more conversations around, well, ​‘what’s the legacy going to be? And we can’t do that on our own’. So who else, including volunteers and other community groups, can be brought in to be able to develop and carry on some of the good work and the activities, and the achievements that have taken place so far.

Kayla Jones 17:42

Rachel highlighted that for so many communities, their journey shaped residents’ relationships and area’s social fabric beyond just funding, in a way that helped locals see that they’re not as isolated as they thought, and there’s actually a common vision for the area.

Rachel Rowney 17:56

The conversations people have had, they realise they get along with their neighbours, they mostly like their neighbours, and that actually they have this shared sense of ambition for the place. The support we put in place has really helped draw this out. They can see some of the positives in that place. They don’t necessarily focus as much on the negatives now, so they can see, actually, there are some really committed people who care deeply about an area and differences of opinion aren’t bad. People just have different experiences, and they have different views on what’s a good use of the money, and that it doesn’t come from any malicious or other place. It’s just trying to work together to get the best outcome. I think over time, it’s really created a sense of you can rely on people around you and your neighbors to pull together to do a lot. I hope that there is support for communities to deliver change, through providing money, through providing support for them and I hope that the kind of fundamental of trusting residents and communities to make decisions and to really be part of the conversations about the services that need and should be delivered in a place is heard.

Kayla Jones 19:17

Like Tarek’s Community Podcast Show and the many videos created by Heston West Film Club, this podcast, the Community Pride Podcast, is a part of Big Local’s legacy. It’s been a way for you, the listener, to hear the voices of residents, Local Trust researchers, and community experts talk about their experiences of being involved in Big Local. It’s a snapshot into the years of commitment, effort and dedicated work of all those involved in Big Local, and the pride in coming together to have an impact on communities in the future. Looking back through all the episodes, pride in community power, pride in creativity and collaboration, pride in heritage, pride in green spaces, and pride in leaving a legacy. There is so much for Big Local areas to be proud of in whatever way they feel is right to express that feeling. I know that travelling along this Big Local journey has changed the way I see community, and I’ve realised just how much the involvement of individuals has made a difference to so many communities. 

The stories shared in this podcast have shown me just how unique and varied all of these Big Local communities have been, and we only scratched the surface with these six communities across England. The hope is that Big Locals’ story can live on and still make an impact through sharing their experiences and the knowledge gained through their journeys. Now, just like in any good story, I hand the reins over to you, listener. What local projects are happening in your area that you can get involved in? Are there hidden stories of communities you’re close to that you can impact through your work, volunteering, or your research? In what ways can you be a part of community initiatives to bring about change and community pride to residents for the future? Thank you for listening to the Community Pride podcast. Please explore the Learning from Big Local website to learn even more about the stories of all 150 Big Local communities across England. Visit www.learningfrombiglocal.org.uk for more.