News

Inside TWCP: Building Community Resilience – Zainab Jalloh

We’re living through difficult times; coming out of a global pandemic, struggling through a cost of living crisis and facing the real impact of global warming. We unfortunately are constantly coming to terms with the fact that we aren’t prepared and the most vulnerable of us experience the worst.

I’ve been living in Barking Riverside for 3 years now and I’ve noticed my growing fear of house fires. We all probably have some sort of bedtime routine or ritual, well a part of mine is reducing fire risks in my house. I start with all the plugs of various appliances, turning them off and removing them from the sockets. I blow out candles, and douse recently burned matches into the kitchen sink trying to remove any possibility of them re-alighting but that may not be enough.

Before working at TWCP, I never engaged with my community let alone sought out being in important conversations around housing, fire safety or resilience. I knew of the fire in 2019, Samuel Garside House, and how it had completely destroyed some homes and also damaged others. Displacing more than 30 families. I’ve watched as the wooden balconies and flammable cladding have since been removed but as I look out the window from my own wooden floored balcony I can’t help but worry about why it takes such tragedy for action to happen. Who is planning ahead, challenging developers, changing policies, equipping residents?

Thankfully, through being a part of the team at TWCP I’ve gained insight into the incredible work community groups are doing. TWCP has been working alongside the British Red Cross around increasing resilience in the neighbourhood and working on preventative strategies to help prepare residents during these difficult times. The Barking Reach Residents Association has been key in brining local people together to voice their concerns and make change happen. I want to be more engaged as a resident and I encourage you all to do the same! Most importantly we need our councillors to be more engaged in this work to spread awareness and impact!

 

Zainab Jalloh

Communications and Outreach Officer at TWCP and Barking Riverside Resident

Director blog August 2022 – Impact-led Strategy

Our vision is of a ‘diverse and vibrant community where residents are driving change’. The vision is of residents driving change – residents as leaders not followers. That is the world as it should be not as it is. That is why it is a vision – a vision is a vivid dream; we are in the business of selling dreams. Of creating the world as it should be rather than scaling back our ambitions. That is a vision.   

Our mission is to ‘create positive spaces and opportunities for resident empowerment and wellbeing’. Every inch of land is monetised. Every conversation in the community and every action that impacts on communities can be liberating, to the extent that local people drive change.  Wellbeing allows people to make healthy choices and drive change in all areas of their lives.   

To enable this to happen we aim to develop leaders, nurture relationships, exert influence and support enterprise to achieve our vision and mission. 

When we started out, we tried out lots of different approaches; tech companies sometimes describe this as throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Testing, reviewing, prototyping.   

We’ve done large scale growth summits attended by hundreds of people, weekly leadership classes for young citizens, social enterprise workshops, door knocking, street stalls, leafleting to every household on the area, meetings with politicians and bigwigs, monthly forums on planning and conservation, arts based events, community gardening, litter picking, campaigns, resident action groups, online arts classes, sports activities, walks and talks, newsletters and newspapers, videos, away days, training of all descriptions, volunteering programmes, service delivery, partnerships and collaborations across the borough, in fact across London, nationally and internationally.   

We have done a lot of things. A lot of events, meetings, outreach, activities, training etc. So what? How do we know it made a difference? How do we know it delivered our vision, mission and aims? We need to get smart, to work smarter. We will never know if we made the kind of impact we hoped for in our vision, mission and aims unless we spell out what impact we want in ways that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timed, evaluated and reviewed.   

Impact-led strategy is about being led by the impact you want to create and being your purpose as an organization, rather than having a purpose (Fisher 2020). It is very easy for any organization or group to be busy being busy, never pausing to consider if actions are having the right kind of impact. This strategic reflection needs to go with the flow because sometimes the same groups over-think things instilling a kind of paralysis by analysis. There is a sweet spot whereby the actions and analysis go hand in hand, so that impact is at the forefront. That’s the place I’m keen to inhabit. That is the place where true change is made. 

Matthew Scott 

TWCP Director 

Summer sorted! Check out local activities!

Summer events at Sue Bramley Centre Community Hub:

Day

Time

Activity

How to Book

1 August 2022

10:00 – 11:30 & 12:30 -14:00

Stay & Play

No booking required

1 August 2022

12:30 – 13:30

Chair Based Exercise

No booking required

2 August 2022

12:30 – 14:30

Visual Art Classes

Book via – alex@twcp.org.uk

2, 3 & 5 August 2022

09:30 – 12:30

Bow Art

Booking required

3 August 2022

10:00 -12:00

Tea & Toast – along with fun activities

No booking required

3 August 2022

11:00 – 13:00

Well Me!

Book via – makeyourmarkbandd@gmail.com

4 August 2022

16:30 – 18:00

Kids Cooking School

Charges apply call 07946899933 for more information

5 August 2022

10:00 – 11:00

Summer Crafts – Sand Art

No booking required

 

Day

Time

Activity

How to Book

8 August 2022

10:00 -11:30 & 12:30 -14:00

Stay & Play

No booking required

8 August 2022

12:30 – 13:30

Chair Based Exercise

No booking required

9 August 2022

12:30 – 14:30

Visual Art Classes

Book via – alex@twcp.org.uk

9 August 2022

11:00

Tim Smith – entertainer

No booking required

10 August 2022

10:00 -12:00

Tea & Toast – along with fun activities

No booking required

10 August 2022

11:00 – 13:00

Well Me

Book via – makeyourmarkbandd@gmail.com

11 August 2022

16:30 – 18:00

Kids Cooking School

Charges apply call 07946899933 for more information

12 August 2022

10:00 – 11:00

Giant Game Club

No Booking required

 

Day

Time

Activity

How to Book

15 August 2022

10:00 -11:30

Story Time

No booking required

15 August 2022

10:00 – 14:00

School Out

https://lbbd.gov.uk/newme-healthy-lifestyles

15 August 2022

12:30 – 13:30

Chair Based Exercise

No booking required

16 August 2022

10:00 -14:00

School Out

https://lbbd.gov.uk/newme-healthy-lifestyles

16 August 2022

12:30 – 14:30

Visual Art Classes

Book via – alex@twcp.org.uk

16 August 2022

13:00 – 15:00

Summer Film Showing

No booking required

17 August 2022

10:00 -12:00

Tea & Toast – along with fun activities

No booking required

17 August 2022

10: 00 – 14:00

School Out

https://lbbd.gov.uk/newme-healthy-lifestyles

18 August 2022

16:30 – 18:00

Kids Cooking School

Charges apply call 07946899933 for more information

19 August 2022

10:00 – 11:00

Summer Craft – Build a Suncatcher

No booking required

19 August 2022

10:00 – 14:00

School Out

https://lbbd.gov.uk/newme-healthy-lifestyles

 

Day

Time

Activity

How to Book

22 August 2022

10:00 -11:30 & 12:30 – 14:00

Stay & Play

No booking required

22 August 2022

12:30 – 13:30

Chair Based Exercise

No booking required

23 August 2022

11:00 -12:00

Summer Crafts – Canvas painting

No Booking Required

23 August 2022

12:30 – 14:30

Visual Art Classes

Book via – alex@twcp.org.uk

24 August 2022

10:00 -12:00

Tea & Toast – along with fun activities

No booking required

24 August 2022

11:00 – 13:00

Well Me

Book via – makeyourmarkbandd@gmail.com

25 August 2022

16:30 – 18:00

Kids Cooking School

 

Charges apply call 07946899933 for more information

26 August 2022

10:00 – 11:00

Summer Crafts – Build a 3D Scene

No booking required

Day

Time

Activity

How to Book

29 August 2022 – Hub Closed – Bank Holiday

31 August 2022

10:00 -12:00

Tea & Toast – along with fun activities

No booking required

31 August 2022

11:00 – 13:00

Well Me!

Book via – makeyourmarkbandd@gmail.com

31 August 2022

13:30 – 16:00

Summer at Sue Bramley – event

No Booking Required

 

The RiverView Summer 2022 Issue is OUT NOW

The Resident Editorial Board (REB) have just finished the third issue of The RiverView! It’s our Summer 2022 issue and the REB have been excited to share local stories, exciting updates on developments in the area; including celebrating our new overground station, and fun activities for the whole family over the summer!

Residents in Thames View, Barking Riverside and Scrattons Farm will receive a copy of our new issue in the post over the next coming weeks. We will also have further copies available to pick up in community hubs across the Ward including the Sue Bramley Centre, Rivergate Centre and the Wilds Ecology Centre.

Check out our digital edition

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Let us know what you think!

It’s really important to us to know what you think about your local paper so we want to hear from you! Have a read of the paper and let us know your thoughts, from how you engage with it, to content and any other ideas you might have.

What’s next?

The resident editorial board is getting prepared to work on our upcoming issue and we would love to welcome new REB members! If you’re interested in learning how to produce a local newspaper and keen to be a part of our team please email zainab@twcp.org.uk

 

For more information on future publications click here

NEW Job Vacancy: Thames Life Governance Manager

Thames Life Governance Manager

The Governance Manager will play an integral part in the day to day running of Thames Life. Working closely with the Director and co-chairs of the Trustee Board, they will act as a source of governance advice and manage all aspects of Trustee Board and other committee meetings as required. The Governance Manager will also support the internal operations of the charity including confidential HR matters and compliance with relevant charity legislation.

At Thames Life, formerly known as Thames Ward Community Project, we believe that long term sustainable change is only possible when it is defined and led by local people, who initiate their own agenda and build it from within the local community.  Our vision is of a ‘diverse and vibrant community where residents are driving change’ and our mission is to ‘create positive spaces and opportunities for resident empowerment and wellbeing’.  We have established a charity which is led by resident trustees and fulfils the role of a Community Development Trust to develop this work. 

Benefits include hybrid working with flexibility to work from home around 50% of the time and with occasional weekend and evening meetings required.

Salary: £33,324.00  pro rata (14 – 21 hours a week (04 – 0.6 FTE) (Hours negotiable)

Closing date: 11th August 2022 12:00 midday

Please complete application form

Interviews to take place on 18th August 2022

Free Climate Action Programme for Young People

As the impacts of climate change become increasingly severe, today’s young people have an all-important task. In Barking and Dagenham, the British Red Cross is partnering with Thames Ward Community Project (TWCP) and University College London (UCL) Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis to offer young people an interactive games-based curriculum (Y-Adapt) to help them better understand climate change and learn how to adapt to the changing climate in their community through their own action project.

The programme kicks off with three full days of interactive sessions filled with workshops, games, fun activities, and challenges from Monday 25th July to Wednesday 27th July. The participants will learn about what climate change is, its impacts around the world and how it may affect them and their community. At the end of these three days, they will work together in groups to make action plans to adapt their communities to climate change. They will then have five weeks to deliver their action project, helping to make their communities more climate-resilient. There will be weekly zoom check-ins for the young people to stay in touch with their group and receive any additional support.

Following the July sessions, there will be one final in-person follow-up session on Wednesday 31st August between 15:00-17:00 for the young people to share their projects and celebrate. Each group will share the outcomes of their projects and capture these in ‘adaptation cards’ that will be used to inspire other young people around the world to take their own action. 

All in-person sessions will take place locally at Participatory City Foundation, 47 Thames Road, Barking, IG11 0HQ with one session including a site visit to the Ripple Greenway, a 4-minute walk away. All facilitators are DBS checked and cleared and there will be a first aid trained facilitator. A free lunch from local caterers will be provided for all young people participating.

By taking part in the programme pupils will be awarded with a nationally recognised British Red Cross certificate as part of the ‘RED’ volunteering award. They will receive the first level which is ‘R’ and if they would like to volunteer further, they can work towards the next levels in the future.

The sessions are open to young people in Barking and Dagenham aged 13-25.

There are a maximum of 30 spaces and the deadline to sign up is Friday 15th July.

You can register your participation online here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/y-adapt-tickets-362898337697.

For any questions about the programme please contact Ghutai Khuram at ghutaikhuram@redcross.org.uk at 07738808811.

Taking Charge of Your Life – Pierre Epoh Moudio

My name is Pierre Epoh Moudio and I am a resident steering group member of Thames Ward Community Project (TWCP). I moved to the area in 2014. I work as a Senior ESOL Lecturer at Barking and Dagenham College and I have more than 16 years’ experience working with immigrants who need to improve their English in order to improve the quality of their lives. It’s important to me to support people to get into employment and to fully integrate in this new country that they now live in. I am also a speaker, coach and an award winner. I use my skills to inspire, motivate and empower people to achieve their full potential. 

When I arrived in the UK, I struggled to find work, make new friends and I didn’t know how things operated in the UK work environment. It was frustrating and I felt depressed. I hated my life. I went from one setback to another and wanted to give up but luckily I didn’t.

I am running a workshop on the importance of taking charge of your life to get what you want. When I started taking full responsibility for my life everything changed and I got all the support I needed to achieve the various goals that I set for myself. What I will be sharing on the day worked for me and it will also work for you so come to the Sue Bramley Centre on Tuesday 5th July 2022 at 6PM to get inspired and empowered.

I want to thank TWCP for the key role they played in most of the successes I have had. Its team provided me with all the support I needed from applying for funding, monthly one to one check in meetings to all the logistics. For any local residents out there who would like to make a positive contribution to the community, get in touch with TWCP now and you will be amazed by the support available.

Pierre Epoh Moudio

Resident Steering Group Member of the Skills & Enterprise Citizen Action Group

Inside TWCP: Improving Inclusion, Prevention, and Making Change – Almu Segura

I have always, one way or another been involved with working with people. Whether it was through my degree – doing performing arts, theatre in the community or with art organisations. I have worked in residential homes with people with dementia and schools to bring them together, as a teaching assistant with autistic kids, volunteering in City Farms. I have always wanted to work with people, to help them play, laugh, have fun and to have better wellbeing.

I am a local resident and founder of Nice Bunch CIC, a new community interest company that focuses on intergenerational projects to improve the wellbeing of local residents. Through working with residents and local parents, I came across the work TWCP had been doing. I often engaged with them by seeking advice for my social business and attended some of their other events. Most recently, I received a call to be the Lead on their new health outreach programme funded by OHID. I said yes! It is a great opportunity to work with my neighbours and their families. To make a better place for my little one and the little ones around me and the community, in general.

The Healthy Living Club is an inclusive 8-week exercise and nutrition programme for residents in Thames View and Barking Riverside. Primarily focussed on supporting five to twelve-year-olds, the programme is structured to work with the whole family supporting participants to live healthier lifestyles with the support of familiar local community groups delivering the activities and health practitioners.

I would describe the work I currently do as a journey where we are trying to bring funders, the community and the tools that we have; knowledge and expertise, together, to be able to create a healthier community. To improve inclusion, prevention and to even start changing policies.

My vision for Thames View and Barking Riverside is for the area to be a model for change that other cities/boroughs can copy. To show that active listening in the community can bring residents what they really need and can change policy. If we work together, we can create longstanding change. On a smaller scale, I believe in just doing small acts of kindness. Even if it’s just saying good morning to a stranger in the bus stop, even if you make a person smile for a small moment, this simple act can have ripple effects that can help creating a welcoming and nurturing community.

Almu Segura

Director blog June 2022 – Warm, Cosy Spaces

We were chatting at the corner of Thames View fields and the pathway to Thames Road. About thirty of us, one sunny Friday in March this year. It is a regular thing we do, walking from the Big Shops on Farr Avenue to the banks of the Thames, by the developers’ prefab offices. We walk and talk. We look around, absorb it all, open ourselves up to the overload. Stepping across the landscape of housing, roads, warehouses, schools, more housing, more roads, buses, vans and lorries. Walking, talking amidst the hum of wider movement on building sites and lives being lived.  

It is not just a social. We are researching. Asking what kind of spaces people wanted in the area.  All the building going on, housing units by the thousands, but yeah, what kind of spaces would you like for your community? Answer: cosy, warm spaces. Someone said it just like that and everyone immediately agreed. That was exactly it. The craving for togetherness, for spaces we can call our own.   

We’ve got a few community spaces but how are they working out? Are they places people want to go to? The group spoke about yesteryear, about the cinemas Barking used to have. About the fields and horses before the development. Each person taking turns spontaneously sharing memories. All the while the cranes on the skyline marked out remorseless inevitable changes.   

The arrival of 50,000 new homes in the borough, many of them in Thames View and Riverside, is impossible to really process, outside of the town hall or the top floors of Maritime House, Barking, home of Be First. How can you make sense of it? You can’t. The walk we did, makes sense in a different way, via the senses and feelings evoked. Looking at the pressures on existing spaces, the busy roads, the construction, people reflect on what they want and conclude: cosy, warm spaces.   

Another way of saying it is, people want an experience of community, not of estrangement.  Places of their own, where they get a say. Cosy, warm spaces. I love that, so simple. So clear, because only residents can truly get to decide what is and isn’t cosy and warm.   

I’ve been walking around Thames Ward, now Barking Riverside and Thames View Wards with groups of people, residents, visitors. Just walking and talking. Typically, I get to the end of a long week and get a Friday feeling, especially when the sun is out, of needing to decompress. When people ask me about the area, there’s so much to say, too much for soundbites. It needs to be experienced, absorb the changes that are underway – the HGVs, the people pouring in and out of schools, the warehouses and businesses, the ever-present building sites, pylons.   

If you do our walk you will end up by the river, the much-referenced riverside or view of Thames View, but you’ll have to dedicate a couple of hours for that, as we always start at Bastable because that way people get to experience the old and the new. The phase one housing units of Riverside rise like small teeth on the skyline from across the Thames View fields – the locals call it toytown. Different from the typically more spacious Thames View housing that was built on rafts because of the marshy nature of the area, so marshy that even now, mosquitos predominate over the summer and netting is required for many newer residents.   

There’s a new Amazon on Thames Road, a Lithuanian beer company, cake shops, so many businesses clustered in one place. Ripple Nature Reserve spanning the bottom end, with entrances padlocked so more recent visitors have never experienced the unique ten-hectare site, once a dumping ground for pulverised fuel ash, now a mixture of woodland, scrub and grassland.  We usually access Riverside via Crossness Road because you can see the exact point where Barking Riverside begins, a private estate. One side of the road is in disrepair, the other considerably neater and tidy, the side where resident’s pay council tax and a service charge.  Then the housing units with wooden cladding begins. We see small ponds with ducks and approach De Pass Gardens, site of the Barking Fire in 2019, where the cladding on that building has thankfully now been removed, if not yet elsewhere.   

The Rivergate Centre marks another stop-off point, a multi faith centre with a Christian Cross on the outside. Where Friday prayers takes place in corridors. A co-op alone in one corner providing much needed supplies for those that can’t reach larger supermarkets the other side of the A13.  There’s still a way to go to reach the river, another busy road to cross (River Road / Renwick Road), but once joining Fielders Crescent, there is a short footpath from the road to the river and the view of the Thames spreads out for miles, past Dagenham and into Essex. From the roar of roads and density of housing everything opens up – big sky, river sweeping out to the sea.   

The end of the walk marks another special place – often quite windy rather than warm and cosy – but nonetheless uplifting. Once again people want to stand and talk about what it evokes. No longer a rat run to rush through but a place of solace to share and hold close. When urban planners talk about assets and place shaping this I know – it needs to be warm and cosy, and it needs to inspire a sense of awe.   

Change is the one constant in our lives. Nothing stays the same. Nothing lasts forever. Change refreshes and reinvigorates but can also leave people feeling unanchored, lacking roots. The property pages of the Evening Standard that I read on the way back from the walk tells me every housing development is the best there has ever been. From nine elms in Battersea, Greenwich Peninsula, Silvertown, Royal Docks.  Every corner of London in fact. Every square inch monetised. Money for advertising that props up free newspapers. Money that underpins planning decisions – they call it market viability. Money like change is double-edged. You can have too much or not enough. Money gives you control but it rarely creates warm, cosy spaces for all. For that to happen, we need communities to come to the party. The more community, the cosier it can be. The newspaper ads talked the talk; I wish they’d joined us, they could have walked the walk as well. 

Matthew Scott 

TWCP Director 

Resident Planning Forum: If you don’t act, you will be acted upon

If you don’t act, you will be acted upon.

If you don’t understand planning and the development that is going on in the area, you can’t do anything about it. You can’t actively shape the positive outcomes of growth. You can’t tackle the less positive concerns that arise. When the cranes go up it is too late. 

Over the last five years our project has done large public meetings attended by hundreds of residents and power holders, numerous workshops on planning and more recently with Planning Aid London, we have monthly resident planning forums.   

We believe residents are their own best resource – together the community can come together and figure it out. By regularly meeting, learning together, prioritising and taking collective action. It needs to happen because the consequences of not getting involved are stark: 

  

The cost of poor consultation:

 

2%

of the public trust developers [1]

7%

of the public trust local authorities in relation to planning for large-scale developments [2]

72%

of built environment professionals agree community consultation could be improved [3]

Barking and Dagenham has the lowest rates of resident engagement in the planning process in London of all 32 London Boroughs. That is unacceptable and we are doing our bit to turn things around with strong support from Planning Aid London and also Just Space, the Bartlett School of Planning and Community Led Housing London. Crucially we also have the support of Be First and other parts of the council and BRL. We know solutions need everyone moving in the same direction. 

The resident planning forum has simple aims: learning together via talks and presentations, prioritising issues (environment, affordable housing, safety) and taking action via work groups such as the Ripple Nature Reserve steering group and British Red Cross resilience forum, to name a few.  

Together we can flip planning and development from being a distant external presence in our lives to an enriching community-led activity. Join us!   

The resident planning forum meetings online on the first Tuesday of each month – it is open to everyone. To join please email nia@twcp.org.uk 

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