The aim is to build community wealth — through inclusive access to heritage and green space, social infrastructure, and opportunities for local stewardship — and to strengthen community capital, including social ties, local knowledge, and collective agency. Insights from this pilot phase will directly inform the design and delivery of the full project, ensuring it remains rooted in local priorities and genuinely participatory in nature, as well as financially viable in the long term.
Community Engagement
Many of Riverside’s community facilities closed down during lockdown and have yet to be built back. There are currently no viable venues for community activities in the Riverside area. For example, the Engineer’s House used to be a space for various community groups who currently have nowhere to go or have ceased to exist. In addition, traditional opportunities for creating social cohesion - for example through work at Pye or Marshall, no longer exist in the area.
One of the key challenges facing Cambridge — and particularly the Abbey ward — is community isolation and disengagement. This is largely driven by the physical and social fragmentation of the neighbourhood, exacerbated by outdated road infrastructure such as the Newmarket Road and new developments lacking integrated spaces or mechanisms to foster community cohesion, heritage revitalisation and nature and biodiversity. New hotels, residential complexes, as well as the proposed Beehive Centre redevelopment developments provide only minimal support for existing neighbourhoods. As a result, already marginalised or "hard-to-reach" communities risk becoming further disconnected.
Even before the church is restored, we intend to further understand what our community needs through in-depth surveys and neighbourhood outreach activities, as well as close liaison with the local councillors. This will be followed up by the co-creation of our space and community outreach programme, as well as our heritage experience.
Volunteering
Volunteering opportunities will be central to our project, both in the work to fulfill the project brief and
the cafe and the heritage experience. In collaboration with experts we will invite locals to participate in and learn about heritage skills such as stonemasonry, lime mortar work and stained glass conservation
as part of the activities plan of our delivery phase.
The St Andrew the Less Community Project intends to become part of Cambridge County and City Councils’ Digital Badge skills and achievements schemes run by the Region of Learning. This provides
local people with a recognised, verifiable way to showcase their skills to local employers and open new career pathways. A particular benefit to people without qualifications or employment experience.
Social Programme
The programme to explore through a viability study could include:
- A much-needed community space + cafe
- Social Gatherings and regular events with a clear purpose to bring people together and tackle isolation in the area (an issue our councillors have been highlighting), eg card game nights, dog cafes, quiz nights
- Councillor surgeries can take place at the renovated church enabling greater community empowerment and active citizenship, as well as community police and fire officer drop-ins making for a safer community
- Earth&Mind’s Wild Well-Being cafes will offer accessible, nature-connected activities in a relaxed and welcoming environment
- ‘Talking benches’ placed in suitable places in the grounds to improve wellbeing and reduce isolation
- Regular ‘Forget-me-not’ cafes will provide refreshments, peer support and entertaining activities
for people living with memory loss - Inter-generational integration opportunities for example, younger people teaching older people how to use technology
- Placements and residencies for local groups and artists
- In line with the heritage theme of the space, workshops in traditional crafts could be provided, such as bookbinding, natural dyeing, candle making, pilgrim badge casting, etc.
History and Reading Programmes
Finally, we hope to create an experience that also fosters a love of reading in young people and an
appreciation of the study of history.
Young people that develop a love of reading experience many benefits when they reach adolescence, including increased cognitive ability and better mental health. St Andrew the Less will also become a site for a small library. In addition, through our historical offering, young people will have the opportunity to understand how to use primary sources, interpret different voices and contextualise
events from the past. All these practices are important to the development of analytical skills so vital, especially considering the pitfalls of today's social media landscape.
All programme suggestions will be tested by expert consultants in the feasibility and options appraisal stage.