Goschen Garden Party

Goschen Garden & Skate Party is a community health and wellbeing initiative from Amie and Melissa. With her unincorporated association grassroots roller skating group called JamSpeedRollers, Amie had already delivered over 48 community skate events and workshops across Southwark and Lambeth since Jan 23. Teaming up with Melissa, they approached The Giving Lab to deliver a Southwark-based parent and family wellbeing event on the Goschen Estate.

Why did you think your project was important to address health and wellbeing in your community?
The goal of the project was two-fold: To deliver a parent project in tackling obesity in our communities by promoting health and wellbeing, and to deliver an inclusive Estate Garden party event for the Goschen Estate residents. Our estate is squeezed in between two bigger estates, and our area suffers from a variety of social issues, all that impact the health and wellbeing of our community members. Being able to organise a day where people can come together and build relationships, get their health check-ups done, and move in a joyful way through skating and hula hooping, we're able to tackle obesity and other health issues in our community in an inclusive way. We invited local NHS teams to conduct vital health checks and awareness, and physical activities was provided in the form of hula hooping for adults and children.

What's something that's surprised you in this process?
The event was clearly well-received: We planned for the family fun day skate party to receive 50 attendees and received 70! Attendees included Mayor of Southwark and BBC radio 1 extra presenter Remi Burgz. Overall both health and wellbeing events were delivered successfully and our objectives were met.

In summary, I personally enjoyed organising and delivering this event and was grateful the weather held out. I also got to meet and work with my neighbours for a worthwhile cause, I found that mothers and children are now closer and more likely to support one another more than before. Neighbours on warm summer days and evenings are pitching up on the communal grass area with their chairs, snacks and drinks and talking and listening to each other and music and watching their children play together. Mobile phones and screens are being put aside and meaningful conversations are being had in person.

What change would you like to see so that more people can be empowered to make decisions on the issues that affect them?
Trust the community! Although our event was aimed at just our estate residents, which consists of less than 200 residents, we received, entertained mingled and fed over 75 people from other places too, including volunteers and vendors. The combination with the NHS coming to the estate worked really well too: The NHS attendees specialised in 5 vitals, diabetes, immunisation, cardiovascular, cancer, and mental health, which made vital health check-ups available to the community in a whole new way. If we were to do this again, we will open it to other, neighbouring estates.

There's clearly a need for initiatives like this, and we'd love to expand on the activities, offering an even wider variation. We would also love to invite advisers from the council that specialise in housing and environmental matters to facilitate discussions on recycling and social housing. Being able to provide financial and legal advice by inviting representatives from these areas would be another option for the future, to empower residents and those who want help with their financial health too.

Check out some of the footage of the Goschen Garden Estate Party here.