A Waggle Dance is a dance worker bees do to share information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers for nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations with other members of the colony. This website is our waggle dance for by and with the people and communities of Grimsby’s East Marsh to share information about making changes in power structures, improvements in local demoracy and growing local social action.
National Lottery Community Fund/DCMS
This is where the money for our project comes from and this is what we are doing with it: “The funding will create positive change by enabling people, communities, local non-statutory organisations and the statutory sector to work collaboratively to create a shared vision for the future of their place, and address local priorities through social action.” More on the Lottery’s page but we are one of ten funded partnership projects awarded a grant of approximately £240,000 over a three year period to implement our social action plan. In practical terms, we are aiming towards 2022, when “…the 5 most promising partnerships will be awarded approximately £240,000 to continue delivering their social action plan over the following 3 years, and scale up social action to build better local outcomes during and beyond the duration of this programme.”
We are Proud East Marshians: A Place Based Social Action Plan for the East Marsh
This is our plan – available for download here – and it is not just about changing things on the ground in East Marsh communities but about changing the systems and structures that create barriers to community action. It is as much about effecting change in statutory organisations as it is about community change. The East Marsh of Grimsby grew rapidly in the middle of the Nineteenth Century to provide workers for the equally rapidly-growing fishing industry and declined just as quickly when fishing left and austerity arrived – insight into conditions on today’s East Marsh can be gained from the community group website East Marsh United and from an (untypically balanced) article in the Guardian, The Battle to make Grimsby Great again.
Our plan comprises three interwoven projects: Community Infrastructure, Community Arts Festival and Community Hub, all of which are embedded in the menu structure on this site:
- Community Infrastructure comprises an East Marsh Social Contract, an East Marsh Assembly, a Community Organisers Programme, a Peer Learning Network, an East Marsh Tardis and a Community Commissioning Model – see the Community Democracy page.
- Community Arts Festival is called ‘Get Together And…’ and will bring people together in small arts and craft groups to foster community-based development through crowd-funding, creativity, collaboration, democracy and sustainability. More on the Get Together And page.
- Community Hub is the need for a shared space with links to and rooted in the East Marsh, owned and managed by and for the community itself. The journey to the hub has been labyrinthine and is ongoing, so developments are not being made public until there is a clear contract of agreement.
This website will serve as the repository for our developing project and as a waggle dance of discussion and dialogue – please do join in the dance as well as sign up for updates at the foot of the page.
Waggle Dance Resources
Evaluation report of phase one of the Place Based Social Action programme (from Renaisi).
Place Based Social Action Learning review (from National Lottery Community Fund)
Place Based Social Action 