Embedding climate action within our community
How Eastside Community Trust has changed by being involved with the Community Climate Action Project
Eastside Community Trust is a hub of activity in East Bristol with two well-loved community spaces and a range of activities to make Easton and Lawrence Hill a place of possibility for everyone. In this blog Emily Fifield, Community Project Manager at Eastside Community Trust and lead for Eastside’s work with the Community Climate Action Project, shares the impact the project has had on the organisation and community since they began as one of the six original community partners.
When Eastside Community Trust began our work on the Community Climate Action Project in 2020, we were a newly formed organisation from the merger of Easton Community Centre, Felix Road Adventure Playground and Up Our Street. The project presented an opportunity to bring together the strengths of these three organisations in a new way while helping to shape a different approach to climate action that would place our community’s priorities at the centre and improve local resilience to climate change.
As we began developing our community climate action plan, we were keen to bring more people into the climate conversation. Our co-production process brought residents together to celebrate what was good in our community and the diverse traditions of sustainability already practiced locally, while having conversations about the issues that felt most urgent and the ways they linked with climate action. These conversations all fed into our Happy People, Healthy Planet climate action plan, which offered a way forward that didn’t mean choosing between the planet’s needs and our community’s.
Building resilience to rising costs and extreme weather
As we moved into the next stage of the project, Eastside wanted to explore the role of our two community hubs to support climate action and build resilience to the impacts of climate change. Our community was facing skyrocketing bills with the cost-of-living crisis, so our demonstrator project focused on building local knowledge to keep homes warm, dry and more affordable to heat in the winter, while also developing a resilience hub model for community buildings with technical support from Bristol Energy Network. Resilience hubs would offer comfortable, safe spaces in extreme temperatures, model best practice and provide trusted information to make sure energy support and opportunities reach everyone in the community.
To improve the comfort of our two buildings and reduce our energy bills we completed thermal imaging surveys that showed us where heat was leaking out and the steps we could take to improve energy efficiency. We were then able to develop a plan and fundraise for measures like loft and pipe insulation, double-glazed windows and a second door in our main entrance.
We also felt we had a responsibility to walk the talk around renewable energy in our hubs and inspire others to take action. Easton Community Centre already had rooftop solar panels and was heated by an electric ground source heat pump, and we were able to fundraise to install solar panels and an air source heat pump at Felix Road.
Early in the project, Eastside was selected for the first cohort of Media Trust’s Weston Communicating Climate training programme. We applied what we learned to new climate features in Up Our Street magazine and our BCfm radio show and created films and other materials sharing practical energy-saving tips and empowering climate stories.
We are now exploring steps we can take to meet the growing need for cool spaces in extreme summer heat. To start, we’re participating in the Council’s cool spaces pilot, providing free drinking water and support to the people who visit our spaces and exploring the possibility of using our heat pumps to cool our buildings on the hottest days.
Embedding climate in all that we do
What began as a stand-alone climate project has spilled over into all areas of Eastside’s work and operations. We now run an annual community seed swap, winter coat swap, getting ready for winter workshops and regular energy advice sessions. Our team supports a weekly gardening group at Felix Road and is working to improve the biodiversity around our buildings. We host Somali Kitchen’s weekly sewing social and a volunteer-led repair cafe at the community centre.
As we look to the future, we are committed to continuing this work and embedding it across all that we do, strengthening links between climate resilience and community cohesion, climate action and improved health and wellbeing. People now see us as a first stop when looking to get involved in local climate action, and we will continue our work to connect people, ideas and resources for wider, more inclusive climate action.
Advice to others
- If your organisation is new to climate action, start with what you already know and do well, and build out from there. Running a busy community building, writing a neighbourhood plan or providing your community with household advice and support can all be starting points for wider climate action.
- When you’re looking to bring people into climate action – whether internally in your team and leadership or across your community – meet people where they’re at and understand what matters to them, then build links between their priorities and climate.
- Always keep your community’s priorities as the core focus when developing actions to reduce carbon emissions. A just climate transition means creating solutions that work for everyone, especially the people most vulnerable to its impacts.
Resources
We have released a series of resources over the last few weeks to share learnings from the Community Climate and Nature project. You can find them here.
The Community Climate Action Project is coordinated by Bristol Climate & Nature Partnership and funded by the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund.
Find out more about the Community Climate Action Project
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