The Save Sprigs Campaign Group attended SYCT’s Open House at the Hut, alongside a large number of community members.
All were invited to the Hut to ‘help design the services they would like to see in the park’. With the Hut being closed for over a month by SYCT, we were hopeful that this was the start of SYCT consulting the community to understand what they want from this Lambeth Council owned building in the middle of Streatham Vale Park.
On arrival, attendees were given coloured tokens to place in token pots across three stands. One stand for early years, one stand for 5-12 year olds and one stand for over 13s. Understandably, the Save Sprigs campaign were interested in the early years stand, which presented four options: - Stay and play - Parent and child cooking lessons - Parent and child forest school - Privately run nursery. We were pleased to see there was also an option for community members to write down other ideas, on either post it notes or A4 paper.
A popular idea was for services like stay and play and the nursery to co-exist together, as they had done for the last six years before the nursery was closed. As well as being present in the Hut and speaking with residents, community stakeholders, local councillor candidates and the SYCT team themselves, the Save Sprigs Campaign Team also took the opportunity to engage with wider community members passing by in the park. We set up a table in the playground with flyers signposting to our petition, as well as ‘Save Sprig Ludens’ stickers.
It was a great opportunity to talk to passers by about the 1000+ people who have signed our petition asking for the nursery to reopen, as well as emphasise why the community needs to have a say on how the Hut, a publicly owned building funded by the taxpayer, is used moving forward. Finally, a couple of us spoke to SYCT Trustees present at the Open House about next steps.
There was recognition that this was just the start of a series of community consultation meetings. They also confirmed they would count the tokens/capture the feedback from the event and share the results, including with Lambeth Council. While it will take an ongoing, concerted effort for SYCT leadership to build back the community’s trust, the Open House was a step in the right direction. We thank the Board of Trustees for holding this event and attending. If you want to support the Save Sprigs Campaign, please email us at savesprigludens@gmail.com and sign our petition here.
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