31.01.2022 Elephant and Castle Town Centre team and Get Living launch Inspiring Elephant Community Fund for local community
- Inspiring Elephant Community Fund launched with £50,000 committed per year over 5-year period
- Applications are open for projects that work with local residents to increase community connections, improve health and wellbeing, and engage young people in training.
- Fund builds on the success of Community Hub which will open in new physical space later this year
The Elephant and Castle Town Centre team and Get Living have today launched the Inspiring Elephant Community Fund. The £50,000 a year fund provides grants to local groups, supporting short term projects, and contributing to longer term initiatives in the community.
Over the next five years the Elephant and Castle Town Centre team will distribute £250,000 of funding to the local community. Each year, £50,000 of funding will be made available for organisations in Elephant and Castle to support the thriving and vibrant community in which they work. Local organisations will be able to apply for multi-year grants of up to £5,000 and a panel of local community leaders which includes members of the Community Hub and representatives from Get Living and Southwark Council will consider all applications.
This Inspiring Elephant Community Fund will support projects that work with local residents to increase community connections, improve health and wellbeing, and engage young people in training.
Ailish Christian-West, Executive Director of Development and ESG at Get Living, who own and will manage the new town centre, said: “We’re very excited to support the local community through this new fund. There are so many dedicated groups that are working to bring local people together which we hope can benefit from these grants and I can’t wait to see the projects we can support.”
The fund builds on the success of the Community Hub, which since opening in 2019, has become a much-loved place for local people to come together for classes and support. The hub has kept running throughout the pandemic, adapting to an online model to keep up morale during lockdown, and switching to a mix of online and in-person activities as London opened up again.
The Elephant and Castle Town Centre team is working to bring the much-loved Community Hub back to a physical space and later this year, a new hub will open creating a new place for everything from arts and crafts to yoga and dance.
Diana Barranco, Community Director at Elephant and Castle Town Centre said: “We have been pleased by the growing success of the Community Hub since its launch in 2019 and enjoy watching the community come together over the activities it offers. Almost 15,000 people visited the online hub during the Covid-19 pandemic, and we’ve only been able to keep up with demand by running a hybrid model for the past year, which hosts groups in local venues across the area.
“With the new hub opening later this year, and the launch of the Inspiring Elephant Community Fund, we hope that local people will have plenty of opportunities to make friends, support each other, and come together in Elephant and Castle.”
The Elephant and Castle Town Centre team has long been committed to creating new opportunities for the community, with £300,000 of donations already distributed to local groups, such as Shakespeare’s Globe, Evelina London Children’s hospital through the National Portrait Gallery’s Hospitals Programme and the Prince’s Trust.
Progress on the Elephant and Castle Town Centre development continues to move forward, with construction starting on the next phase of the new town centre. Construction partner Multiplex are now on site and will be managing the project as the new town centre starts to emerge.
The redevelopment of Elephant and Castle will provide a diverse new town centre incorporating housing, restaurants, shops, a university, workspace, leisure and cultural facilities, transport infrastructure and acres of new public realm. The project also brings new jobs to the area, creating 1,230 construction jobs per year for a decade and then approximately 2,000 full-time jobs in the new town centre.
If your organisation is interested in applying for a grant from the new Inspiring Elephant Community Fund, visit our website at elephantandcastletowncentre.co.uk or email Community Director Diana Barranco at info@elephantandcastletowncentre.co.uk
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