Round Hill Community Project

Brighton Business School – Round Hill Society

The Round Hill Community project aimed to foster and strengthen community spirit between all residents in the Round Hill area.

The Round Hill area is bounded by Upper Lewes Road, the railway track and Ditchling Road with an estimated 1000 households in the neighbourhood. The project partners will use local community events and work with University of Brighton student volunteers to find ways of better understanding, sharing and acting upon each others’ needs, worries and concerns about living in the area. They believe this will enhance our community members’ enjoyment of living in the area, by taking account of each others’ needs and providing help and support to neighbours. They are particularly keen to gain the views of young people who live in the area.

The partnership was intended to deepen community cohesion in the Round Hill area and increase understanding of different groups’ needs and issues through gathering information about their views and needs related to living in Round Hill and then sharing this information and resulting plans for action. Starting with a community street party in June 2011 and culminating with a local research project led by Brighton University students, the project aimed to establish:

•How safe, happy and well the people in our area feel

•The interest and preparedness of neighbours to volunteer their help to each other

•What role and actions the RHS Committee need to take forward on behalf of the community

Developing good relationships between students and residents within the RHS area was key to this project and was hoped to be achieved by engaging local students in a needs analysis project which identified the needs of our more vulnerable neighbours that could be met through developing a local volunteering programme.

It was hoped that increased engagement in community activities from different groups who live in the area, would result in a stronger sense of local community and a better understanding of each others’ views of and priorities for Round Hill

The project partners aimed to gather the community information they need to inform a bid to establish a sustainable local volunteering scheme to reduce social isolation of vulnerable people within the neighbourhood and improve social cohesion through building a sense of common purpose.

How the Project Progressed

Recruiting students was very challenging and therefore only 2 students actively worked with us on the project. However Jim Mcloughlin continued his sterling work and generous support of the students, so we were able to continue with a revised form of the plan.

The project has provided the time and expertise involved in developing a statistically robust survey, Professional design/production of the survey (online and paper versions), promotion and inducement to complete the survey – leading to nearly 100 responses, analysis and presentation of results to inform future community work. This work is now leading to local action and results can be used in influence council decisions and plans. For example, we are currently planning a community clean up event in response to the highest concern identified by residents

The project changed focus from identifying vulnerable residents and the support they needed/wanted to a wider analysis of views of all our community members about living in the area Originally we had hoped to conduct in depth face to face interviews with a proportion of responders – but this was not possible with only 2 students involved In response to expert advice we broadened the focus and designed the survey to only require written/online responses rather than any interviews The time line slipped (slowness in recruiting; college semester dates/holidays; student exam preparation pressure etc) so we reduced the written report to a summary of findings published in our community newsletter rather than a presentation/separately published report The street party activities used to promote community themed engagement and promotion of survey was hampered by down pouring rain!

How did the partnership work?

A Working group made up of the University of Brighton academic lead, students and representatives of the Round Hill Society designed a survey with the oversight, advice/feedback of the Round Hill Society Committee. The survey was then distributed to all households in Round Hill. There is now further involvement of University of Brighton students and staff in our first Community clean up.

Outputs and outcomes of the project

The project produced a survey, the responses were then analysed. Street party community activities such as making houses and graffiti boards also took place.

This project has directly led to the planning of a community clean up weekend with children, adults and the council working together to tackle areas needing improvement (identified by residents).
In addition One (new) University of Brighton student will be leading work with young local film makers who will be creating a short video (3-5 minutes) about Round Hill, using some info from the clean up and we are also with help developing the reporting (and photography) skills of local young people to regularly contribute to our community newsletter. We are also setting up a Round Hill twitter account. We are using remainder of CUPP funding to support the video and reporter work, as well as to provide resources to run the community clean up day.

We believe that community relationships, understanding and communication have strengthened through this project and this will support on-going neighbourhood work. We also know that local views will have greater credibility with the council because of the professionalism of the survey. The RHS is considering the value of joining one of the council’s Local Action Team to further influence council decisions, priorities and actions More residents have volunteered to help in the locality, we hope this will continue to grow and that younger people and children will be more actively engaged.

Project Partners Annie Rimington, [Roundhill Society] (http://www.roundhill.org.uk)

Jim McLoughlin, University of Brighton