Transforming a forgotten community and building a legacy in East London

To compare what Aberfeldy Street looked like when Leila Lawal moved there 13 years ago to what it is now, is a bit like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when it goes from black and white to technicolour. 

You can find Aberfeldy in Poplar, east London. Head two miles north and you’re in Stratford, or one and a half miles southwest and you’re in Canary Wharf. Aberfeldy, however, had become a forgotten inner-city community. In 2018, Aberfeldy Big Local supported the opening of a community pub and the street it’s on is now home to a bike shop, a safe space for young men in an area that has been affected by gangs and knife crime, and a boxing club, all of which have an impact that goes beyond this part of E14. 

While there has been positive progress, an influx of developers and new homes means the community is at risk of being trampled on by those looking to gentrify Aberfeldy. It means the residents need a vocal character who doesn’t take no for an answer. Step forward Leila, chair of Aberfeldy Big Local, or ABL as it’s known. 

Leila: Mad. Eclectic. Resourceful. Fun. I was going to add ​‘togetherness’, but we’re getting there on that one.

Leila: Ha! Where would you like me to start? Okay, so we’ve got 20 years of regeneration happening in this area. It was probably the last available brownfield site for redevelopment in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. A lot of developers have come in and said they want to consult and hear from the community. They have meetings and they still do what they want. 

The biggest challenge here is having things done to us, without us being at the table, being able to influence or make decisions. That’s what ABL and I are fighting for – to have a seat at the table, to ensure the community is being listened to. 

To give a good example, in 2018 we started working to improve our green space in partnership with the Parks Department. We were hired to do the consultation, we set up a working group and then the developers stepped in and took over the project. 

It should have been completed by now. It isn’t.

Leila: I worked for a different council. Then I went travelling, and when I came back I saw an advert for ​‘Asset Based Community Development Training’. On the second day, somebody said to me ​‘what are you going to do in your community?’. It triggered something. 

In the last session, I started kicking off about things that weren’t happening in Aberfeldy. Sitting in my group was one of the programme managers for public health in Tower Hamlets. She asked me where I lived. Then she said, ​‘do you know about Big Local?’ and asked me to come along to a meeting. That was seven years ago. My favourite question is ​‘why?’ and I like to challenge the status quo. After two years I kept asking so many questions they decided to make me the chair! 

Leila: I work in community impact for Mencap, which involves demonstrating the impact of their community projects. I also spent four years on a project for Tower Hamlets called Communities Driving Change. Sometimes people forget that Big Local areas are run by volunteers, so meetings with councillors are first thing in the morning.

Leila: The first ABL meeting I went to was in a community centre, which is only open from 9am to 5pm. There was nowhere to go in the evening. The Aberfeldy Tavern used to be at the end of the road. It had been there since the 1950s but closed down in 2013. The developers put in a wine bar, closed that down, and then they put in apartments. 

So, ABL supported the opening of the Tommy Flowers – named after the Poplar resident who designed Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer – as a pop-up pub. ABL funding made sure there was an open space there for the community to use, and we ran activities for residents. That got us attention and made people sit up. Then somebody wanted to open up a boxing gym. Once we had a pub and a gym, we started to attract more people to this area, and things started happening in the parks during holidays. 

We realised 60 per cent of the community can’t go to the pub for religious reasons, which is why we pushed for our own space. We also brought in lawyers to look over contracts to ensure the shop owners and businesses don’t get screwed over. We opened up a space opposite the Tommy Flowers and created a tea room, which is the only place in Tower Hamlets where people can get a free cup of coffee. With the cost of living crisis, a lot of our neighbours can’t afford to go into a coffee shop, especially if they’ve got kids. 

It’s a fine line because you have to work with the council and the developers and then you can find yourself being accused of working for the developers. But I’m very big on accountability and transparency. 

Leila: It took time but when COVID-19 happened people knew who we were and reached out to us. That included the local school because parents were seriously stressed out with kids being at home 24/7.

We worked with the local church, and we created activity packs for 350 homes, 100 of which were in Aberfeldy, and involved 60 volunteers. I took that into other projects I was working on and suddenly we found that this spread across the borough. It showed me the importance of community. 

Leila: Constantly! Especially when I’m tired from my day job. The thing that keeps me coming back is my neighbours or when I’m on the bus and I see kids hanging around the community hub, or at the barber’s next door knowing that they’re enjoying being there. 

But there is still a lot of work to do. We want to leave a legacy organisation. We know the regeneration of this area will be happening for years to come and we want to protect the community voice. So, we will be spending part of 2023 thinking about what would a legacy organisation look like. We will visit other Big Local areas to see how they’ve done things, what they’ve learned, and what ideas could be adapted for Aberfeldy.