The idea
With community support, our partners & the Mayor, Tottenham Café Connect’s community hub is now up & running – a welcoming haven used & run by local residents in the heart of a massive regeneration area. We’ve a busy indoor space & an outdoor oven, but now have overwhelming demand for community-run outdoor activities & events: arts and eco crafts, carpentry, arts & eco crafts, camping, dance, music, theatre, comedy and film nights, gardening and food growing. This project will create covered spaces, provide lighting & electrics, containers & storage for bikes, bike maintenance & sports equipment – so the bowling green space can be used all year round as a safe place for people of all ages, abilities & cultures to share ideas & aspirations, be up-skilled & active, and engaging positively in their neighbourhood! Tottenham is becoming more polarised & we’ve lost some beautiful young people to gun and knife crime – through this project we want to bring existing & newer residents together!
What we'll deliver
- Create all season outdoor covered spaces for activities & events
- Provide outdoor lighting & electrics to support activities
- Repairs to safeguard the outdoor grounds area
- Create a container and storage for bikes, bike maintenance & equipment
- Volunteer training & support and outdoor activities and events
Why it's a great idea
This time last year we our dream seemed impossible with the boiler breaking down, faulty electrics, unexpected challenges & heartaches - but we’ve delivered a community hub to be proud of & feel we can build on this success. Café Connect Outdoors, where old and new communities can integrate in a welcoming green & natural space, is needed more than ever with 3400 homes & 10000 new residents planned for Tottenham Hale alone. Tottenham has much more to offer than land for development. It has people and nature, and its spaces hold our stories and our heritage. We want to create a special & safe outdoors & appreciate the skies before the tower blocks surround us - linking residents with Tottenham Marshes, the River Lea, the wonderful Wetlands, and local growing spaces & bringing nature closer to communities! We’re challenging social isolation, obesity, poverty, poor mental & physical health, lower life expectancy, lack of access to information, services & open spaces & want to change this!
Steps to get it done
- Launch Crowdfund London campaign (14 Sept 18)
- Funding raising activities and campaign events (Oct/Nov/Dec 18)
- Complete Crowdfund London campaign (17 Dec 18)
- Commence volunteer training/support & outdoor activities & events (Jan 19)
- Create all season outdoor covered spaces for activities and events (Jan - Mar 19)
- Provide outdoor lighting & electrics to support activities (Jan-Mar19)
- Repair and safeguard outdoor grounds area (Jan-Mar 19)
- Create container storage for bikes, bike maintenance & equipment (Jan-Mar19)
- Complete volunteer/training/support & outdoor activities (Mar 19)
- Showcase event on completion of project (21st Mar 19)
- Complete and submit project impact report ( 31 Mar 19)
- Complete long term forward plan (Feb-Mar 19)
We’ve successfully tested the outdoor area over the summer with a fun day, a mini festival & holiday activities for children & young people, it works! Now we need to make it fit for purpose all year-round! This will also generate hire income & help sustain & secure a legacy. Wherever possible we will use locally sourced & recycled materials - offering an affordable outdoor space to host activities, events, festivals, play schemes, sports, performances or showcasing talents and entrepreneurial ideas! Young people especially have great ideas they want to try out and Tottenham Café Connect Outdoors will offer the place for this. We’re a small unfunded charity and deliver all our work with no core funding, relying heavily on volunteers and our partners, so we need the Spacehive community to come together & help us bring this latest amazing, unique opportunity to life! We will reward all our supporters by creating a mural with their names on and an invite to a special event.
