May 20, 25 & Beyond

Ladies, gentlemen, good people of Southgate, you are cordially invited to join us (on the dates set out above) to begin the debate, team building and democratic action now necessary for genuine, commonsense solutions to bear fruit in this lovely lovely town.

You can find out more about the concept of a Community Anchor by visiting Community Alliance

Community Anchors:

• encourage people from different cultural and economic classes to get to know one another, united in concern for the locality they inhabit
• ensure great participation in decision-making about local affairs
• practise community-led solutions to social problems
• bridge the interests and aspirations of local people and governing bodies
• liberate the power and resources of local people
• develop resilient community spirit
• support individuals to fulfil their dreams

Yes, we want to build cohesion, something that brings people together to restore the community fabric. But also a new, creative movement: can we beat the beastly bureacratic machine in a skilful, artful and inspiring way - something genuinely-of-the-people to put Southgate Town & Green, Enfield N14 (and all its beautiful Hertfordshire surrounds) right up there where it belongs - on the World City map?

Click here for Next Meeting

Community Anchor Meetings

Southgate Community Anchor
Click here for: Next Meeting

This project is a new initiative aimed at bringing the various groups making up the Southgate community together on a regular basis, to seek community-led, democratic and ecologically sustainable solutions. You can find details of the proposed agenda for both meetings below this post.

Tuesday 20th May
Community Anchor Forum Planning Meeting and Consultation
Morning session 10am-12noon and evening 7.30pm-9.30pm
Meetings at St Andrews Church Hall, Chase Side next to ASDA

Main Launch Meeting | Sunday 25th May 1-4pm
Community Anchor Forum Presentation and Group Discussion
With shared lunch, music & other refreshments
Alan Pullinger Centre, High Street (next to the Fire Station)


Community Anchors:

• encourage people from different cultural and economic classes to get to know one another, united in concern for the locality they inhabit
• ensure great participation in decision-making about local affairs
• practise community-led solutions to social problems
• bridge the interests and aspirations of local people and governing bodies
• liberate the power and resources of local people
• develop resilient community spirit
• support individuals to fulfil their dreams
  

A People’s Plan | Grassroots Consultation

We hope you’ll also be interested to take part in our Southgate Locality Survey. It’s been developed in consultation with Southgate residents and will contribute directly to the agenda for the Anchor project. Ideas raised in it will be fed into the initial meetings and overall project. If you’re interested to receive a copy, please contact me at the address below.

For more info contact Mark at:
65 Burleigh Gardens | 0785 439 0408 | greenpeaproject@gmail.com

Proposed Agenda Items - tbc

Introducing Community Anchor / C421 Project
Maybe Show Film
Introducing Concept of People's Plan | People In Common
Participatory Budget | Economic Democracy
Proposed Community Account
The Paradox of Ward Boundaries
Who Owns Southgate Project

Red Tape Issues
Parking
Ashfield Parade Licences
New Licences - Chase Side - Costa/Starbucks etc
Amusement Arcade

Major Projects
Lunch Stop Two
Newsletter
Youth Citizenship Engagement - September Pullinger Project
Police Station
Future of Leisure Centre
Street Market - Local Farm Produce - Introducing Chris Savva
Future of Ashfield Parade
Local & Mental Health Service - progress report

Other
Asylum/Migrant Issues


Agreed Actions
First Campaign ?
Local Honours Ceremony
Next Meeting - date /venue ?
Summer Sunday Picnics :-)

This wish list is ever-evolving, thanks to popular input and the results of our survey. To suggest other agenda items, pls email greenpeaproject@gmail.com

Thanks, M

Local Health Service

In an attempt to tackle the connected mental, emotional and community health problems prevalent in modern society Green Pea aims to pilot an arts based, free-to-use and local community-driven health clinic.

Essentially, we believe the best health solution will be found in small, independent and innovative health clinics, permanently situated and offering local patients community resident driven mental health services.

Patient feed will be from GPs and other local clinical referrals [*], and the services (which will be neither private, nor state provided, but administered independently) to involve a variety of effective therapeutic activities, provided daily in a local community-based setting, with detailed scheduling in advance.

Therapies will involve a sustained process to improve the state of each individual's overall mental and emotional well-being, encouraging personal healing in the context of the motto 'physician, heal thyself' (encouraging each individual to discover the practices that are most appropriate for them) whilst also encouraging a natural process of participant and community friendship building through the very local nature of the project.

This process will take local patients out of the usual ineffective treatment loop for patients with mental and emotional health issues (drug/one off psychologist referral before being left to their own devices) and instead put them into a healing setting that actively looks at the root causes of eg addiction, depression, obsessive compulsive behaviour, anxiety, anomie and other modern mental health ailments.

We are now recruiting a team to provide a regular programme of activities such as meditation, music, art, dance and yoga therapies, CBT, NLP, Karuna, martial art, sport/physical activities, local walks, intellectual/academic presentations, life coaching for skills such as career and debt/money management, job hunting and relationships etc etc.

[* aside from GPS, other professional individuals who might refer to us could include youth workers, occupational therapists, psychologists and nurses]

If you would like to get involved in this exciting project, either as a therapist, youth worker, local GP, potential funder/networker or patient, please contact Mark, Arul, Illi & Mahdi via
greenpeaproject@gmail.com or
0785 439 0408

"Health, contentment and trust, are your greatest possessions
Freedom, your greatest joy"

Community Anchor

We're now undertaking a Locality Survey. The purpose of this survey is to get to know the local community, find out what interests and skills local people hold, and begin the process of bringing people together for a better Southgate. The survey will be casting out for opinion & interest in a number of initiatives, including the Sunday Street Market and Local Health project, and we'll also be encouraging local resident and worker attendance at the forthcoming series of Community Anchor meetings. The first of these to be held on Tuesday 20th and Sunday 25th May.You can read more about the concept of a Community Anchor, here.
For more information about these meetings, or if you'd like to receive a copy of the survey in Word to comment on and/or fill in and return, please email us at greenpeaproject@gmail.com

Update

As some of you know, we've a host of initiatives in the pipeline, and we're now awaiting the outcome of different meetings before we move forward further, specifically about the Health Project & Street Market, but also about funding streams and use of TfL land (at Mayfair Terrace) for a Community Garden project.

This site will updated soon to let you know where we're at in some more detail. In the meantime, please scroll down to read more, and thanks for your patience.

A Real London Pea Souper

Readers will be happy to hear that the Green Pea soup plot has now thickened considerably, although there is, as to be expected still a fair bit of stirring to be done. In the best (or worst) of the modern tradition, absolutely everything got consumed in the market. So, my apologies (a) for being a bad capitalist (b) as with my garden, for not having tended this blog more regularly..

Thankfully, the fog has now lifted. Aside from the impending, exciting return of Revolutionary PM Tea we have four other pieces of news, about (1) a brazen attempt from trusted local parties to steal the market right from under our very nose (2) an equally brazen theft of aforementioned koanic building design by the powers-that-be (3) a little story about a big camera and how, as with that delightful film about the rat who becomes a gourmet chef, the best ideas will often spring up in unlikeliest of places and lastly, (4) terrible red tape.



Verily, the less said about the first and last probably the better, for fear of upsetting fragile egos, not to mention using clubs where bridges of light may well suffice. So, instead, let's focus on the middle two, which are not unconnected and well worth recounting. Middles making the very best stories, and bridges, after all..