Creative Spaces London: Crane Valley Partnership Projects

Creative Spaces London (CSL) is a Community Interest Company (CIC) dedicated to providing creative wellbeing activities for women and children. The CIC collaborates with a number of partners, such as Thames 21, Let’s Go Outside and Learn (LGOAL), Cultivate London and Hounslow Council. With a strong focus on building community engagement in Cranford and Heston, CSL designs projects based on ideas suggested by local residents. A key question that is often asked is “what would you like to do but can’t afford to do?”, to ensure that activities are tailored to the needs and wants of the local community.

CSL’s most recent Crane Valley Community Fund was used to provide 10 free ‘Garden Craft’ workshops for the local community, involving a combination of craft and nature. This project is a continuation of a previous ‘Grow for the Future’ project, which looked at urban greening and food growing. The initiative was very successful and received positive feedback, with people requesting further workshops, particularly centred around raised beds. As a result, the Community Fund was also used to create bespoke raised beds for CSL, constructed by Cultivate London.

Some of CSL’s ‘Garden Craft’ workshops included:

• A wreath-making session, in collaboration with LGOAL, where people collected greenery from their local green spaces
• Building bird houses, to be put up in trees by Hounslow Council
• Seed potting for people to either take home with them or contribute to the community garden
• Creating bug hotels with colourful paint and explaining why they are important for our ecosystem, linking CSL’s creative focus with nature and wildlife
• A ‘fairy door’ workshop for children to make and put up in their local area

These free workshops provided people with the opportunity to learn about biodiversity and engage with nature in a creative way without financial barriers, as CSL supplied all the materials. This is particularly important for families on low income as they are able to participate in new activities without financial risk. Additionally, the project provided employment and training to local unemployed residents.

The workshops were well attended, with weekend sessions attracting up to 20 participants and weekday sessions averaging around 10. The workshops had a mixture of both regular and new attendees. Both staff and attendees have shared positive feedback on the workshops; one of the organisers from CSL added that “when we have opportunity to add joy and beauty, it makes people take care of things”, reflecting on the positive impacts the workshops have on local green spaces.

Creative Spaces London found the Crane Valley Community Fund highly beneficial for smaller organisations, as the application process is not time consuming and is accessible for groups with small capacity. The CIC also acknowledged that there is a lot of support available with the application if needed. The issue that staff faced with this project was the short timescale, which made it hard to deliver all the workshops in time. However, by having 2 workshops per week on Wednesdays and Sundays rather than one, they managed to keep within the timeframe.

In previous rounds, another challenge CSL had faced with the Community Fund was the administrative burden of financial reporting. Staff noted that the diligence required in tracking receipts was time consuming and occasionally led to having to do unpaid work to meet these requests. However, through experience, they have now become more stringent with receipts and can better manage this issue.

You can learn more about Creative Spaces London and see what they are up to by visiting their website: Creative Spaces London.