Coffee & Chat

Creative Community Activation

Context: Royal Borough of Greenwich’s Black History 365 (BH365) initiative supports local organisations in creating a range of activities and events throughout the year. The aim is to engage communities with Black history and culture and better understand how African and Caribbean diasporas have shaped the borough and the UK, throughout the whole year, not just the month of October.

Brighter Futures Foundation were one of the recipients of the funding. They wanted to host 5 community coffee and chat workshops to draw out unsung heroes and untold stories in the community and photographs to feature in the exhibition.

Challenge: The workshops were to be hosted at the Foundation’s Camouflage Cafe site in The Moorings, Thamesmead. Many social and logistical reasons meant that the Cafe’s community engagement was low.

Approach:

I conducted quantitative and qualitative research on community engagement strategies, analysing cultural patterns and engaging local community.
I created creative workshop plans based on audience insights introducing two new creative events (painting & poetry) to the Cafe’s event calendar - this created additional content for the exhibition and created a relaxed environment for participants
I managed all aspects of project coordination, including budgeting, scheduling, and stakeholder engagement for this and a second project

What made it work?: Projects that spotlight individuals often feel as they are extracting from communities and not giving back. By curating a series of workshops that allowed the community to create, the audience felt like they were gaining something from these sessions.

The initial brief requested workshops to collect stories but by me choosing to do so through creative activities, the environment felt safer for those sharing their stories. They also gained something from the session.

Community Insight: The use of creative activities made people feel more relaxed and thus allowing them to open up. The activities were seen to be therapeutic and challenged them to think about the difficult times in their lives in new ways.

Impact/results: The sessions brought over 50 new customers into the venue. It produced extensive material for an exhibition for May 2025.

Feedback from participants

“This session made me a lot more appreciative and helped me understand different perspective”
 “amazing session, very therapeutic and a great way to engage with others”
 “loved seeing the community come together” 
“this session felt like therapy and art which is what I believe poetry should allow for. Very grateful”