Brixton Garden Party

Just a couple of days to go until the Brixton Garden Party, on Fairmount Road from 4pm.

Come along to meet your neighbours and enjoy: 

Community Tea

Children's games and face-painting

Live music

Bread making

Jumble and swap table

Raffle 

Community design workshop

 

Please bring: food to share, jumble to swap and your own mug and plate for the tea. 

The event will be an opportunity to get involved in ideas to turn the series of disused garages between Fairmount Road and Raleigh Gardens into a space for the community.
 

We are looking for volunteers to lend a hand to help on the day. Even 30 minutes of your time will make a big difference. Drop a message to thegardenbrixton@gmail.com, or on 07583 948612 or via the website http://www.gardenbrixton.blogspot.com. 

See you there and let's hope for good weather!

Thanks,

The Garden Brixton

Welcome to The Garden, Brixton

Hello neighbour,

Welcome to the Garden, Brixton website. You might have just received a leaflet about the idea to bring some disused garages at the top end of Fairmount and Beechdale Roads into community ownership and to turn them into a community space.

Hopefully the blog posts below will give you a bit more information. Do get in touch if you want to know more - the easiest way is to email thegardenbrixton@gmail.com

The first step is to bring neighbours together to get to know each other a bit more, share ideas and find volunteers who want to make this happen. Please do come along and join in the street party, on Sunday 18th September, from 4pm on Fairmount Road. Ideas and help are needed so do get in touch if you are able to bake a cake, organise some children's games or bring some music or if you are able to lend out your tables and chairs on the day.

Looking forward to hearing from you and seeing you on the 18th September!

The Brixton Garden Party

At all the meetings so far, the idea of holding a street party has come up It seems like a great way to get people engaged in the project and for people locally to get to know each other a bit better. So we got together to plan and this is what we came up with...

The Brixton Garden Party :  Sunday 18^th September from 4pm, Fairmount Road

The idea is for people to get together, maybe have a community barbeque and for as many households as possibl to bring stuff along to eat and share. We want lots of stuff for children to do, and the chance for people to hear about the project, share their ideas and views and get involved in a community design process so that their input can feed directly into the project.

It would be fantastic if the party itself demonstrated how much we can achieve together as a community  - and most importantly it will be a chance to have a really good party. A lot of people talked about events for the Big Lunch - we have missed this year's date, but this is our chance to do something similar.

So where to start ?

First we need 10-12 people to volunteer to leaflet, knock on doors, distribute info and gather emails from residents in Fairmount Road, Beechdale Road and Raleigh Gardens - the three roads adjacent to the site. We have 6 volunteers already, so another 6 means that we would only need to knock on about 10 doors each and it shouldn't take more than 45 minutes. We plan to do this as a group or in pairs with people starting closest to their own home addresses early evening in the week of 15th August . Please email thegardenbixton@gmail.com if you can help out.

We hope that this will get even more people interested, and it would be good to get as many people as possible along to a party planning meeting during that week as well - more details to follow.

We also thought we could ask some local businesses to make a donation in cash or kind or offer support on the day and we can think more about how we do that when we meet , but if anyone has any contacts with local businesses please do give me a shout. Please get in touch if you have any contacts with schools in the area who might want to get involved by supplying a band or doing a show.

We brainstormed a list of ideas about things we would need for the party - some people had done this before and it was great to hear that you don't need much to have a good street party, even in bad weather (although not much can be done if it totally tips with rain). 

We have probably forgotten things from this list so please do add ideas of what would make a good party. Most importantly, please let me know if you own or can get hold of any of these items as we don't have any budget for this party so we are hoping that between the three streets we can find everything we need.

Things we need:

Tarpaulins

A few gazebos or a small marquee

Folding tables and chairs

Face painting, chalk for chalk drawing on the pavements, ping pong or any other games that can be played in large groups

Electricity cables

Sound system and DJ

A small stage?
A big barbeque or lots of little barbeques

And to let people know about the project...

3 display boards to contain information about the project 

Photos and information about places that inspire us

A site model

Plasticine and other materials to model ideas for the site

Cameras/video cameras

I'll post a bit later with a list of things that need doing on the day...meanwhile, happy party planning!

What could grow in the Garden?

Over the first couple of meetings, there have been a real range of ideas of things we might put in a community space locally. Here's a taster:

-Garden space to grow veg - allotments or community garden
-A community shed
-Massive wormery for all our local food waste and community composting area
-A tool exchange
-A seed exchange
-Plant sales
-A space where food could be grown and cooked - keeping it really local
- A bee sanctuary with honey production
- An educational centre for growing and beekeeping - this might be especially treasured by kids in an urban area
-An educational centre conencted to local schools and maybe linked to the Windmill - wheat growing, bread making
- An inner city farm with goats and chickens
- A community meeting space with space for training, arts, playgroups and meetings
- A garden classroom - for children and for adults wanting to learn more and for the many local community groups to meet each other and learn how to grow to the next stage
- A community kiln for firing ceramics
- A community oven for cooking bread and pizza
- Office space for micro enterprises/small creative enterprises
- A quiet space for thinking and reflection (with wi-fi access!)
- A space for children's birthday parties and other celebrations (with noise kept in check!)

The idea of leasing the land also came up and growing and then cooking street food from vans for a few weekends in the summer.

The winning and immediate idea was to get together for a party - in fact the Brixton Garden Party - to get to know each other and get more people involved in thinking about the space. A group is coming together soon to plan...

Please join us on 1st June 2011, 8pm at the White Horse, Brixton Hill.

Meeting number 2 - More ideas, more talking, more gardening

Please come along to a further meeting about The Garden, Brixton.

Wednesday 11th May, 7-8.30pm, Corpus Christi, Trent Road, Brixton

The meeting will be used to discuss and develop proposals for the site in more detail, to plan next steps and help prepare an application for a small amount of funding that would help take the project to the next stage. It will also be a chance to find out how you can help the garden grow.

See you there!

Blown away by the meeting - now what?!

I have been reeling and exhausted for a full week after an amazing and slightly overwhelming meeting last week. Had no idea what to expect. All the old hands said 20 would show, but they were secretly expecting 10. In the end the meeting was packed, with 60 people there drawn from all over Brixton. Amazing. Meant it was all a bit busier and nosier than I expected and felt like we had just started a much bigger conversation.

Loads of energy and ideas and a good healthy dosage of worry too about the proposals. So now what?

Well, turns out it's lots more conversation. Just arranging a meeting now with all those who back on to the site to hear more about what they want and their concerns. And then, a further community meeting on 11th May to get into the detail of the plans and hopefully sign up a few folk with seeds, watering cans and plenty of sunshine to nurture the beginnings of this idea.

Now, who was it that said we should have a street party in the meantime just, just simply to get to know each other. Loving that idea....

Find out more at the public meeting

Chuka Umunna www.chuka.org.uk will be hosting a public meeting about The Garden, Brixton:

Wednesday 6th April, 7-8.30pm

Corpus Christi Church, 11 Trent Road, Brixton

Please come along to find out more and get involved. 

I will be presenting the project and Jerry Tate www.jerrytatearchitects.com will be presenting some plans for the site.

If you want to find out more please email thegardenbrixton@gmail.com

See you then!

The Garden goes public

Preparations are underway for the first public meeting about The Garden, Brixton. Am prepping the page for questions that local people might have. So let's start with the basics. What's the big idea? Here's a brief summary...

What is The Garden?

The Garden is currently a row of disused garages in a built up area in the heart of Brixton.  This derelict site offers a unique potential for community development in a densely populated, urban area .

What is now a wasteland will be turned into a community building and Garden so as to allow the community to:

• Develop a demonstration edible garden that shows how food can grow in small urban spaces
• Develop a community kitchen and cafe to promote healthy eating and demonstrate the benefits of using fresh, own grown produce
• Provide an oasis for individuals to reflect, grow and learn new skills
• Engage in community activities including animation, film, sculpture, creative writing, live music, arts and crafts
• Provide an affordable space that nurtures small creative businesses and social enterprises
• Learn practical skills such as gardening, cooking and carpentry Experience a green building first hand that demonstrates practical ideas that can be applied simply in the home and office environment
• Come together as active citizens in a new space that allows for community development

The mix of space, with community cafe and letting space will ensure that revenue is brought back into the area, and that the project is sustainable in the financial sense also and built with the current tough economic climate in mind.

As a true community project, the seeds of the Garden will be chosen by local residents and the outreach projects (school engagement, work with people with disabilities etc) will be guided by the views of local practitioners and other voluntary sector organisations to ensure that the needs of the community are well understood.

What is at the roots of The Garden?

At the roots of The Garden are a set of principles. The Garden will grow strong on these (will the temptation to stop using gardening metaphors ever stop d'ya think?).

The first principle is that The Garden will be sustainable. This means not only will The Garden have a low impact on the environment and be able to sustain itself without drawing down from the grid, it will be able to sustain itself as an entitty. It will not be a cipher for energy/time/money. Rather, like a balanced eco system it will have the ingredients within itself to run itself, generating mixed sources of income so that when times are tough it has enough to keep ticking over.

The second principle is that The Garden will be a place for growth and a growing place - organic, ever changing, responsive to its environment and the changing needs of the community.

The third is that The Garden will demonstrate its principles by doing and living them. The building will be developed on green principles to inspire greener ways of living. The creative projects housed in The Garden will show what it is possible when a little bit of imagination is freed. And the journey (and the many leaps of faith needed) to create The Garden will be shared through this blog to inspire others to take a similar journey.

Who and what is inspiring The Garden, Brixton today?

The Garden, Brixton is just the seed of an idea.

I could easily list a hundred reasons why it will never flourish. The owners of the site don't play ball, the planners put a blanket ban on it, local residents don't want it (literally) in their back yards not to mention the small issue of raising three quarter of a million pounds.
 
So what will keep the idea alive. Regular watering and fertiliser of course!

Seeing and imaging what is possible is not always easy when the reality you are faced with is an overgrown plot, decorated with nothing more than an abandoned shoe and "Keep Out" and "Danger Absetos" signs.

So these are some places that are giving me an idea of what may be possible. All very different - all ideas donated by generous friends and family but all of them have at their heart the idea of communities coming and growing together in a beautiful space.

http://dalstongarden.site11.com/
http://www.bbbc.org.uk/
http://www.b-inspired.org.uk/index.html

Inspiring indeed.

The Garden starts here

Welcome to the very first shoots of The Garden Brixton.

The idea?

To grow a unique, green space in a busy urban environment. To grow something special for the community from some disused garages, abandoned for years.

This is The Garden now - could we make it into something really special?