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The East London Waterworks Park: Phase 1 published their Delivery Report!8 months ago
By East London Waterworks Park
Help us take the first step towards realising our vision for the East London Waterworks Park, a place for wild swimming and a place where people learn to live harmoniously with nature.
The East London Waterworks Park is an idea conceived by local people. At its heart is a community group that wants to acquire and transform a 5.68-hectare site into a brownfield rainforest offering people the opportunity to immerse themselves in nature. Currently a fenced-in concrete depot in the middle of a swathe of green space, acquiring the land and building the East London Waterworks Park will reconnect the lower Lea Valley. It will also showcase an environment-first community-led approach to land ownership that will transform the way we think about green spaces. And it will provide space for people to experience a range of activities that will improve physical and mental health and improve biodiversity, including wild swimming in Victorian filter beds and conservation volunteering. This first phase of the much larger project is about engaging a team of professionals to help us develop the idea and enter into negotiations with the landowner. Help us make our vision a reality.
What we'll deliver:
Why it's a great idea:
Linking Green Spaces Opening up this site will stitch together Leyton and Walthamstow Marshes to the north, the Waterworks Nature Reserve to the east, Hackney Marshes and Middlesex Filter Beds to the south and the river and towpath to the west allowing people and wildlife to roam. Improving Physical Health Walking and wild swimming provide low-cost opportunities for people to be physically active. Improving Mental Health Research has shown that for every £1 invested in health or social needs projects connecting people to nature, there is £6 in social return. Increasing Biodiversity Similar sites that have transitioned from concrete to nature are now home to over 2,000 invertebrates species, some of which were thought to be extinct. Biodiversity is critical to human survival. Providing a Once-In-A-Generation Educational Opportunity Allowing young people to watch nature take back the landscape over a decade will encourage a deeper understanding of the way humans and nature interact.
Steps to get it done:
If the possibilities of the East London Waterworks Park excite you, please get in touch. The project is open and inclusive, and we welcome everyone who would like to get involved.
Gallery
Location Waltham Forest
About the space
Victorian filter beds that are currently paved over and used as a depot. A concrete patch of land in the midst of marshes and wetlands stretching for miles along the River Lea.
Council
London Borough of Waltham Forest
Journey
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Thanks to everyone that has already voted and shared. There's a few days left to vote for us in the New London Architecture Reimagine London People's Choice award! elwp.info/vote The deadline is Friday and voting takes less than 5 seconds. It would be so beneficial to the project to win and mean so much to everyone who has been involved over the last 5 years, so please share the link and ask your friends and family to vote for us! elwp.info/vote Many local people, us included, received an email last week announcing that the planning application to build a secure facility for children on the site we want to transform into East London Waterworks Park has been delayed. Last Wednesday, we received an email from the Pan London Secure Children’s Home Project telling us that the planning application is being delayed and, with no indication of when it might now be submitted to Waltham Forest Council, we can only hope it has been indefinitely delayed. This is good news for the site, for our Metropolitan Open land that should be protected from development. Here's the email we received in full: "I am emailing you with an update on the proposals to build a secure children’s home on the Thames Water Depot on Lea Bridge Road. Delivering a secure children’s home in London remains a key priority for London boroughs and the Department for Education as there is still a national shortage of welfare placements in secure children’s homes and currently there is no service of this kind in London. This means London’s most vulnerable children are waiting several months for a placement, and these are usually hundreds of miles away – far from their families, carers, friends and other people that are important to them. By keeping these children closer to us, here in London, we can provide them with greater support when they are ready to leave secure care and settle back into the community. Since launching the public pre application consultation on our proposal to deliver a secure children’s home on the Depot, a great deal of work has been done to develop our design proposals so that they reflect the views of the local community, local planning authority and other key stakeholders. We were planning to run a second round of consultation and then submit a planning application by the end of September ‘24. This will now be delayed due to the need for further design development and the need to review the project delivery approach in partnership with the Department for Education. We are doing this to give this complex project and our future planning application the greatest chance of success. We will share the new timelines for the project, including planning application submission once a new date has been established. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, comments or feedback on our design proposals so far." While we wait to see what happens, the volunteers at East London Waterworks Park will continue to talk to each other and to the wider community, and will continue to co-design our community park. You can find another wonderful example of this work on our website https://www.elwp.org.uk/SwimmingPonds.htm where Maggie Popova shares details of the swimming area co-design workshop. In a first for East London Waterworks Park, participants used a game engine to visualise different options for the design of the swimming ponds. Finally, before I sign off, there is still an opportunity to vote for us to win the NLA Reimagine London People’s Choice award: http://elwp.info/vote. Wishing you all a beautiful autumn. Abigail Woodman, and the team at East London Waterworks Park 3 September 2024
What happens now? Since the disappointing and frustrating news about the plans for a secure facility for children was announced our community has leaped into action. Thank you to everyone who has written in, attended the consultation, or spoken to your neighbours! A lot of you who generously donated to this Crowdfunder have also been asking what happens now. The answer is that it’s very early days, but one thing is for sure: we will do everything we can to oppose the forthcoming planning application, and we need your help: https://www.elwp.org.uk/Blog.htm?Blog=62. Right now, the main action we’d like you to take is to write to your local councillors asking them to stand up for East London Waterworks Park: https://www.elwp.org.uk/Blog.htm?Blog=62 ⬇️ If, despite local community opposition, the developer/ government decides to proceed with the planning application, we’ll continue to do everything we can to oppose this inappropriate plan for development on our protected Metropolitan Open Land together. There are full details of what this process will look like in our recent blog. Please do have a read: https://www.elwp.org.uk/Blog.htm?Blog=61 ⬇️ If the planning application for a secure children’s facility is successful, then we will be unable to purchase the site we want to transform into East London Waterworks Park. If this happens then, as explained on the crowdfunder page and on our website, donations will be used to support relevant, local projects in accordance with our charitable objects. We really hope we won’t get to this point but, if we do, we’ll invite everyone who donated to help us decide how to spend the money. At the time of writing, £558,274.15 is safe in a Charity Bank account. Charity Bank is an ethical bank entirely owned by charitable foundations, trusts and social purpose organisations. What can I do? We will let you know how you can keep our dream for our park alive each step along the way. Sometimes you have to struggle for your dreams but the results are always worth it. Thank you for your continued faith in our project and all the contributions you have made so far. Remember to sign up to keep posted on the latest developments: https://www.elwp.org.uk/SignUp.htm Is volunteering and outreach still happening? Yes! We are continuing with our positive community action and events, and we are continuing to contribute to our community through collaborations with local citizens and organisations. Recently we accompanied Year 7 and 8 Buxton School Council members on a day of learning about the environment and sustainability in and around the River Lea, taking them on a perimeter site walk and joining in with workshops we’d organised for them with EcoActive at Leaside. We’ve also created a series of lesson plans for Buxton School for Year 7 Geography, focused on learning about wilding at East London Waterworks Park. Continuing our collaboration with University College London, we are also exploring how data science can contribute to ecological design. On 3 February, we hosted a vibrant and informative forest school co-design workshop. We are continuing with our inclusivity workshops as part of our listening project. ‘Patterns in Nature’ photography exhibition At East London Waterworks Park we offer something for everyone! We’re delighted to invite you to our upcoming photography exhibition at The Mill in Walthamstow. Our ‘Patterns in Nature’ exhibition will showcase the beauty of nature through the lenses of talented photographers of all ages. The exhibition will feature the winners, runners-up and highly commended photographs from our 2023 World Photography Day photo competition. East London Waterworks Park volunteer and photographer Jonathan Perugia was one of the three judges of the competition. He says: ‘The photos reveal the deep passion people have for nature, capturing the essence of our community's connection with the environment and the enthusiasm to create a unique place for wildlife and wild swimming in East London.’ The exhibition, kindly sponsored by FRMD, will run from 5 March to 5 April 2024 at The Mill Walthamstow (7–11 Coppermill Lane, E17 7HA). It is free entry. Do pop along! East London Waterworks Park team, 8 February 2024
As anticipated, the Department for Education has plans for our site. If you live nearby, you may have received this leaflet through your front door this morning. The leaflet states that ‘London boroughs are leading on proposals to develop and build a new secure children’s home on this site, using funding from the Department for Education.’ It also invites local residents to an initial public consultation at the Lee Valley Ice Centre on Lea Bridge Road on 7 February, from 3pm to 8pm. We encourage you to attend, ask questions, and have your say. For more information please see our blog: https://www.elwp.org.uk/Blog.htm?Blog=60 Abigail Woodman on behalf of the East London Waterworks Park team, 24 January 2024
It’s been four months since we finished our crowdfunding fundraising campaign, and time to share what we’ve been doing recently to bring us closer to our goal of transforming the concrete-covered depot on Lea Bridge Road into a haven for wildlife, and a place we can reconnect with nature. Let’s start with a quick recap. In March 2021, we received a letter – via our local MP – from the responsible junior minister at the Department for Education at the time. It said: LocatED, the Department’s arms-length property company, is managing the disposal of the site as it has not been possible to find an educational use. We will advertise the site to other Government Departments or public sector bodies. If no education or public sector need is established, the Department retains the option to sell the site for a commercial return. Taking heart from this letter, we spent a year working on our plans for the site. Then, in March 2022, we met with LocateED. We were told that other parties had shown interest in the site, and we would be notified when it was put up for sale. We were also told that our interest in purchasing the land would only be taken seriously if we had cash to back it up. So, three months later, we launched the crowdfunder fundraising campaign to great success, raising over half a million pounds and securing a philanthropic loan for the balance of our offer: £1.5 million in cash + £18.5 million in social value. In March 2023, we wrote to LocatED and made an offer for the site. In response, we were told: As previously discussed, the free schools planned at the Lea Bridge Road site are no longer being proposed. As a public sector body, prior to considering commercial disposal of any site, we are obliged to consider alternative educational or public sector uses for the site. The site is not currently being marketed, nor has it been confirmed that it will be. We’re not quite sure how to interpret this. There appears to have been a subtle shift in the wording, from a stated intention to advertise the site to other public sector bodies in 2021 to, two years later, a vaguer sense that this might happen at some point in the future. In parallel, a promising email thread with staff at the Department for Education about arranging a meeting went quiet. Naturally, we are trying to seek clarification, but we strongly believe a new planning application for the site will be submitted in due course. This could be a planning application for new schools or it could be a planning application for an alternative use that would allow the site to be marketed with planning permission. While it is possible to read this as a setback, we believe it can also be viewed as a positive sign: the government knows it must do something with the site and, if this new planning application is rejected by Waltham Forest Council like the previous one, our offer to buy the site will be strengthened because the alternative options will be reduced in number. But how likely is it that the planning application will be turned down? Until we know what is planned, we cannot know for certain. However, we know that there is no need for additional school places in Waltham Forest and Hackney, so it is unlikely that a planning application for new schools will be met with any more interest than it was in March 2019, when the original application was firmly rejected. Waltham Forest Council has also ruled out the site for housing due to its protected designation: as Metropolitan Open Land, East London Waterwork Park is the only credible – and best – option for the site. The challenge for us is that we must now wait for the planning application to be submitted, and we don’t know how long that wait will be. We must be patient, we must continue to work together to develop our vision, and we must hold our nerve. The money raised through the crowdfunding fundraising campaign, and additional donations received since, is safe. We’ve opened an account with Charity Bank, an ethical bank that uses its savers' money to lend to charities and social enterprises, which currently holds £547,932.28. We have also appointed Bates Wells as our solicitors, a well-respected law firm with extensive experience advising charities, including those buying land and property. We have already received a lot of support from across the political spectrum, and we will continue to meet with local MPs, local councillors and council officers to talk about the project. We will continue to develop our plans for the site. And we will continue to strengthen our business case. We’ll also share news with you as soon as we can. The idea that is East London Waterworks Park is simply too good not to happen, so do join us in bringing it to life. Whether you’re interested in governance, marketing, inclusivity, learning design, spatial design, ecology or fundraising, email us at [email protected] and help us make concrete bloom. Abigail Woodman, 1 August 2023
What better day is there than May Day to combine Nature and learning? We hope the rest of the month gives you plenty of opportunities for learning with Nature too. Learning with and from Nature is at the heart of East London Waterworks Park’s vision. We are learning all the time as we innovate through designing this new biodiverse park with free-to-access natural swimming ponds and, in turn, as our vision evolves, we invite everyone to contribute their art, perspectives, experiences and skills to help create the project and the park. We always intended to create a specific space for learning with Nature and this is what has inspired our Forest School Space proposal. This description from our friends at forestschools.com perfectly encapsulates the kind of space we wish to create: ‘Forest Schools are nature-based communities where trained practitioners nurture learner-led exploration and discovery, nurturing meaningful experiences for positive lifelong impacts.’ You can read our exciting and innovative proposal for our Forest School Space, developed with the expertise and passion of many volunteers, in full here: https://www.elwp.org.uk/Story.htm This proposal emerged as a result of conversations with the many Forest School practitioners who have joined our community of volunteers. We went on site visits, spoke to operators and practitioners, and shared our experiences, hopes and dreams for the Forest School Space in our park. This draft proposal details our planned design for the space, and makes recommendations for how it might operate. We are passionate about ensuring local people, including disabled people (who have historically been under-represented in Forest School participation), are involved in the co-design of the space, enabling their full and long-term participation in its learning activities. This could be the first learning interaction with Nature for many. To that end we set ourselves the challenge of designing an operational model that enables those who would otherwise not be able to access the Forest School to attend for free, whilst practitioners and facilitators are paid a fair wage. The proposal starts to explore some ideas. Conversations with specialists, volunteers and, crucially, with you will continue to inform future versions of our plan. Once you’ve read the proposal, please do send your feedback or suggestions, or if you’d like to offer to contribute to the next iteration of the design, email me at [email protected] or reach out to us via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/EastLondonWaterworksPark), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/eastlondonwaterworkspark/), Twitter (https://twitter.com/ELWaterworks) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/east-london-waterworks-park). Thank you to our volunteers Jane Heather, Judith Stanley-Smith, Richard Skrein, David Fisher, Elinor Chambers, Sophie Nathan, Matthew de Kretser, Lizzie Hassay, Martin Smith and Caroline Day for contributing to the Forest School Space proposal. Continuing with the theme of design proposals, Caroline Day has written a blogpost inspired by our Wetlands Proposal. We’re always open to art inspired by our work to create the park, so let us know if inspiration strikes! You can read the blog on our website: Seven Imagined Days in May (https://www.elwp.org.uk/Blog.htm) Sign up for our newsletter here: https://www.elwp.org.uk/SignUp.htm As always, if you’d like to listen in or contribute to the project, we’d love for you to join us. If you’d like to donate some time to a community cause, or you’re in charge of your company’s corporate responsibility, we’d love to hear from you. In particular, the learning circle is looking for learning designers, facilitators, people that work in training, learning and development, and anyone who might be interested in creating learning experiences based on the project, so that schools, universities, community groups and charities can contribute to the creation of East London Waterworks Park. There are also plenty of opportunities to get involved in all our circles, from art visualisations to content marketing, fundraising strategy to graphic design, and social research. Just drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll point you in the direction of where your skills can be best utilised. Nathan Miller, 2 May 2023.
Spacehive supporter, if you haven't already, please donate to our current crowdfunder. We need your help with the next phase of the project: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/elwp We're 55% of the way there! Thank you to every single person who continues to support us! Thanks also to those of you who joined us at our online presentation and Q&A and at the Open House Festival at Grow Hackney, you've been wonderful audiences and we have more to update you on, on both of those events. We are excited to announce we are having a fundraising night at Grow Hackney on Tuesday 27th of September, where there will be music and dancing from The Preshaah, Abdoulaye Samb and more! There is a fantastic group of raffle prizes including: • a dinner for two with a bottle of wine at Grow • a weekend stay in a getaway in the South of France • a stay at Five Acre Barn • a professional portrait by photographer Jonathan Perugia • a local foraging walk for two from Flavour Fred • Bramble Jelly and Sloe Gin from Peter Mudge • Good Folk Coffee • and more! Buy tickets for you and your friends to join us here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/east-london-waterworks-park-fundraising-night-tickets-421389085097 We also have the video of last week's online presentation. Please do share it with anyone you know that is interested to find out more about the project but hasn't donated yet: https://youtu.be/cmq4DcBE2V8 Now more than ever we need to invest in our local communities. Creating East London Waterworks Park is a once in a generation opportunity to provide free access to clean natural swimming and community spaces. The park will be a vital resource for generations to come and we as a community are uniquely placed to steward this plot of land. Help us spread word about the crowdfunder and encourage those who haven't donated yet to do so. You can donate again if you'd like to also: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/elwp Finally, if you'd like to get involved with the project or know of a company that has a strong approach to corporate social responsibility and might be interested in supporting us, please get in touch: [email protected]. And, of course, please continue to get the word out there via social media by following and sharing our posts: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/EastLondonWaterworksPark/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/ELWaterworks Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/waterloversoflondon/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/east-london-waterworks-park/ Thank you, from the East London Waterworks Park team
Supporters of East London Waterworks Park, We have a couple of events coming up that we would like to tell you about. Some of our volunteers are going to be at Grow Hackney on Saturday 10 September for their Open House Festival, from 12pm until 6pm. Come and see us there! https://www.growhackney.co.uk/events-calendar/open-studios-openhouselondon2022 We also have an online presentation and Q&A this coming Tuesday 13 September. Come and learn more about the work we've been doing, as well as how you can help the crowdfunder! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/east-london-waterworks-park-online-presentation-and-qa-sept-2022-tickets-408823481037 Thanks so much to each and every one of you for your continued support for East London Waterworks Park! This is an all-or-nothing crowdfunder so, if we don't get to £500,000, we won't get anything. I have every confidence we can get there, but we do need to pull out all the stops! Can you persuade three people to donate within the next week? https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/elwp Finally, if you'd like to get involved with the project or know of a company that has a strong approach to corporate social responsibility and might be interested in supporting us, please get in touch: [email protected]. And, of course, please do continue to get the word out there via social media by following and sharing our posts: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/EastLondonWaterworksPark/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/ELWaterworks Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/waterloversoflondon/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/east-london-waterworks-park/ Thank you, from the East London Waterworks Park team
I like me a metaphor. A metaphor can help turn a feeling into something more tangible, something you can explain to others. For me, life is like an endurance race. Sometimes, you don’t know how you will go on, but you dig deep, find a well of energy you didn’t know you had and you push forwards. You keep going and reaching the finish line is amazing, a moment of pure, sparkling joy, before… you plan your next gruelling challenge. But there’s another volunteer in the East London Waterworks Park team, Cathy, and she takes a very different approach to life. She encourages us all, every so often, to stop and turn around and see how far we’ve come. She reminds us to celebrate our achievements even as we look to the far horizon and focus on our goals. So, today, I’m not going to talk about how far we have to go with our crowdfunder (https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk), I want us all to focus on how much we have already raised (or almost already raised): £250,000, a quarter of a million pounds, in around two months. That is nothing short of amazing. It’s a testament to the power of a good idea. And I thank all of you, from the bottom of my heart, for your generosity in sharing the crowdfunder (http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/elwp), encouraging others to donate and donating yourselves. It would be lovely to share this moment of reflection with you, this waypoint in our endurance race that is the crowdfunder (www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/elwp). After the success of our in-person meet-up at Today Bread in Walthamstow a few weeks ago, we’ve decided to re-run the event online. Join us at 19:30 on Tuesday 13 September for a short presentation followed by a Q&A. It’s an opportunity to find out about the project in more detail, ask all your burning questions and learn what you can do to help us reach our crowdfunding target. Register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/east-london-waterworks-park-online-presentation-and-qa-sept-2022-tickets-408823481037 We've got another £250k to raise, so as ever, please do get the word out there, and if you would like to get involved in volunteering, contact us at [email protected] Please do continue to share the project via social media: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/EastLondonWaterworksPark/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/ELWaterworks Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/waterloversoflondon/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/east-london-waterworks-park/ Abigail Woodman, 30 August 2022
Thanks so much to each and every one of you for your continued support of East London Waterworks Park! You are visionaries on a journey to create a resilient biodiverse new park. Thank you to Alex at Today Bread for hosting us on Friday and thank you particularly to those of you that were able to come and listen and ask questions about the project. We noted down the questions and will be answering them on social media across the week, so keep an eye on our accounts at the end of this email. We’d like to address one particular question now though: What happens if you don’t reach the crowdfunder target? The answer is that this an All-or-Nothing crowdfunder, so we need to reach £500,000 before the deadline or you’ll all be refunded and the project will have a significantly lower chance of happening. So please join us in encouraging your friends and family to donate what they can to create this amazing new park! https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/elwp We will be hosting more in-person events, so look out for updates on those.Finally, if you’d like to get involved with the project or know of a company that has a strong approach to corporate social responsibility and might be interested in supporting us, please get in touch: [email protected]. And, of course, please do continue to get the word out there via social media by following and sharing our posts: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/EastLondonWaterworksPark/ Twitter - https://mobile.twitter.com/ELWaterworks Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/waterloversoflondon/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/east-london-waterworks-park/ Thank you, from the East London Waterworks Park team
How will the money be spent?Target (inc. fees) £28,902
Costs Breakdown
This shows how money raised for the project will be spent. These costs have been confirmed by the project's Delivery Manager and verified.
Overfunding
This project is enabled for overfunding. If the project hits its funding goal before the end of the campaign period, any extra funds raised will be spent (in order of priority) on:
Target (inc. fees) £28,902
Our Volunteer List
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VolunteerOn 16 September 2019, 25 people from Waltham Forest and Hackney came together at a public meeting to develop a strong vision for an unloved depot on Lea Bridge Road, a vision that weaves together the dual narrative of water and living in harmony with nature. The East London Waterworks Park campaign was born. We currently meet fortnightly and have set up a company to make our vision a reality.
East London Waterworks Park Ltd is a registered company limited by guarantee. This means it will not have shareholders and all profits are re-invested to promote the non-profit objectives of the company. The objectives of the company are:
(a) to promote the protection of the environment by purchasing land and returning it to nature, and
(b) to create a habitat that will increase biodiversity, and
(c) to create a place for people to connect with nature.
We will be applying for charitable status as soon as we can secure the necessary regular income.
Project Owner: East London Waterworks Park The Project Owner takes legal responsibility for receiving and spending the funds raised and ensuring the project is delivered.
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