Building community organising in Forest Green
Our work in Stroud District began with community conversations and training, initially focused on Forest Green, Nailsworth. Community Roots was commissioned by Stroud District Council to deliver the community development element of the Strengthening Local Communities Pilot, a two-year health and wellbeing programme funded through the Clinical Commissioning Group and Gloucestershire County Council.
The wider programme aimed to strengthen people’s confidence, skills and ability to take an active role in their own health and wellbeing, while exploring how community-based approaches could improve access to support and build stronger local connections.
Our role was to deliver this through community organising. That meant listening to residents, building relationships, supporting local people to develop ideas and activity, and providing community organising training alongside the practical engagement work.
A key part of this was recruiting and employing a trainee community organiser from the local area. This ensured the investment did not simply bring in external capacity, but also developed skills and leadership within the community itself.
Luke Burrows, a Forest Green resident, was recruited into this role and trained and mentored while working within his own community. Luke went on to complete his Level 3 Award in Community Organising at The Living Room, in the same cohort as Deb Baker. They later trained together to become Community Roots trainers.
Luke became a director of Community Roots in 2019. Although he left the organisation in 2022 to pursue his own projects, he remained a director until more recently.
His journey from locally recruited trainee organiser to qualified organiser, trainer and director reflected an important part of the project: commissioned work could create immediate community activity while also investing in people who could carry skills, experience and leadership forward.
Stratford Park Skate Park
Our work with Stroud District Council also extended to Stratford Park Skate Park, where Community Roots was commissioned to engage with people using the skate park and support the development of a user-led group.The starting point was relationship building. Community organisers spent time listening to skate park users, understanding their experiences and identifying people who were already showing leadership or had ideas about how the space could develop.
Our role was to bring those people together, support them to explore their ideas and help build relationships with other stakeholders connected to Stratford Park. The longer-term aim was for skate park users themselves to have a stronger collective voice and play an active role in shaping the future of the space.
As with the Forest Green work, training was built into the project, creating opportunities for local residents and workers to develop community organising skills alongside the practical engagement.
The Arkell Centre and the Freezer of Love
In 2020, during the Covid pandemic, Stroud District Council asked Community Roots to support the Forest Green community through the Arkell Centre. Working with the Community Team at Forest Green Rovers and Nailsworth Youth Club, we connected with the Long Table and were able establish a Freezer of Love at the centre - the Freezers of Love were an initiative developed by The Long Table, providing nutritious frozen meals to community hubs and groups to distribute locally on a pay-as-you-can basis. Alongside the freezer, we helped establish a community pantry, creating another way for people locally to access affordable food and practical support.
This work also connected us with other groups and organisations responding to similar needs across Stroud District. Through those relationships, we gained a much broader understanding of the community-led activity taking place across the district and strengthened links between people doing complementary work. Funding also enabled us to provide community organising training for local residents and workers, so that the work was not only responding to an immediate need, but also building skills and capacity within the community.
A consistent approach
Although the individual projects were different, the approach remained consistent throughout our work in Stroud District.
We started by listening, built relationships with people who cared about their communities, supported local leadership and created opportunities for people to develop the skills and confidence to take action.
From employing and training a local community organiser, to supporting skate park users to build a collective voice, and working with partners to develop community food support during the pandemic, the work showed how community organising can sit alongside commissioned services while keeping local people, their ideas and their leadership at the centre.
Friends of Forest Green – National Lottery Awards for All
As the work in Forest Green developed, the community conversations began to identify some recurring concerns, particularly around anti-social behaviour. At the same time, they also identified residents who wanted to do more than simply raise concerns: they wanted to understand what was happening, explore the causes and look at what they themselves could do to improve the area.
This led to the development of Friends of Forest Green, an emerging group of local residents supported by Community Roots. We secured National Lottery, Awards for All, funding to continue this work and support the group to develop. The funding enabled Community Roots to continue using community organising approaches in Forest Green, helping residents build the confidence, skills and relationships needed to take action on issues affecting their neighbourhood.
The starting point was anti-social behaviour, but the work deliberately went beyond trying to impose a ready-made solution. Residents were supported to explore what people actually meant by anti-social behaviour, recognising that different people could experience and interpret behaviour in very different ways. The group could then begin to understand where there was common ground, what might be contributing to the problems being experienced and what responses could realistically be developed within the community.
Our role was to support rather than take over. We helped bring together residents with shared concerns, interests and ideas; supported them to develop their own leadership and practical organising skills; and helped them make connections with organisations and individuals who could bring relevant knowledge or experience. This gave residents opportunities to research issues, develop ideas, build partnerships and begin shaping their own responses.
The work was also about strengthening the community more broadly. Through working together, residents were able to recognise and share their own skills, develop confidence and build stronger relationships with one another. Reflective practice formed part of this process, helping people consider both their own development and the progress of the work they were undertaking within their community.
Extending the listening to children and young people
A further National Lottery-funded project developed from these concerns, focusing specifically on children and young people. Community organising was used to create opportunities for younger residents to talk about their own experiences and perceptions of bullying and anti-social behaviour, rather than relying solely on adult interpretations of what was happening. The purpose was not simply to identify problems, but to capture young people's ideas about what might make a difference. Their experiences, concerns and proposed solutions could then contribute to the wider community understanding of the issues and inform future activity.
This was an important continuation of the Forest Green approach: beginning with listening, recognising that different sections of a community may experience the same place very differently, and supporting people closest to an issue to have a meaningful role in shaping the response.
Taken together, the Friends of Forest Green work demonstrated the progression we were seeking through our community organising approach: conversations leading to relationships; relationships leading to local leadership; and local leadership creating the potential for community-led action.