South Ockendon Community Forum

The Glass-House worked with staff, users and volunteers at South Ockendon Community Forum for a day of presentations, discussion and interarctive activities to help them rethink the layout and style of their community hub.

The South Ockendon Community Forum was founded by residents in 1996. It became a monthly networking group for those active residents and grassroots workers who took part, many of whom remain active members today.  The Forum helps in practical ways through providing them with internet connection, help with letter writing and understanding forms and correspondence community members have received. Statistically, South Ockendon residents have very poor health compared to average across the UK, and The Forum therefore provides advice on how they can improve their levels of health, in a friendly and informal environment. The Forum organises a huge variety of activities for local people including street dancing clubs, keep fit, walking groups and football/athletics clubs during school holidays. They also have education projects to improve the community’s life chances. It is a non-judgmental organisation and occasionally acts as a place of refuge.

The Forum maintain a community base and workers to facilitate support services in health, education and training. Their base is used for many ‘surgeries’ and organisational meetings, clubs and consultation purposes but the current building is not serving them as well as it could.

South Ockendon Community Form got in touch with The Glass-House to support them in considering how to make their existing building better suit their needs. The Forum want the centre to be a place where local people feel welcome, comfortable, safe and most importantly, valued. The building is currently used for a huge variety of activities but its layout and appearance create problems for staff, volunteers and users. The building does not have enough storage, and years of accepting doanated furniture means it has a somewhat haphazard appearance. The only access to both the toilet and the kitchen is via the large community space. This means that when the large room is in use, neither of these can be accessed and circulatation around the building is generally poor.

With Tim Beales of ADP Projects, as independent enabler, we came up with a programme for a one-day workshop with the following aims:

• Examine the current building and how it is used
• Find out what is working well and not so well in the building
• Analyse the spatial capabilities of the building
• Work towards a joint vision of how the buidling should look and feel
• Come up with some ideas of how to change the layout of the building to suit the many functions it performs

During the day we spent time discussing what the group don't like about their building, what they like about other community buildings and how they would like The Forum to look and feel. The group made mood boards to illustrate the colours and styles they would like and using large plans of the building, the group also had a go at reconfiguring the rooms to create a more practical layout.

The Fourm has a close relationship with its users and user groups and works with a large number of community organsations across Ockendon. The trustees and staff at The Forum were keen for everyone who uses their facility to play a key role in exploring how to change the building and what improvements to make. As a result, The Forum invited a huge number of people to the workshop and lots of people of all ages and with differeent relationships to the bulding turned up and contributed their thoughts and ideas.

This intensive day of workshops allowed the staff and trustees at The Forum to get a better idea of what the wider community would like the building to be like. Working with Tim Beales who specialises in interior architecture, this gave the group a sense of what is possible in their space and how they could configure it to make it work more effectively.

"Thank you very much for your interesting workshop yesterday at The  Forum...The feedback from some of those attending has been very positive and we are really keen to continue the dialogues  started."

Buildings

Refurbishment

Interiors

One-day interactive workshop

Better sense of a shared vision for the building

Understanding of design possibilties

Ideas for the mood, furnishings and colours

A better idea of the next steps

Tim Beales - ADP Projects