Residents of Alma Street and surrounding streets in Stratford are celebrating the completion of a huge community effort to transform a neglected play area into a brand-new space for play and exercise.

The revamp is part of ‘Greener Together’, a community-led project bringing residents and local authorities together to take climate action and create a greener, healthier, and more connected neighbourhood.

Over 80 households have been involved in improving the area, deciding they wanted to focus on creating cleaner, greener communal spaces where residents could spend more time enjoying the outdoors. Over the last year, residents have helped to plan the new play area and raised over £130K to make it happen.

They have also created a wildflower garden with wildlife friendly flowers and plants; installed a community allotment for growing herbs and vegetables; and taken part in regular community clean-ups. At their first tidy-up session, residents collected 30 bags of rubbish and over 10 bags of green waste, helping to reduce not only local litter but also discourage fly-tipping, which has been a huge issue locally. The residents are also taking part in a series of free workshops to help improve their growing skills so they can continue to maintain the green spaces in the long-term.

Children planting in the new Alma Street space, © Nyla Sammons

The project has also allowed residents to work alongside Newham Council to tackle other social issues within the area including accessibility issues for disabled residents, rough-sleeping, security concerns and anti-social behaviour.

Greener Together is a partnership between local residents, environmental charity Hubbub, the Mayor of London, Ten Years’ Time and Afterparti. It aims to address the fact that lower income and Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in London are most likely to experience the impacts of climate change, including overheating and flooding; as well as poor air quality and lack of access to green spaces, and yet are often underrepresented in mainstream environmental programmes and groups.

A 2020 study by CentricLab highlighted the Borough as having the highest compounded factors of “structural racism”, looking at population density of Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities per 100k population, overlapped with pollution (SRS scores) and deprivation (IMD decile 2019).

Local resident and community coordinator Billie-Jean Holmes said: “ For a long time residents have felt disheartened and pessimistic about the issues our community was facing – from litter and fly-tipping to lack of accessible green space. Through coming together to tackle these problems, many members of our neighbourhood now feel empowered and valued.”

Hubbub and the Mayor of London are urging Londoners to visit www.hubbub.org.uk/london to find 10 key actions they can take to help the planet, from cutting emissions to protecting the city’s wildlife.

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