On Saturday 19th August the Lok Fu Gardens’ residents saw their street turned into an exciting sports and games zone with pop-up badminton, basketball, hula hooping and swing-ball, plus classic games such as giant Jenga, giant Connect4 and giant Noughts & Crosses. There was also a bouncy castle and face painting.
The Active Street event was held in partnership with Manchester City Council, MCRActive and Strong Roots which saw the whole street closed to traffic so that sports and community stalls could be set up in a safe space.
The event was supported by Greater Manchester Fire Rescue Service, Greater Manchester Police, NHS, Biffa, and Manchester City Council Neighbourhood Services and The National Trust, who ran gardening activities and gave each household plants and flowers.
Russ Nixon, Social Value and Community Investment Manager for Your Housing Group said “It’s great to see a community come together for an event that is outside of National celebrations like the Jubilee or a Coronation. This is exactly what communities should strive to achieve and it was great to see everyone getting involved. There were some great ideas on how to improve the area and the collaboration with residents and partners has started from this event. We are looking forward to working with the groups to develop their ideas and support them to improve their community and the surrounding areas.”
Lok Fu Gardens is home to a wonderfully rich and diverse with families from different faiths and cultures including Black Afro Caribbean, White British, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, and Jamaican.
The event was driven by residents who first approached Strong Roots and YHG’s Customer Connect Panel who agreed to give £1,000 from YHG’s ‘It’s In Your Hands’ community funding initiative.
Customer Services Committee members, Anver Zeria, said, “Strong Roots is a not-for-profit organisation whose aim is to provide community solutions to enhance social understanding and cohesion which is so important in places where there are diverse backgrounds coming together. They also try to reduce the fear of crime and even crime itself, by building stronger relationships between neighbours so they look out for one another more, so I am thrilled to see this event come together.”
Active Streets, which is run by MCRActive also runs other community events such as recycling and street cleaning, hosting 14 different events last year.
