HomeBrent (Phase 1 - Completed)
The following Well London activities took place in the Kensal Green area.
Themed Projects
Be Creative, Be Well
- Harlesden Youth Theatre and Sarah Ullmann: “Our country’s Good” performance with students from local schools.
- Sarah Ullman further developed Harlesden Youth Theatre with a series of workshops.
- Harlesden Poetry Hub.
This is a safe space, I enjoy coming here, to our sanctuary.
Project participant
Eatwell
Community Feasts were delivered in August and December 2008 and August 2009.
DIY Happiness
Eight DIY Happiness sessions took place for local women.
Mental Wellbeing impact assessment (MWIA)
An MWIA took place on the Pocket Park/Tubbs Road project.
Changing Minds
Mental health awareness sessions took place on a variety of subjects including:
- Mental Health Awareness.
- Stress management.
- Confidence Building for young people.
- Drugs and alcohol awareness.
Healthy Spaces
- Tubbs Road Pocket Park
The park is brilliant... I like all the imagination and artwork used - it was a very dull area before and it’s brilliant to have such inventiveness used in improving it. It has been really good for the Residents Association also: it's so nice to have something positive happening in the area.
Local councillor, James Powney
In September 2010, The Junction Road Residents’ Association won the Well London category of the London Health Commission 2010 Awards Scheme for bringing together local people to create Tubbs Road Pocket Park. The group worked with many agencies to build local partnerships and successfully raised funds for a programme of open space improvements and fun activities, supported by the Well London Programme.
Activate London
- Street dance sessions at Northwest10 Club
- Yoga sessions for older people
- Community Gym at Cardinal Hinsley School
- Street dance sessions at Open Doors
- Gentle exercise for older people Open Doors
- Boxercise sessions at Cardinal Hinsley School
- Capaiera sessions at Brent Festival
Heart of the Community Projects
Training communities
This project provided training for the following Well London groups:
- WLDT members
- Well London Activators
- MWIA facilitators
- Young Ambassador
Training Communities also offered Personal support packages (PSPs). Examples of training people chose included the following:
- Writing and documentary film making.
- Photography.
- Family mediator training.
- Spanish for beginners.
- Principles for personal fashion stylist.
- Exercise for nutrition.
Youth.com
- A talent show.
- Promotion of STI testing.
- DJing at a summer fun day.
Related links
Participant Data
Total participants; 413
325 people reported an increase in healthier eating.
310 people reported increased access to affordable healthy food.
320 people reported an increase in levels of physical activity.
342 people reported that they felt more or much more positive.
Junction Residents’ Association: Tubbs Road pocket park
Backing onto the tracks at Willesden Junction station in Brent is a small, brand new and immaculately groomed park. It occupies a gap in the terraced housing of Tubbs Road that for years was not much more than a patch of scrub.
In the basement of a nearby café, the Junction Residents’ Association is discussing the purchase of a new bench. Using £30,000 of funding from Well London, matched by Brent Council, the group – helped by environmental charity Groundwork, one of Well London’s delivery partners – began work on the pocket park in September last year.
The local community now has a spruce new public space, and it is already well-used. But for the residents involved, the development process itself has delivered less tangible benefits, too. Image 4
‘The park has been a real focus for the community,’ says Beatrice Barleon, founder of the Junction Residents’ Association. ‘It will be even more so in the summer. Our group is so diverse, there are people from all communities – Croatian, Ghanaian, I’m German – we are hugely mixed and the park has really pulled people together. People say hello to each other in the street now, and that is a huge thing.’
Fellow association member Liz Murray agrees. ‘The park has improved people’s wellbeing,’ she says. ‘Not only that, but when we were door-knocking about having the park done up, people were a bit negative to start with –they thought nothing would be done. But now people have seen the result, they have more belief that things can be done.’
Ms Barleon is, she explains, a great believer in localism, but not the big society. Groundwork’s support and expertise were crucial: ‘It’s a false economy that people who are working, who have families, who are busy with life will be able to do these things by themselves [without professional support].’
In Willesden, however, that support has been forthcoming – and it has strengthened the local community as much as it has prettified the area. ‘Well London has brought the community together to make rewarding things happen, and it has worked really well,’ she adds. ‘In this area a number of different communities and community groups have started to come together and that’s a very important development.’March 2011
