Celebrating Community Centres

After two years of Community Centre Week where getting together in person was a challenge, 2022 has provided an opportunity to get back into Community Centre buildings to celebrate. Marking our ninth year, the theme of 2022 was food justice, using the week to highlight the work that community centres do year round to support their communities in accessing nutritious, affordable and culturally-appropriate food.

As we do each year, we produced a downloadable pack full of ideas about how centres across the country could get involved, including community picnics, recipe sharing and community growing. This pack was shared far and wide in the run up to the week, ensuring that centres had enough notice to get involved and could use the poster template provided to promote their events.

Seeing communities come together in and around Community Centre buildings was a real highlight, it was great for the week to include a combination of in person events and social media story sharing and celebrations.

The Octopus Network members held a number of in person events in celebration of Community Centre Week. These included Hornsey Lane Community Association, Elizabeth House Community Centre, Whittington Park Community Association and Mildmay Community Partnership who all held community picnics, bringing their communities together around food. Caxton House’s annual Hillrise Festival was celebrated during the week – the first since 2019!

Community Centres from outside of Islington got involved on social media, including in Bristol, Preston, Mitcham and Acton. Zurich for Charities wrote three brilliant blog posts focusing on the work community centres are doing to increase food justice, including St Hilda’s in Shoreditch who have run a community food co-op for over 16 years.

Thanks to all those who got involved this year, we already can’t wait for Community Centre Week 2023!

Read the full report here.