EPSG got an office at Grange Community Centre, and is now working with a group of consultants to become a community development trust. The consultants have helped us to work out a plan of where we’re going and what we’re doing, and by April 2005 we aim to be up and running and employing our own development worker. We’ve already changed our name to East Preston Development Trust (EPDT) and are working towards becoming a company limited by guarantee before the end of 2004! Eventually we will also have charitable status. The challenge here is making the leap from being a quite informal, but busy, community group to having a very strict and formal legal framework.

We needed to identify a formal project to start our activities as a Development Trust. Over the last five years or so, many groups have asked for help and advice with issues and problems of young people in their communities, and so we feel this is the first project that we should take on. In preparation we will be visiting all groups in East Preston to ask them what they need, and then supply youth work that is wanted by the young people and their groups. We feel this is the only way forward to end the boredom which leads young people into so much unrest on the estates. There will also be meetings to keep all up to date and to ask for further ideas, or criticisms.

We will also need to become as sustainable as possible in the future, running schemes and projects that generate income! It’s very early days, but examples of what we’re discussing include a community launderette, and costume hire shop for community carnivals in Preston. We are also in negotiation with the Council to take over some empty properties to give us a more permanent base from which to run our activities.

To be practical we can only build up EPDT and its projects with the help from people living in the area who care about the issues of today. We would welcome anyone who can assist us whether they are from the estates, business world, church or schools as we would value their experience in those matters that we are unfamiliar with, especially retired persons with accountancy/legal or secretarial experience.

Our Neighbourhood Watch group is an example. The key word is ’neighbourhood’. If you don’t know your neighbours and feel friendly towards them then you couldn’t care less whether a burglar is in their house and not yours.

Everyone on our avenue is a member. We make a collection of £1 per year to cover some of our costs, but all members are residents whether they pay or not. Our activities are transparent: meetings are minuted and put on our website, and all community events are memorialised in project notebooks which anyone can look at. Our street includes two hostels with ex-problem people living there, three residential homes, one for the elderly and two for the mentally disadvantaged, one building of asylum seekers, and several different ethnic groups. Everyone is welcome to participate.

We have three main aims: community safety and crime reduction; community spirit and community activities; and quality of life including environmental concerns. Let’s shorten these to safety, community and environment. Each year we plan to accomplish one thing (we have always done more) in each of these categories. For safety we do what most neighbourhood watch groups do: organise anti-crime devices for houses that want one; liaise with local police and fire prevention services, etc.

For quality of life and environment we organise activities such as flower-planting and a Housing Forum with the Council.

But here, we’re going to concentrate on what we do for community spirit and community activities. Every year we close the street at each end and hold a street party. This requires a huge amount of teamwork. Someone has to arrange for the closure, someone has to organise insurance, someone to arrange for first-aiders and the police to be there, others to decorate the avenue, and others to arrange food & drink for us all. And each year we have to come up with a new theme.

One year we completed a Neighbourhood Frieze. Two pieces of cardboard were delivered to each household. The idea was to depict your neighbours on each side of your house. You could do a sketch, a collage, a painting, a digital image or a poem. The point is: to do this you need to know your neighbours! The results were amazing as practically everyone on our street joined in.

We collected the pieces of cardboard, laminated them, and strung them together on a chain to make the frieze which was exhibited at the party and then at four other venues.

This year the party will begin with a Junk Swap, based on a very successful idea from the continent, where people put out things they don’t want any more and anyone who wants it just takes it. The leftovers go to charity shops.