Case Studies

The White City Co-op offers healthy produce to local residents and is run from Phoenix High School. It is managed in partnership by Phoenix High School Farm and Learning Zone and Staying Put Services. The co-op sells a range of fruit and vegetables, part of which is supplied from the farm at the school, while the co-op is run by local volunteers.

Food businesses are encouraged to apply for a Healthier Options award, which is then marked on their menu so that local residents can make informed choices about what to eat. To qualify for the award, local cafes and restaurants all receive advice from a qualified nutritionist who advises how to offer healthier food choices for customers.

Café Relax community café was set up in Poplar, Tower Hamlets, to inspire, enable and motivate local people to eat more healthily. It opened in May 2009 and now serves healthy meals from Monday to Friday and provides a space for locals to meet; it also acts as a community resource where residents can access training and enterprise opportunities.

This project developed an unused area of an existing adventure playground into a ‘healthy space’, offering activities such as a gardening club, growing edible plants in pots and containers and establishing healthy walk groups, all of which help bring people together to enjoy their local area.

A programme of events was delivered to promote well-being and enhance community cohesion across diverse groups in White City. Activities included: yoga and sewing sessions for women, summer activities for young people, teenagers and the elderly, a BAME film festival during Black History Week and a White City Football Tournament set up over a ten month period.

This Cook & Eat course provided local residents with knowledge about healthy eating and shopping on a budget, increased confidence in cooking healthily and ways of making changes to their lifestyles for improved health. Food and hygiene training was also provided, increasing the skills base of participants who were also enabled to pass their new skills and knowledge on to others in the community.

This Cook & Eat course provided local residents with improved knowledge and awareness about healthy eating and cooking.

This course was delivered over three phases of six sessions on a weekly basis, which entailed a 3 hour combination of interactive group discussions and practical cooking sessions.

The Well London Delivery Team has run in each of the 20 Well London areas. The projects recruited teams of volunteers who received training in outreach and health promotion and then went out into their communities to signpost local residents to services and activities that promote health and wellbeing. They also fed back to service delivery organisations to help them to deliver better services.

In addition to raising awareness among local residents, this project also built capacity particularly around confidence and skills among the volunteers, a number of whom found employment as a result. The Well London Delivery Team run by City Gateway in Tower Hamlets was a particularly successful example.

The Well London Delivery Team has run in each of the Well London areas. The projects recruited teams of volunteers who received training in outreach and health promotion and then went out into their communities to signpost local residents to services and activities that promote health and wellbeing. They also fed back to service delivery organisations to help them to deliver better services.

In addition to raising awareness among local residents this project also built capacity particularly around confidence and skills among the volunteers, a number of whom found employment as a result.

The Bellingham Food Co-op now operates from St Augustine’s Primary School in Lewisham every Thursday afternoon during term-time, and has been set up to improve the availability and affordability of fruit and vegetables in the area, which has limited access to healthy food.

This project opened up opportunities for women-only physical activity sessions. It addressed the cultural sensitivities preventing participation and also used the sessions to integrate healthy eating and general well-being approaches into participants’ lifestyles.

Lansbury Gardening Club was set up on the Lansbury Estate to promote and develop gardening for local residents of all ages. Groundwork provided a gardener to work with residents in a community garden created out of an under-used space alongside a local community centre. A wide variety of flowers, fruit and vegetables are now grown in huge ‘growbags’. Local residents now facilitate the weekly gardening sessions.

Local visual artists Sally Barker and Sally Labern developed a portable drawing studio, the ‘drawing shed’ – a unique, custom-built pavilion that sets up stall in different venues and unravels to reveal materials for an exciting drawing experience. The drawing shed was wheeled around the community and workshops were held in various locations to get people talking and drawing together.

This project explored the role of art in addressing issues that individuals face in their daily lives that affect their mental well-being, such as isolation, depression and lack of self-confidence. With the help of professional artists, participants were encouraged to discuss various aspects of their dayto- day lives that caused them stress and to use art to express their emotions, via activities such as pottery classes.

‘Handbuilt’ was an intergenerational art project that challenged the perceptions of different generations by bringing them together to produce a creative arts piece. Community artists ‘Face2Face’ worked with a group of young and older people to help them make casts of their own hands and to share experiences through creative writing. The casts have been used to build a wall of united hand casts that represents diverse members of a community working together to promote greater understanding and respect between generations.