A gathering of community asset leaders – for coalition & collective power
- Mycelial Network News
- Sep 30
- 5 min read
“I can't recall a time when I've felt so deeply connected to a group of folks working their socks off to usher in the joyful regenerative futures we so urgently need. The festival felt like stepping into that future for a few hours. And it was delicious.” — Andy Edwards, Makespace Oxford
© All photos by Natalie Sloan, Little Red Hen Films
In early September, 70 community asset leaders came together to share, learn and play at Wolves Lane Centre in London – home of The Ubele Initiative and community growing with Black Rootz and OrganicLea.
This was a peer-led gathering, co-convened by the Mycelial Network and Footwork, bringing together community asset leaders from across England engaged in the deep, knotty work of neighbourhood transformation. Many are part of national programmes and learning journeys such as:
Local Property Partnerships, Platform Places
People and Place, Footwork
‘Retrofit Reimagined’ Street Demonstrators and Street Incubators, Civic Square and National Retrofit Hub
Community-led High Street Innovators, Power to Change
Civic Power Fund's place-based grantees
Ubele Initiative’s Agbero 2100 community leaders
With delicious food from local internationally renowned chef and author Rosamund Grant, and DJ Inky on the decks, we trickled in from up and down the country, welcomed warmly into the beautiful acres of woodlands, glasshouses and community growing spaces, and eco-designed halls for an afternoon of togetherness.
Threads of connection. Webs of support.
“There was a sense [Black communities] were losing those assets… and a need for a next generation of leaders to take on and steward such places”. — Yvonne Field, OBE
The Ubele Initiative’s founder Yvonne Field OBE spoke (in conversation with People Dem Collective’s co-founder and Mycelial Network co-facilitator Victoria Barrow Williams) about the origins of Ubele: a series of community dialogues mainly in South London in the early 2010s. A critical theme that emerged through those conversations was the loss of community spaces that Black communities had historically held around the country.
We sat, inspired, in the spacious, all-natural, purpose-built event spaces. We heard how Ubele and OrganicLea convened a coalition, after OrganicLea had successfully tendered for the 3.5 acre site. Both organisations then collaborated to secure a 25-year lease from Haringey Council. We heard how they raised £3 million to transform the site, with the development of three new eco-buildings involving dozens of volunteers and community members in the build process.
Yvonne reminded us that the work of community asset development takes serious time and tenacity – and is absolutely worth it.
She shared: “It feels like poetic justice [that in an area connected to enslaved ancestors] we’re here growing food on the land, producing amazing things, reclaiming space and assets.”
“I remember speaking to Yvonne in the early days of People Dem Collective about our vision of a national cultural centre in Margate – and from that moment, Yvonne and the Ubele Initiative has been such a big part of our journey, so to have the opportunity to be in this space is super special.” — Victoria Barrow Williams, People Dem Collective
Peer solidarity and restoration
“...Mixing embodied practice with urgent, transformative knowledge...” — Aska Welford, House of Annetta
As the afternoon unfolded, participants chose from different sessions, depending on what they needed the most. There was breathwork, self-massage, mushroom-growing, sampling fresh tomatoes, tours of Wolves Lane Centre with forest bathing, and peer-led sessions (on developing a Mutual to attract long-term affordable finance and on using health equity as a lens for neighbourhood transformation).
Some participants had even squeezed in visits to peer projects – like Clitterhouse Farm and Ubele's Eat Wood Green – before arriving at the gathering. And many in the room are walking hand-in-hand as peer supporters or mentors over the next year.
Meeting the moment
“Because land and assets hold so much power in this country, one of the only ways to really leverage our deep creativity and possibility is by having agency and ownership... and by moving away from ‘ownership’ into stewardship.” — Immy Kaur, CIVIC SQUARE
Why now? Immy Kaur’s closing reflections were a rallying cry to see ourselves as part of something much larger, and to collectivise to push for change in the face of rising fascism:
“We’re seeing more and more communities start to understand deeply what it means to build, make and create regeneratively. There are hundreds of these stories – some starting from the arts, housing, retrofit, healing, a coastal perspective, growing food, play...
But this story is not getting airtime; this story is outsmarted… by a story that has a massive inflow of capital and control over the media, over fear and division, over scapegoating trans people and people trying to escape conflict and war that has been inflicted on them... Our story is going to have to stand up with much more ambition, vision, belief in our creative capacity, and tangibility. And we’re going to have to be loud, unshakeable, visionary and rigorous.”
But how to do this in practice?
First we need to do the basics: openly and quickly sharing templates for insurance, warranties, planning consultants, drawings, patterns, plans - so that no peer is repeating work.
This then creates space for other Rs (alongside Rest and Restoration): Responsibility, Resistance, Reimagination, Rigour. The work is to tell, show and inspire a different story than narratives of division and fear.
Immy referenced Amahra Spence’s latest piece on Substack: “It is about building infrastructure—unions, movements, civic and social infrastructures, cultural projects—that can hold the complexity of race and class together, and orient the pain of change toward justice.”
Nourishing the network: our call to funders
We heard again from peers in the room how the funding landscape is one of the biggest barriers to community asset development (CAD). Underpaid CAD leaders are spending vast amounts of time and energy fundraising, managing funders and stressed about financial precarity, rather than delivering critical work on the ground.
That’s why the Mycelial Network and partners are working to create dedicated pooled funds for:
A core revenue grant so that leaders can be nourished by salaries and breathing space and do this work long-term, rather than face ongoing sacrifice and burnout;
A capital grant to acquire, retrofit and transform the assets themselves.
If you would like to explore partnering on this critical work, please message hello@mycelialnetwork.co.uk
As Immy said: “For every single community asset developer in this room, plus the ten others you could think about; there’s enough money to mobilise £5-10 million for all of them in the next 12 months. There’s enough money in the coffers of the great wealth transfer, and in the endowments sitting in big foundations.”
Acknowledgements
A huge thanks to:
Ubele Initiative, especially Yvonne Field OBE, Christxpher Oliver, Megan Schiller and everyone else in their team who made it possible.
All the convenors and partners of the community asset leaders in attendance (CIVIC SQUARE, National Retrofit Hub, Civic Power Fund, Power to Change)
The facilitators:
Victoria Barrow Williams and Kelly Abbott from People Dem Collective
Sarah Ebanja, The Ubele Initiative
Melissa Mean, We Can Make
Tim Oshodi, Community-led regeneration consultant
Pam Shor, Black Rootz
Dr Jess Steele OBE, Hastings Commons
Max Onslow, Wolves Lane Centre
André Bright, Embodied restorative practice
Ellie and the team at Footwork Trust
“An inspiring gathering of community activists commoning for a just, sustainable and equitable future...” – Kathryn Chiswell Jones (Artspace Lifespace)
