About the project

To help this community centre become a more central part of the community in Bellamy, we helped to free up their downstairs room and converted this into wider, more accessible space for the community in a more private space – to be used for coffee mornings, physical and mental wellbeing, benefits advice, as well as a confidential space for community meetings and complimentary therapies. All of these services were previously up a steep staircase, very inaccessible for some members of the public, particularly the elderly and those with disabilities.

We also helped to decommission part of the original building, previously a children’s toilet in this former children’s home, and convert this into storage space

In the year following the VIY project, we caught up with the team at Trowell Community Centre:

• Really enhanced what the building can deliver for the local community, broader discussions with health partners, to help build relationships and build trust for people who need it most
• Huge impact/improvement in social inclusion, loneliness, seeking advice
• Their food club has benefited hugely – the dedicated storage room storage has now become a small social supermarket
• Complimenting their work trying to take health & wellbeing services for the community to tackle huge health inequalities on Bellamy – which has no doctor’s surgery or pharmacy
• 6-8 key delivery partners use the space inc. food club, bingo, coffee morning, community events, social-prescribing, community college
• Kirsty, Health & Wellbeing Officer for Bellamy reported lots of health & wellbeing conversations are taking place where they were not before, as more people are accessing the venue through coffee mornings, the food club etc – this has led them to set up of a weight management group for local people
• Just walking to the centre for the wider services on offer has got people who were previously inactive to come outside and be active in some way – geographically isolated community
• They’re also talking about a couch to 5k and walking group, chair-based exercise, self-defence – a group who meets in the Trowell private room are also setting up a charity bike ride for Prostate Cancer 
• Others work in progress – working with NHS partners on outreach, smoking clinics, flu vaccines, health & wellbeing pop-ups all using the private space
• Beginning delivery of a diabetes support group/pilot programme for this diabetes-intensive area – all came from candid conversations with those in the community where diabetes diagnosis hadn’t happened or were under-supported
• They’re now developing a volunteering impact report as part of this updated delivery from this centre following VIY’s improvements, looking at how they’re contributing to the NHS prevention agenda, community cohesion, reasons for volunteering etc