The First Highfield Neighbourhood Assembly: What We Found
On Monday 5 May, We hosted our first Neighbourhood Assembly in Highfield, at Highfield Trinity Church. here’s A Summary of our Findings…
Pits & Peaches
In this session we were asking ourselves: what’s going well in Highfield, and what could be going better? What are we doing right as a community, and what do we tend to overlook?
We found that the ‘peaches’ of living in Highfield fell into two broad categories, that it is a very well connected neighbourhood, and that there is a strong sense of community here.
In terms of being well connected, we talked about Highfield as a ’15 minute city’ - most of what we need, from playgrounds, local schools, supermarkets, Mount Pleasant Park, the city centre, and restaurants of a variety of different cuisines (which reflects another peach, Highfield’s cultural diversity), are easily accessible to us.
Pits and Peaches
“We felt Highfield could be helped by introducing a repair cafe, a tool garden, more space for skills sharing, more trees, litter picking groups, and play areas.”
We are also able to walk to most of these, making it easy to live here without driving - and there are also good cycle links and bus links around us. In terms of having a strong community, we talked about how we like that people talk to each other here, neighbours help each other by picking up their kids from school, and that people helped each other during COVID-19 through mutual aid.
Some of us thought this feeling of community is helped by the dense housing in Highfield, and said that the community is a happy place with a welcoming feeling. We also appreciated that people are embracing and knowledgeable about different religious festivals and cultures here, and thought that Highfield is a good place to start a family.
On the other hand, the ‘pits’ of living in Highfield we talked about were the high levels of air pollution, especially around London Road, and noise pollution, including the sound of fireworks at night. All three groups were annoyed at the amount of litter, including flytipping, around Highfield, although some noted that there are also some groups doing litter picking.
The generally high level of traffic was mentioned, including people speeding, making the area unsafe for children to play in - and many of these issues are increased by the effect that football matches have on the community. Another pit raised across multiple groups was the proposed McDonald’s site.
REsource Mapping
In the second session, we mapped out the resources in our communities, asking the questions: Where do people go to feel safe, welcomed, and connected? Where are opportunities for learning and sharing skills?
Much of our discussions were centred around the support and advice available in our community, from venues such as Highfield Library, Sharrow Community Forum, Shipshape Family Hub, Duchess Road Community Centre, Roshini Asian Women’s Centre, and Madina Masjid. Also noted were St. Mary’s Church’s English language classes, as well as U-Mix’s refugee services and youth clubs.
We also talked about the recreational spaces we use, including Mount Pleasant Park, Heely City Farm, and Meersbrook Allotments. On top of these, we were generally happy with sources of food including Sharrow Food Works, Roshini Kitchen, and St. Mary’s and St. Wilfred’s churches.
Mapping Highfield’s resources
“We found that the ‘peaches’ of living in Highfield fell into two broad categories, that it is a very well connected neighbourhood, and that there is a strong sense of community here.”
However, discussion also emphasised the need to increase these community resources. We felt Highfield could be helped by introducing a repair cafe, a tool garden, more space for skills sharing, and more trees, litter picking groups, and play areas. And to help all of these new ideas, as well as the resources we’re already happy to have in our community, was the need for clearer communication and advertisement of everything going on in our neighbourhoods.
To illustrate the findings of this exercise, we have visualised the areas we thought were significant in our community on this online map.
