Our objectives
East London Waterworks Park is a charity that has raised £2m towards buying land from the Department for Education to transform the 14-acre Thames Water Depot on Lea Bridge Road on the border of Waltham Forest and Hackney, into a new biodiverse park with natural swimming ponds, forest schools and community spaces.
We will benefit the environment, wildlife and people including our identified priority audience groups:
- Young people;
- Disabled people;
- People with global majority heritage;
- People from lower socio-economic groups;
- LGBTQIA+ people;
- Older people.
We will benefit a wide range of people by creating a thriving community hub, designed by and for local people, with free access to natural swimming ponds comparable in terms of scale to Hampstead Ponds and London Fields Lido, a biodiverse park teeming with wildlife, and learning and community spaces which lead the way toward a sustainable future.
Our activities
East London Waterworks Park is an open-to-all volunteer-led charity intent on changing lives by changing the way we think about our relationship with nature and our relationships with each other. Working together, developing long-term partnerships and employing a sociocratic approach to governance and decision-making, we are co-creating our new park with more than 150 volunteers with a wide range of professional backgrounds across five different working groups:
- Design circle -Architects, ecologists, gardeners, engineers and non-designers collaborating to design the space and engaging the local community through proposal sharing and co-design workshops.
- Inclusivity circle - Listening to people from backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented. The listening project listens to, gathers feedback, analyses and shares what people want and need from our park and project.
- Learning circle - Collaborating on projects with schools, universities and youth groups that contribute to the design of the park and the project.
- Communications circle - Promoting public awareness and support of the project.
- Governance circle - Engaging in the political strategy to buy the land from central government. Ensuring our community has has an organisational structure and culture that blend grassroots camaraderie with the professionalism of a business that will achieve its aims and objectives. Implementing charity administration, accounting, and business modelling.
