Queens Park Forum
Queen’s Park Forum aims to improve the quality of life for local people. The Forum is based in Office 1, an important community hub in Queen’s Park that offers a range of affordable healthy activities.
The Forum exists to:
- Provide a voice for the local community
- Influence and improve vital services
- Strengthen partnerships between the local community and service providers
- Identify opportunities to tackle the unmet needs of residents
- Support and celebrate social, community and cultural life
In 2010 the operation of the Queen’s Park Forum was severely curtailed due to a 100% cut in our budget. Up until then we had been working towards agreed goals set out in Neighbourhood Plan. The issues it identifies and the priorities for action were all agreed by local residents through extensive engagement and consultation. About 50% of the actions in the plan were comlpeted before the funding crisis.
Until the crunch Queen’s Park Forum had seven staff doing community development, health and wellbeing, gangs outreach, and employment advice. As well as fundraising and negotiating improved services for local people while promoting increased take up of services locally.
Faced with the prospect of closing up shop we were fortunate to raise sufficient funds via City Bridge Trust to keep the office open on a skeleton staff. Residents were rightly alarmed that the progress they had worked so hard to achieve faced being reversed throught the cuts, and the structures that they had helped to create to deliver these improvements were being dismantled. Showing determination and courage, ever larger circles of residents mobilised to shore up a sustainable alternative that could not be so easily taken away in future. After much consultation and several public meetings the Campaign for a Queen’s Park Community (parish) Council was launched in Jan 2011.
The Queen’s Park Forum undertook to support residents in their effort, and our attention has been largely focused on this since. The Forum’s Management Board, which had been made up of democratically elected residents, the ward councillors, and officers from both the voluntary and statutory sectors, has been temporarily suspended while efforts are concentrated on the Campaign for a Queen’s Park Community Council
Neighbourhood Officer
‘My job is to work closely with local residents and direct them to the wide range of activities and support services available locally. I organise community events including the annual Front Garden Competition, Summer Festival and Fireworks Display plus a number of other activities from bike maintenance sessions to resident training workshops.’
Time Credits taking off across London with uudet kasinot
It’s the start of my second year working in Queen’s Park and I’m very pleased to announce that people are now able to spend their Time Credits across all the Spice, London projects. We are also in progress to take advantage of Time Credits on online casinos. With the new uudet kasinot-project you may soon use Your Time Credits for different online casino vouchers and promotions.
The fabulous London Time Credit Menus arrived just before Easter and the response to them has been fantastic. The menu contains information on all the places you can spend Time Credits in London including the Tower of London as well as the full range of places you can spend them including our wonderful new local partner the Tricycle Theatre. You can download a copy here or pick up a copy from Office 1 at the Beethoven Centre during opening hours (Wed-Fri 9am-5pm, ask at reception for Harriet, Fabian or Ted).
As always the places to earn and spend credits will keep growing and the menu will be updated to reflect this but you will be able to find the lastest information on these pages or by liking Queen’s Park Time Credits on facebook.
A word from our intern.
Fresh-faced and straight out of university, I wanted a job where I felt that I could really ‘make a difference’. This originally led me to teaching. I made a brave attempt, working for four months in an inner-city school in London. However, after an 11 year old hit me with an atlas I decided, perhaps, it wasn’t quite the career for me…
Queen’s Park welcomes its newest arrival!
Proud new Mum Emma Sweeney with baby Amber born last Tuesday the 19th March and weighing in at 6.10 lbs. Amber is the youngest member of a long line of Queen’s Parkers who have lived in the Avenues for generations. Anyone involved in local action will know Emma who has been a rock within the community since joining the Queen’s Park Forum in 2008. Together with local painter and decorator Matthew (highly recommended) they will make fantastic parents. We wish them all the best!
Champions conclude research and draw iPAD prize winner
Emma and Ted present an iPAD mini to lucky prize draw winners Mohammed Abdullah and his daughter Hussna.
The Community Champions have been out and about over the past few months in freezing conditions completing surveys, providing advice and signposting Mozart residents to local health and well-being services. Everyone who completed a survey was entered into a prize draw and the lucky winner was drawn last week. The iPAD mini went to a very deserving winner – Mohammed has been an active volunteer helping out at events and getting involved in community action since moving to the Mozart Estate.
The champions have received training in social research methods and used their local connections, knowledge and networks to complete 150 general health surveys that will inform their work going forwards. They have also been conducting a dental health survey with families whilst providing guidance and advice around keeping teeth strong and healthy. A massive thank you to everyone who took part in both surveys and congratulations to the lucky winners!
BOOM! Time Credits explode at the British Museum.
Exciting news from our latest Time Credit Partner.
The British Museum, have made places available to the preview of their latest exhibition on Pompeii and Herculaneum on Sunday 24th March.
Tickets normally cost £15 but for 2 Time Credits you will be able to see this fascinating and moving exhibition before everyone else.
Starting with the bustling street, and moving through the intimate spaces of a home, you will be transported into the lives of ordinary Romans nearly 2,000 years ago, before devastation struck. From the atrium to the garden, bedroom and dining room, this personal journey will reveal parallels with our own lives today.
With over 20 years since the last major exhibition on Pompeii in the UK, recent discoveries alongside celebrated objects, including body casts, will reveal new insights into this highly captivating and human story.
Time Credits Go London Wide!
Exiting news! You can now use your Time Credits with our wider London projects.
The London Time Credit Menu has arrived and as well as new places to spend your Credits locally like the Tricycle Theatre it also contains details of where to spend across London, like the Tower of London and Barbican Centre. If that wasn’t enough you can also find out about father afield places to spend like the National Botanic Gardens of Wales.
They arrived last week so you can pick up a copy from the Beethoven Centre and an online version will be coming soon!