‘Community Led’ – What it looks like

This post is by way of being a visual accompaniment to the words-only ‘Community Led’ post of the other day. In that post I talked about my views and experience of how community led change gets done and the demands it makes on all of us involved. Today I want to show you what it actually looks like when done well. Staggeringly well here at Homebaked in Anfield.

As well as being deeply and joyfully engaged with what we’re all doing at the Granby 4 Streets Community Land Trust, I’ve also been invited in by the community around Homebaked to contribute to getting their own Community Land Trust into serious movement. Homebaked have been open a good while now as a social enterprise community bakery, and now their next phase of development is to begin their CLT work on the land around them. Turning a soon to be demolished row of houses next to the bakery into? Well that’s what we’ve all been starting work on these last few weeks.

We’ve been getting ready to appoint the architects Homebaked CLT will be working with by working on how we’ll work with them. How the whole involved community can work out what is wanted and then work through the complications of getting it all done over the next couple of years.

The crowd-funded Kickstarter oven that Jess, now baking here all week every week, memorably appealed for a couple of Christmases ago.

The story of how they’ve arrived is told more fully than I’m going to attempt by Cally Highfield, writing in the background there. Cally has lived all her life round here and is now both working at Homebaked and running the blog on their website. The architects then, are Architectural Emporium.

This is the first time they’ve met the community of us since their appointment. Everybody welcomes them warmly and cheerfully reassures them that they’ve been deliberately ‘thrown in at the deep end!’ They survive fine.

Don’t forget. Everyone here has already done a working day, a school day, a bakery day. We’re not a group of office workers carefully fitting in what we need to do between the hours of nine and five. This is another of the many evenings that real Community Led change always needs. Time joyously given for the common good, but always working late into the evening to do what’s needed.

By the time I get home (thanks for the lift Cal Starr of Homebaked CLT) it’s 10pm and my brain feels like it’s stopped working for the day. But it’s a good tired. I love Homebaked and I love the work we’re all doing. It’s a privilege to be involved.

And remember, much more detail on what we’re all up to here on from Cally Highfield on Homebaked’s own blog.