Arches Local Big Local Year 3 Review

Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………2-3

Social Investment………………………………………………………………………………………………3-8

Open Spaces and the Environment………………………………………………………….………10-17

Private Rented Sector Housing………………………………………………………………..……..16-19

Getting Active………………………………………………………………………………………..……...21-23

Whole Community……………………………………………………………………………….………..23-27

Changing Behaviour……………………………………………………………………….………………28

Big Local Learning Clusters…………………………………………………………………..…………29-31

In Closing…………………………………………………………..………………………………..…………32

Introduction

The Arches Local partnership has progressed in almost every element of the three-year plan. Part of
our focus has been on developing and forming a group to develop a Neighbourhood Plan, but we
have also worked extensively on ‘getting active’ and have continued to involve more local residents
through a range of activities focusing on the Arts and creativity.

The chapters that follow provide detail, but we would like to highlight the following:

 Social Investment – We nominated three locations as assets of community value, including

Luton Road Shoppers Car Park. The Arches Hub, our community space on Luton Road,
accessible by local residents to attend sessions and groups.
 Open Spaces and the Environment – Includes our local parks, Luton Arches, nominating key
locations as assets of community value, litter
picking and our allotment space by Symons
Avenue.
 Private Rented Sector Housing – Our main focus
has been on the Neighbourhood Planning, we
held two events where people came along to
take part in a range of activities where we
recorded their thoughts and ideas.
 Getting Active – Working in partnership with
Medway Sport, Olympia Boxing CIC and St.
Mary’s boxing, we put together a timetable of

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activities for kids of all ages over the summer holidays.

 Whole Community – Includes all the events we held throughout the year that involved our
whole community, such as our annual Easter, Summer and Christmas events. Also our mini
events that we host at The Arches.
 Changing Behaviour – Working with Open Road volunteers and the local community on our
green spaces, and support of St. Mary’s Box fitness sessions.

Social Investment
(Developing a Better Local Economy)

Contents
Luton Road Shoppers Car Park Market………………………………………………….2-3
Arches Local Community Hub Introduction………………………………………..……3
CAP Life Skills……………………………………………………………………………………………3-4
Community Business Weekend………………………………………………………………..5
Arches Local Hub Highlights………………………………………………………..………..5-9

Luton Road Shoppers Car Park Market

We nominated Luton Roads Shoppers Car Park as an asset of community value; the car park at the
time being under threat of disposal and housing development.

As an asset of community value, the local community would have marked that area of community
importance and help prevent development of it and loss of much need parking spaces locally. Had it
been successful this would be to allow local residents to preserve the facilities that matter the most
to them.

Unfortunately, our submission was rejected by the council.

4.1.5 The Council does not consider that the application and supporting evidence demonstrates that the use
of Luton Road Shoppers Car Park furthers that social wellbeing and social interest of the local community. This
is because although the car park is used by the community its use is not considered to be a social or wellbeing
use. Although it is used by those accessing community facilities such as a Doctors Surgery this is not its primary
use. The primary use is as a shopper’s car park and although the future aspirations of the group to hold events

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in the space was noted these were only aspirations and therefore not sufficient to indicate that the primary use
would change from its current one.

Although we did manage to add Luton Millennium Green and Town Hall Gardens Park to the register
of Assets of Community value – See: Nominating Key Locations as Assets of Community Value (Pg 11)

Arches Local Community Hub

At the end of last year we secured the Arches Local Hub which is in close proximity to the Luton
Road Shoppers Car Park - situated just down the road behind the hub. The Hub has succeeded in
being a focal point for Arches Local activities, intern supporting better social investment in the area.

We are a community space and run different sessions throughout the week for local residents to
attend. Groups include patchwork, maths club, community art, social art, creative writing, English
classes and many more.

The Arches is also used in the evenings for the Arches Youth Drop In for 12-19 year olds, Girl’s Night
for 8-14 year olds, as well as our partnership meetings and Medway Youth Trust’s Youth Forum once
a month.

CAP Life Skills

In May CAP began running there Life Skills classes from our community hub. CAP Life
Skills gives people the confidence and decision making skills they need to survive life

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on a low income. They teach practical money saving techniques such as cooking on a budget, living
healthily on less, and how to make your money go further.

Community Business Weekend

Also in May, we held our Community Business Weekend.

Community Business Weekend celebrates the 7000 community
businesses in local hands across England. The idea of a Community
Business Weekend is to demonstrate the positive impact they have
on society and tell their stories of success and inspirations. Our
weekend was a success with lots of people coming along and being
inspired by the local businesses on show.

Arches Hub Highlights

January
The Manual Handling, First Aid was carried out by
Gillingham based by Darren of 1st Aid Fire and was great
fun and informative and we also included people that
volunteered on a regular basis for Arches Local.

The hub was also busy hosting lots of events and meetings
including our MYT youth forum, Paediatric first aid course,
After School Clubs, Toy and Clothes swaps, Woodwork,
Youth drop in and lots more being booked in the space.
We even had a visit from George Gilbey from Google box.

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February
The hub was getting busier, hosting even more events including our Home-
Schooled Lego Session, MYT Filming, Patchwork, Community Art Sessions,
Housing Advice Drop in, Creative Writing, and various other meetings.

March/April
Nucleus Arts Social Art group began
hosting their weekly art sessions in
the hub. The hub had been show-
casing a lot of art in many different
mediums, it was amazing to see the amount
of hidden talent many residents had!
Copperhouse ran facepainting
sessions for young people afterschool.

May
On Saturday 5th of May we had our Community Business Weekend; lots of
people came along and were inspired by the local businesses that were
shown!

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We had a visit from @themytrust and their international partners on the BOOTS @EUErasmusPlus
project. It was great meeting them and talking about Big Local and them showing us the Romani
Flag. The international guests were very impressed with the great work that we do and really
appreciated us taking the time to meet with them!

CAP also began running their advice life skills workshops.

June
In June we began a Chit and Chat group, and also held a Mental
Health Awareness workshop from 1stAidFire for local residents
which was very well attended and a great day.

We also held our feature event, Equaliteas on Thursday 28th June

with afternoon tea and board games. Everyone had great fun
playing board games and sharing what equality meant to them!

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July
In July hub held a few new groups including the VCSE Health
Network Meeting, Floristry with Maggie, Conversational
English classes and Clean Air Day prize presentations

August
We held several well attended regular activities over the summer
holidays including a creative arts class for older children and a Lego Club
for younger children!

September/October
After the summer holidays are regular groups returned to the hub,
including Nucleus Arts Social Art, Community Art, Maths Club,
Patchwork and Creative Writing. We planned on a Monday to have
different activities throughout each month which began with
Christmas Card Making sessions. We hope to begin a book club with

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the help of the local library, and began plans to start a job club for local
residents.
During the October half-term, we held Halloween themed Lego and
Lunch sessions for the younger children, and creative arts sessions for
the older children to keep them busy in the holidays!

November/December
After the holidays Jackie’s Christmas Card Making sessions began and
continued up until the Christmas holidays, as well as our other session
continuing as usual.

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Open Spaces & the Environment

(Creating More Family Spaces)

Contents
Our Green Spaces…………………………….……..10-11
Luton Arches Regeneration……………………11-12
Nominating Key Locations as Assets of Community Value…………………..…….12-13
Luton Road Action Group…………………………………………………………………………..13-14
Urban Tree Planting……………………………………………………………………………………14-15
Planters………………………………………………………………………………………...………..………15
Litter and Natter Sessions………………………………………………………………..……………..15
Allotments………………………………………………………………………………………………….15-16
Luton Junior School………………………………………………………………………………..……….16
One Savings Bank – Community Allotment…………………………………………….……….16
Luton Infant school…………………………………………………………………………………..…….17

Our Green Spaces

We are proud of the Luton Millennium Green Pocket Park created by Arches Local and the increased
community ownership that this has fostered. In addition to registering Luton Millennium Green as
an Asset of Community Value we continue to monitor its maintenance. This is an ongoing challenge,
with council contractors failing to fully meet our expectations
(or their contractual responsibilities).
Sadly, some of the maintenance activity that has been carried
out has highlighted local homelessness issues, with people
living in tents ‘moved on’.

With the remaining matched funds from the People’s

Postcode Lottery, the Arches Local partnership issued two
funding agreements. The Magpie Growers were awarded
£4,000 to help to maintain the park and Tony Palmer was
awarded £3,600 (including VAT) for maintenance, further

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improvements and development. We ran our summer event at the park and it looked fantastic.

We have initiated conversations to create a second bench,

similar to the Snail bench created originally; drawing on
children’s designs and built ‘in situ’. We would like this to
be the centrepiece of a storytelling circle at the park,
perhaps linking with a children’s book publisher whereby
the pictures, thoughts and ideas could be used to help
create a book that links the process with the local area that
was known as ‘cabbage island’ and encourages family use of
the storytelling circle at the park.

We have instigated a conversation with the Applause Rural Touring Company and hope to hold
outdoor performances in the amphitheater during the school holidays.
Luton Millennium Green was accepted for the ParkLives project with Streetgames and enabled
Medway Sport and Medway Youth Service to offer 6 weeks of free activities during the summer.

Arches Local continues to instigate conversations

with local stakeholders interested in further utilizing
and developing the space for community activities.
For example Medway Council suggested installing a
climbing frame; jointly with Arches Local although it
now transpires that this is too expensive. We have
been talking to St Mary’s Boxing Club who have plans
to build a new centre, offering affordable
opportunities for local people.

Luton Arches Regeneration

The Luton Arches are a prominent focal point in the area and suffer from longstanding neglect. Over
the past few years Arches Local has managed to determine responsibilities for upkeep and has
worked at building relationships with key stakeholders. Similarly to issues of dog fouling, the
condition of the Arches has a detrimental impact on the health and wellbeing of residents. For
example, broken pigeon netting leads not only to falling
pigeon guano but also to dead birds. In addition,
overgrown and unkempt shrub vegetation attracts
rubbish and anti-social behaviour, contributing to
perceptions of crime and insecurity.

These issues are subject to ongoing reports to the Chief

Executive of Network Rail, with support from our MP,
Tracey Crouch and Medway Council.

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In January Network Rail advised that they would undertake work to ‘clear shrub vegetation,
strengthen works to the Viaduct arches, pigeon proof and clean existing guano.’ These works were
to involve the erection of tubular scaffolding to facilitate the masonry works and the installation of a
new canopy above the pavement of
Luton Arch, with the intention of creating
a more environmentally friendly and
cleaner public space and to improve the
integrity of the structures.

In April, we were delighted that a new

canopy was a last installed.
Unfortunately, the workman failed to
reconnect the drain pipes and heavy rain
saw #DripGate for the rest of the week!
In May Network Rail informed us that
they intended to address the drainage issues in the last quarter of the year. By the summer we had
despaired of seeing a satisfactory solution and took matters into our own hands. We sourced a
ladder locally, and taped together the pipes. Although clearly only a temporary fix, it is probably
some of the better-quality work carried out in that area if we do say so ourselves #UrbanRepair.

As a community we are determined that issues surrounding the

Arches are addressed and in September we again met with Network
Rail representatives and Medway Council to discuss several issues,
including Network Rail’s intention to top trees that are blocking train
drivers view to a signal. Our hope was that necessary road closures
would provide an opportunity to carry out additional works. We
spoke about vegetation encroaching the footbridge from land that is
Network Rail’s responsibility and that makes the footbridge slippery
and unsafe, particularly for elderly residents and children, and
obscures views of people using the footbridge making it feel unsafe.
We also discussed the canopy and drainage issues. The engineers on
hand were sad to see the visual appearance of the structure and
recognized the lost opportunity to restore it adequately.

Nominating Key Locations as Assets of Community Value

In January 2018 the Arches Local partnership decided to apply to Medway Council to designate key
locations as Assets of Community Value. Three key areas were identified;

• Town Hall Gardens Park: this area is not well maintained or utilized and is threatened with
housing development. (26 signatures were received)
• Luton Millennium Green: residents are keen to ensure future use and legacy of this park,
which has a checkered history of anti-social behaviour (37 signatures were received)

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• Luton Road Shoppers Car Park: under threat of

disposal and housing development, this area
was identified through the Community
Economic Planning process as a site for a
community market and recycling centre. (40
signatures were received)

The Arches Coordinator canvassed local opinion,

gathered resident’s signatures and nominated these
locations as Assets of Community Value. Submissions
for both Town Hall Gardens and Luton Millennium Green were accepted and these have been added
to Medway Council’s register of Community Assets. Unfortunately, our application to register the
Luton Shoppers Car Park was declined. Medway Council did not consider our aspiration to develop
the social benefit of the space adequate to warrant change of primary use. We will continue to make
every attempt to influence any planning proposals that are submitted.

Luton Road Action Group

In the summer a new social media action group was set up by residents of Luton Road, highlighting
issues and campaigning for positive change. Some of the key challenges that they identify are fly
tipping, untidy land and other antisocial behaviour. Arches Local is in close contact and constant
dialogue with this group of ‘anonymous’ residents, we share many of their frustrations and hope to
involve them in our planned neighborhood
planning process. One positive outcome has
been an increase in Medway Council
enforcement officers and we have met with
Community Wardens and enforcement officers
to explore how through closer collaboration we
might achieve long term change.

We have also seen renewed interest from local councillors, enabling us to highlight some positive
aspects of the area as well as the complex and entrenched challenges. We explored some of the
further work that Medway Council might undertake, in conjunction with Luton Arches to work with
residents and businesses to make the area a nicer place to live, work and visit. We discussed,

• Fly tipping, refuse out early.

• Poor Landlords – HMO’s and ones not licensed – revenge evictions.
• Population density.
• Road design.
• Railings everywhere.
• Housing people from London Boroughs.

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We also explored some possible ‘quick wins’, such as more enforcement, volunteer wardens and a
‘Keep Luton Tidy Campaign’ along the lines of Neat Streets to help to create resident ownership to
take back our streets and create pride in our area.

Urban Tree Planting

Conversations with local residents have

introduced discussions about urban tree
planting in the area, with significant local
enthusiasm and interest. We have been looking
at the feasibility of doing this along Luton Road
and the Brook. We have spoken to Brockley
Street Trees who have inspired us with their
achievements and advice. They suggest:

• Avoiding areas that are red routed

• Brokering deals with local businesses and local residents around the cost of planting and
watering (trees may need regular watering for up to 3 years)
• Understanding that the tree is potentially being planted in a toxic environment (multi-layers
of road and pavement along most of Luton road) and that this may impact the cost of
planting
• Considerations of where to plant the trees; they bought a utility scanner to look for power
cables, etc [A local utility company has also offered to lend us a cable detector to help locate
where best to plant the trees]
• Caution concerning fibre optics that may not picked up on scanners and not mapped
accurately
• Avoiding near sight lines at road junctions, traffic lights, CCTV, etc.
• Evidence that the planting of Trees slows traffic

Our aspiration is to incorporate a tree planting scheme

within Neighbourhood Planning processes and use this to
influence developers to build in design guidelines to
accommodate more trees in future and existing
developments.

We have started looking at design guidelines around

planting trees, focussing on provision of a natural scale to
buildings and streets, reflecting changing seasons and offering a psychological link to the
countryside, bring visual beauty to the area, blocking ugly views and softening the glare from
reflective building surfaces. Trees will provide shade, act as natural windbreaks, can filter out a great
deal of dust, pollutants and even viruses and provide valuable screening for residents. We have
initiated a conversation with Medway Council’s Green Spaces team and Head of Environmental

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services to discuss urban tree planting in the Arches Local area and the potential to utilize Section
106 funding from future developments.

Planters

We are also investigating installing planters along Luton

Road, as part of our plan to reclaim our streets and to
improve the area visually. We have researched suitable
planters and locations and are speaking to a local
company who can install and maintain these.

Litter and Natter Sessions

We have organised regular litter picks to improve the general appearance of the area, and also as a
way to meet and engage with residents. In April we collaborated with the Victory Academy, working
together on the Medway #GBSpringClean Keep Britain Tidy, a campaign bringing people across the
community together to clear up the litter at Luton Millennium Green.

We have arranged litter picks throughout the

year, encouraging Arches Local residents and
businesses to get involved in making where we
live look better. We have offered Medway Time
Credits as a further incentive, underpinning our
Well done guys belief that everyone’s time is equal and should
Bin Du be recognized.

The litter picks have continued to go well, with new people attending every week and some
locations being selected by people via Social Media. There has been interest from people in being
more involved and potentially joining the Arches Local
partnership.

In September we spoke to a local councillor about

Arches Local and improving Luton Road; combating
litter and fly tipping. We spoke about a running a
campaign such as Neat Streets, a creative approach to
tackling litter. Great job guys
Lisa Michalowics

Allotments

We were contacted by Toilet Project Working for support to install toilets at the allotments by
Symonds and Magpie Hall Road. They had already raised 50% of the cost to purchase and install an
eco-loo and offered us a plot that we could manage/share as part of the community project in

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exchange for our support. The Great South Toilet

Project was also accepted by Tesco’s Bags of Help
charity for fundraising in local stores.

In July we were delighted to receive a key and our

own plot and in September we began work at our
community allotment. We were fortunate to receive
help from the HR team from One Saving Bank, who enjoyed themselves so much they asked whether
the other half of their team could come also. We are looking forward to arranging a celebratory
opening event.

OneSavings Bank – Community Allotment

Teams of staff from the One Savings Bank came along on various
days to help us create our community allotment. Every team did a
fantastic job of helping us clear out and shape the allotment into an
asset for the community it will be, so a massive thanks to them!

Luton Junior School

Luton Junior School Deputy Head has contacted us about making their School Field available to the
community.

Hi Stephen, when we spoke earlier in the year about you guys using the field
for a possible community football? We’re currently having the field marked
out for a 9 a side pitch and are looking at the possibility of getting some
fixed football goals built. Is this something that Arches could maybe help
fund if we made it accessible to the public at weekends and holidays?

We have had further conversations with the School and visited the site and it looks amazing as
Medway Norse have cleared away all the bushes and undergrowth around the fence area. Hopefully
should receive some costing from the school for goal posts and netting to stop the balls envisaged at
around £2,000.00

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Luton Junior School have submitted a funding enquiry for approx. £1500.00 details available.

The plan is to place 'fixed' 9 aside goals posts on the field to allow for official football fixtures to be
conducted against other schools in the area. We would also like to fix high rising protective nets
around the perimeter of the pitch to prevent balls flying over and disturbing the surrounding area.
This could help to enhance the plans of Arches Local, as it would provide a safe, secure and
functioning 9 aside football pitch in the heart of the area that both the school and the community
could have access to.

Luton Infant school

Dec 2017 - Myself and Lindsay met with the Head of Luton
Infant School and Chair of the PTA to discuss a gardening
project at the school involving the community and
potentially Tony Palmer. With further discussions to be had
after arranging a site visting in early 2018.

(June) Myself and Tony Palmer visited Luton Infant school earlier today to meet with some parents
who are looking to do a gardening project and may look for support from Arches Local. We had met
previously with the Head of the School and a parent who is heading up the project. On viewing the
site Tony felt that the project was very large and way more than the estimates that had been put
forward (£2500.) and that the maintenance would be high. It was great meeting with the parents
and the Site Manager (Caretaker) who were enthusiastic and
benefited from Tony advice and opinions. Unfortunately, at the
end when we met with deputy head and finance manager they
were very off putting and there did not seem to be cohesion
between the project planners and the school. We shall wait and
see what comes out of the discussion had today.

Private Rented Sector Housing

(Better Develop and Shape the Future to local
need)

Contents
Neighbourhood Planning…………………………………………………………………..17-20

Neighbourhood Planning

Throughout 2018 we have been discussing with our community and stakeholders, creating a
Neighbourhood Plan for our area. We have chosen its aims and objectives which are for the Forum
to produce a Neighbourhood Plan to improve the social, economic, environmental and general well-
being of individuals living in a designated area and to further the interests of businesses operating in

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the same area who support the Neighbourhood Plan aims. It shall operate without distinction or
discrimination on the grounds of gender, disability, sexual orientation or race, or of political,
religious or other beliefs.

We also after lengthy discussions with the Local Authority have

together drawn up a designated area that includes the
boundary of our Big Local area and has taken in some
additional areas that it was flt would make sense to include i.e
because there were future plans to develop those areas. We
also decided on a name for the forum which would be The
Arches Neighbourhood Planning Group and we successfully
applied to Locality for funding to help create a forum.

Later in the year we advertised our intention to have two

Neighbourhood Planning consultation events over a period of
two days in late November. We put up banners, posted flyers,
a social media campaign, website posts and dedicated an area
in our community space to advertise the events.
The Arches Neighbourhood
Planning Group consultation
events took place over a period of two days in November. One at The
Brook Theatre and one at our community space at The Arches.

We invited local residents, businesses and stakeholders to come

along and take part in a range
of activities we had created to
record their thoughts and
ideas on the past, present and
future of our area around
Neighbourhood Planning. A
brief description of each
activity and some of the
findings can be found below;

What You’ve Said

For this activity we asked people to tell us if the things our community
researchers had recorded in the past about our area are still correct
today. To do this we laid out out some of the comments residents had
previously made to us and asked if people still agreed or disagreed.
Through this activity we discovered that people’s views of the area had
remained much the same, with most people agreeing that the
comments made in the past are still relevant to our area today.

Community Treasures

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We asked people to nominate buildings, built features and

open spaces that are important to our community. Before the
event we invited people to make nominations by tweeting
@ArchesLocal a picture or description, using #wetreasure or
emailing arches@archeslocal.org.uk. Nominations made
before the event included The Arches, Luton Millennium
Green and Magpie Community Centre Cafe.
We displayed these nominations at each event placing a flag
on the map at their location and asked people if they agreed with each one by placing a dot by the
corresponding photo. There were additional nominations made at the events these included the
Nucleus Arts Centre, Fort Luton, Central Theatre, Luton Junior School, Luton Library, St Marys Boxing
Club and the Dock Yard.

Our Place Journal

For this activity we asked how our area used to be, what it’s like now and what you would like it to
be like in 15 years time. We recorded people’s ideas by asking them to place a blue flag on the map
for things they would like in 15 years time, and a green flag
on the map for things that were there in the past.
People spoke about things in the past including the Driver
Fountain at the arches, the stamp shop at the bottom of
Slickets Hill and the cinema at the top of the High Street.
For the future we recorded ideas about creating a big green
space on the site of Go Outdoors, a community space near
the bus station and lido/beach at Luton Road Shoppers Car
Park.

What’s stopping you…

We asked people about the things that were stopping them from
being more active in the area, to help us address these barriers in
the future. To do this we asked two questions: What would you like
to do and what’s stopping you.
Some of popular things people said they would like to do were
walking, cycling, running, free gym and fitness classes, etc.
Common things people said were stopping them were not having
enough time, not knowing anyone, fear about going out and really
big hills.

Big Tree Plant

For this activity we asked where people would like trees to be planted in
our area by getting them place trees on the map in the places they think

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they would look nice or were needed. In the future we will use these suggestions where appropriate
and will aim to plant more trees.
Some suggestions were a rows of trees along Luton and New Road, a forest school at Luton Junior
school playing field and lots more trees at the top of the high street.

Postcard back from the Future

We asked people to write a message on a postcard to themselves 15 years in the future. Some of the
messages that people wrote were:

‘Trees now stand where railings stood, green area’s flourishing,

the area’s good. Shops are aplenty with lots to do, changed with
passion for me and for you.’ (Ian)

‘There is a lot more planted trees and cleaners areas, drug/alcohol

crimes have gone down. A lot more people are friendlier and
happier.’ (Sophie)

‘I reckon in 2033, things in Luton will be cleaner and greener. People will be prouder and more
optimistic about their area and crazy old Granddads will tell stories about Luton being run down.’
(Cameron)

Please find below some live drawings captured by a local artist David Frankum. We will look to share
more of his drawings with plans to create visual minutes of the event and findings in the New Year to
share with you all.

The events were a real success with people sharing their thoughts and some people signing up to be
part of the forum. There will be a more detailed report of the findings from the events, which we will
share on its completion. We plan in the New Year to hold some more Neighbourhood Planning
events and hope early next year to form our forum and begin our Neighbourhood Planning journey.

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Getting Active
(More Affordable Activities for Everyone)

Contents
Active Arches (Summer Sessions)………………………………………………………………….21-22
Fit and Fed - October half term…………………………………………………..…………………22-23

Active Arches (Summer Sessions)

Video Link to Summer Fit & Fed: https://vimeo.com/311260172

Working in partnership with Medway Sport, Olympia Boxing CIC, St Mary’s Boxing
and others, we put together a timetable of activities for kids of all ages over the
summer holidays. These activities included boxing, parkour, the Summer Splurge,
creative art, Lego clubs, Fit and Fed and Park Lives. We put in a bid for Tesco Bags
for Life funding and came in 3rd, so received £1000 of funding for the programme.
Medway Sport also provided Match funding of £4,415. We have provided
information on the Bid.

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Through the programme, we ensured that both older and younger children
would have something to do nearly every day of the 6 week summer
holidays either through our Active Arches programme, or through our
creative art sessions and Lego Club ran out of our community hub.

We delivered our Fit and Fed programme out of Luton Junior School with
the help of Medway Sport, supported by Streetgames, Tesco and
Fareshare Kent. It was an amazing success in combating inactivity and
holiday hunger. We had🏃♂️🏃♀️ 83 unique participants, 👫 47/53%
split (female/male), 👨👩👧👦 24 daily average attendance, found that 9 was the average age of
those that attended with the oldest being 17, and an amazing 🍏 363 free meals
were provided.

We never failed to deliver a session of the Fit and Fed, which ran 3 days a week
throughout the holidays. Even on a day where we had heavy rain, thanks to some
last-minute organising, Luton Junior School allowed us to use their hall to hold that
day’s session. We had children waiting outside, soaking wet to see if it was still on!

We are immensely proud of our Active Arches programme, including all of those
that helped deliver it and those members of the community that took part, making
it a great summer for those children who attended the sessions. It helped to bring
our area to life in areas that aren’t always used through our outdoor sessions at our local parks,
Millennium Green and Town Hall Gardens.

Though everything did not always run smoothly, there was nothing we could not overcome and
none of it affected the wellbeing or enjoyment of the participants.

Fit & Fed – October Half-Term

Over the October half term, in partnership with Medway Sport, Olympia Boxing CIC, Street Games
and Luton Junior School we held 3 Fit and Fed sessions, once again running from the Junior School,
with food provided by Fareshare Kent.

On the last session of the October half term Fit and Fed
programme, the children were able to take part in a boxing
session inside the Olympia Boxing Arena. They also had the

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chance to meet an Olympic gold medallist, Karol Itauma, St Marys Boxing Youth Olympics Gold
Medal Winner.

Whole Community
(Creating opportunities for connections)

Events Calendar
Contents
Arches Local Xmas Event 2017…………………………………………………………….23
Volunteer’s Afternoon 2018………………………………………………………………..24
Arches Local Easter Event 2018……………………………………………………………24
Equaliteas 2018……………………………………………………………………………………24
Big Lunch 2018…………………………………………………………………………………….24-25
Arches Local Summer Event 2018……………………………………………………….25-26
Silver Sunday 2018………………………………………………………………………………26
World Kindness Day 2018……………………………………………………….…………..27
Arches Local Xmas Event 2018…………………………………………………………….27

Arches Local Xmas Event 2017

The Xmas event was held on Sunday 17th December at Town Hall
Garden. The event (Unlike the weather!) was fantastic with a lot
more people turning than the previous. It was our biggest best most
festive Xmas event ever!

A massive thanks to all the organisations that supported us in

helping to make it happen including Tony Palmer, All Saints
Community Project, Medway Sport, Anchorians FC, Medway Youth
Service, Medway Plus, Steve Tomlin,
Cretabot, C&S craft, Mobile Farm
Experience bringing the reindeer,
Leisure King with their snow globe
and our fabulous face painters.

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You can find the video of the Event at: https://vimeo.com/250262994

Volunteer’s Afternoon 2018

We held a Volunteers Afternoon at the Arches on the 7th of

March to say thank you to all our volunteers helping in the
community and making a difference in our area.

Arches Local Easter Event 2018

On Saturday the 14th of April, we held our Easter

Event at Luton Millennium Green. It was a fantastic
day for all the family with a visit from the Mobile
Farm Experience, Easter Egg
Hunt, Boxing, Football,
Creating Easter Bunnies,
and lots more. It was also
our best ever attended
event!

EqualiTeas 2018

On Thursday the 28th June, we held

our EqualiTeas event at the Arches
Hub. EqualiTeas is a campaign run by the UK Parliament
to bring communities together to explore what equality
means to people today. It was a great day filled with lots
of interesting discussions about equality, and plenty of
tea and cakes consumed! Thank you to all those that came along and made it such a special and
memorable afternoon!

Big Lunch 2018

The Big Lunch is about millions of people getting together to share
food, have fun and get to know each other better. It's a simple idea
- that for a few glorious hours, cars stop, shyness stops and
neighbours come together in the street to meet, greet, share, swap,
sing, plan and laugh.We held our Arches Local Big Lunch on the 3rd
of June. It was a great day with lots of fun games, light refreshments
plenty of fruit donated by Tesco’s:

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https://www.edenprojectcommunities.com/thebiglunchhomepage

There was also a great write up in the Medway Messenger!

Arches Local Summer Event 2018

Video link: https://vimeo.com/282686244

It was a beautiful hot sunny day for our annual Arches Local Summer
Event at Luton Millennium Green on Saturday, July 7th, 2018.

There was entertainment provided from Applause Rural Touring

company with The Playground of Illusions and Fred and Froojamaflip,
a living fruit and vegetable man! Enoch from Music for Change
returned this year, performing his amazing circus skills and acrobats

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Arches Local Big Local Year 3 Review

with one parent telling us that they were very pleased as they had learned to juggle!

Everyone had the chance to take part in lots of sports activities

provided by Medway Youth Service, Anchorians, Medway
Sport and Olympia Boxing.

Some fantastic fruit and vegetables were on offer from Victory

Academy and lots of other goods from residents, including lots
of arts and crafts.

There was some amazing face painting going on, and the Kids really enjoyed painting their own Piggy
Banks with Christians Against Poverty.

Silver Sunday 2018

On Sunday the 7th of October we held our Silver

Sunday Event for the residents of Pembroke Court. It
was a great day and we look forward to planning
together with the residents more events, and look
forward to next year celebrating Silver Sunday again!

Silver Sunday is a national event held to draw attention

to the problem of loneliness amongst older people, but
also to celebrate their contribution to society. Many
different events were held up and down the country,
for ours, we held a fun afternoon of music, food and refreshments.

We also had a young person from the Arches Local area come in to play the piano to the residents.

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World kindness Day 2018

Kindness Day UK is a nationally recognised day for

the celebration of kindness in society and day to day
life. Individual acts of kindness are encouraged on
this day annually.For World Kindness Day (13th
November) this year, we dropped off some footballs
we got from StreetGames to New Road School and
Luton Junior School as a random act of kindness!

Arches Local Xmas Event 2018

Our Christmas event was a fun-filled

day for the whole family to enjoy,
with our rodeo reindeer and giant
snow globe proving popular among
those who joined us!

We were joined by local crafters,

selling some of their homemade
festive items, as well as the 'big
man' himself delivering good wishes and gifts to children that visited.

Hot refreshments were provided including the popular hotdog stand,

and soup and rolls provided by Copperhouse.

This year we asked local residents what

they liked about the area, what they did
not like and what can be done to make
it a better place to live. As part of our
Neighbourhood planning, we also asked
visitors questions such as: Where would
you like to see trees planted? And what
would you like to see in the future?

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Changing Behaviour
(Diversion Activities)
Contents
Open Road Volunteers – Luton Millennium Green…………………………………………..28
St Mary’s Community Box Fitness Sessions………………………………………………………28

Open Road Volunteers – Luton Millennium Green

Open Road Medway offers people who are nearing the end of their
treatment for drug or alcohol misuse volunteering opportunities in
the local area.

A big thank you to the volunteers who came to help us, who worked
hard and did an amazing job of clearing the dense shrubbery at
Luton Millennium Green Park, making it a prettier and safer place for
the whole community to enjoy.

The same volunteers also helped us to begin creating our community

allotment at Great South Allotments.

St Marys Community Box Fitness Sessions

A partnership between Olympia Boxing and St Mary

Boxing Club supported by Arches Local run several
sessions one aimed at Ladies only and the other an
open session. The box fitness sessions continue at St
Marys Boxing Club with the ladies box fitness and
community box fitness sessions. We visited the
Community Box Fitness session we are supporting
where all abilities and levels of fitness are welcome to
join and created the below video of our visit.

Video link: https://vimeo.com/manage/253776226/general

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Big Local Learning Clusters

Throughout this year we took part in two Big Local Learning Clusters: Coastal
Communities and Youth Exploitation and Gangs. These events aim to:

 Set the scene of this topic within the Big Local areas
 Develop new relationships between Big Local areas
 Test a new approach to coming together and sharing learning through action learning
 Understanding and mapping the issues common to the areas
 Plan the next events over the year and learning outcomes

It was useful to meet up with other Big Local areas and see the issues they are facing and work they
are carrying out to address them. We look forward to seeing how the further sessions develop and
some action being generated locally.

Coastal Communities Learning Cluster

The first Coastal Communities Learning Cluster took place on the 18th of April in London; the two-day
event was jointly run by Local Trust and the New Economics Foundation.

The second cluster took place in London once again on the 9th and 10th of July. This time each Big
Local area had to deliver a brief presentation about their area.

We attended the 3rd Coastal Communities event in Scarborough on the 18th-19th of October. It was
an enlightened couple of days with things discussed and the takeaways were:

 Areas near sea/river coast lots of investment, streets a few back not on the coastal stretch
lack of investment. (i.e. LA plans for the paddock, investment by bus station, plans for Town
Hall gardens zero)
 Areas coming together (South Coast)
 Similar problems across the cluster (Hidden Poverty, 180 Economy, Doctors, Seasonal)
 Chatham Coastal Community Representative (listed as Fran Toomey probably Sunny EE)

We heard from areas presenting about projects they had run or were running that included installing
water features (230k), regenerating beach huts, clearing plastics and, most interesting for us, the
success of selective licensing in the Scarborough Big Local area leading to one local landlord standing
up at a meeting and saying that it was “the best thing that ever happened where he had houses for
rent”.

We visited several sights including Scarborough’s thriving open market pictured below;

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It was also decided to hold the last cluster meeting at the end of January in Medway, so we look
forward to hosting and welcoming the Big Local areas to Chatham where they will be based near the
Chatham Historic Dock Yard. Agenda to be confirmed

Youth Exploitation and Gangs Learning Cluster

The Youth Exploitation and Gangs Learning cluster events kicked off on the 17th of April in Leicester.

The second was event was held on 27th of June at Noel Park Big
Local, London. It was an informative day with guest speakers
from Paul McKenzie on gang’s behaviour and very interesting
chicken shop story from Dover. We got to hear from a young
person from Brixton who had been involved in gangs. We also
spoke with Ken Hinds about stop and search who has been
commended by the Met for his courage in tackling knife gangs,
yet he has had to take the police to court for harassment and
has won £22,000 compensation.

Unfortunately, even though

we requested that they did not clash the next Youth Exploitation
Gangs workshop is to be held at Walsall on 17/18 of October, due
to us committing to the other cluster and being unsuccessful in
trying to find replacements, we are sadly unable to attend this
cluster.

We submitted a bid to the youth exploitation cluster funding

available to develop and run a lunch time boxing sessions pilot
project to build grass roots connections and explore whether
participation in school of a mixed group of ‘at risk’ and engaged
pupils can impact attendance and behaviour and therefore to help
challenge and reduce group violence. We planned to provide
afterschool and lunchtime boxing sessions at a local Primary (All
Saints CofE) and Secondary School (Victory Academy).

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We were successful in our bid to Local Trust to run our Youth Exploitation Cluster Funding project
pilot project. Consisting of 3 sessions per week which are made up of the following:

 All Saints Junior School 2-hour lunch time session for year 3 – year 6 children (with the
school identifying up to 50% participants with either special educational needs, poor
behaviour or attendance)
 After School 1-hour session for secondary school Victory Academy
 After School 1-hours session for secondary school Brompton Academy;
 for one term commencing from January 2019 for 7 weeks.

The sessions aim to teach the young people discipline, self-control, improve their concentration and
promote social inclusion. Like many physical activities it will also boosts fitness level, keeps the
participants active, boost self-esteem and improves confidence levels. Young people will be taught
the importance of respecting others as well as instilling respect. The young people will take part in a
fun boxing session that will include practicing jabs and hooks on boxing pads held by the coach or
punch bags but are not permitted to hit each other. We will also use the Olympia Boxing Legacy
Awards as an incentive, where the participants are awarded certificates and medals for each new
skillset and exercise goal achieved.

This new pilot project will provide added value and will compliment elements of our year 3 Big Local
plan around getting young people more active and building stronger
relationships between youth and the community. From our
conversations with local schools they do not have anything similar
running during lunch times and some are experiencing rising level of
behaviour issues in class and during this period. This project will provide
a new and different approach locally to addressing the challenges of
keeping young people engaged in school as a tool to keep them safe and
help them to make and have positive choices.

We are working with various partners including local schools, Medway

Youth Service, Medway Sport, Olympia Boxing CIC and Streetgames.

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In Closing

We hope you have enjoyed reading and seeing

what we got up to in Year 3. If you’re wondering
why we have not included something you may
have been involved in or saw the clue is in the title
this is just a review. It will not capture all the
activities, events and things that Arches Local were
involved in throughout a busy year 3 there really is
just too many to mention.

It is through a great overview of what did happen, I

think our previous chair Lindsay Robinson who was
so cruelly taken away from us at the beginning of
us delivering our year 3 plan would have been very
proud of all that has been achieved this year. Myself
and our Big Local rep Carl literally climbed a mountain
in his memory in April 2018 which often
resembles the combined effort it requires in
creating positive change in our area. It is all
worth it though to help secure a better
legacy for the fantastic people and
organisations that exist here.

One thing we still must remain focus on is that

much of our success is made possible by
working together in partnership and listening
to and reflecting the thoughts and aspirations
of the Arches Local community. We look
forward to sharing and you being a part of
what we achieve in year 4 and beyond as the
Big Local program enter the second half of its
journey.

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