We are working in Coney Hill, Matson, Robinswood and White City communities listening to younger people in schools, youth clubs, parks, wherever they hang out to understand what they want to do to make their communities an even better place to live and to encourage and support them to take action. We believe that younger people know best what is needed in their area and have ideas, skills, and talents to help make this happen.

Active Gloucestershire commissioned an evaluation of their partnership with us which ran from August 2020 to August 2021, looking at how we might take “a strengths-based, place-based approach in communities to increase physical activity.

We reflected on the Ripple Effect Mapping evaluation a year on, identifying what the organisation learnt and how we have implemented these findings into our strategic plan moving forward to working in communities and encouraging more community-led action.

A short video about Gloucester Community Building Collective

For our AGM, our team looked back over the last year, celebrating the power of community spirit and people coming together in challenging times.

Our Annual Report is a celebration of our work, the people we work with and our partnerships. Together we want to make Gloucester a great place to live, where everyone can have a good life

Like many organisations, we had to adapt during lockdown and work very differently. We learned a lot during that time about the power of community. We were due to refresh our strategy in September 2021 with the team and our Board, so decided to ask people in the community, a number of questions to help us think about our strategic priorities.

Gloucester Community Building Collective has developed this Theory of Change to describe how its activities lead to the outcomes and impacts it aims to achieve.

We have been really lucky to work with Active Gloucestershire as part of “We Can Move”; testing out the ways in which community building can support an increase in physical activity. Active Gloucestershire provided funding for Community Builders in two Gloucester city wards (Barton and Tredworth, and Kingsholm) and commissioned the University of Bristol to co-evaluate this project over the course of 12 months (from July 2020 to July 2021).

We have been privileged to be part of that effort through our links to communities and the energy of local residents. It is good to be out and about again and meeting with residents face to face. We have lots of ideas and plans about how we can build on what we have learned this year.