Masefield, Wordsworth and Dickens House
Project
Masefield, Wordsworth and Dickens House
Client
Karakusevic Carson Architects
Location
South Kilburn, London
Working alongside award winning architectural practice Karakusevic Carson Architects and Brent Council we designed and delivered a series of social impact project designed to benefit local residents living in Masefield, Wordsworth and Dickens House in South Kilburn, which forms part of the South Kilburn regeneration programme.
YOUNG INNOVATORS
In the Autumn of 2021, we recruited a team of young innovators between 16-21 years of age from across South Kilburn, inviting them to work in collaboration with Beyond The Box to co-design social impact projects aimed at providing solutions to local issues that they had identified.
We worked with the young innovators over 6 months, developing their skills whilst connecting them to the local cultural and civic infrastructure across the borough, providing them with paid employment at London Living Wage. We hosted weekly development sessions with the young innovators to help them develop their ideas into projects, investing funds into the South Kilburn Trust, through hiring their space and helping connect the community to the under-used centre. We also employed a full time Engagement Assistant from within the local community, to collaborate with Beyond The Box to design the programme, after which they gained full-time employment at the South Kilburn Trust.
THE PROJECTS
In collaboration with Karakusevic Carson Architects we awarded £6,000 in grant funding to three inspiring projects. The young innovator teams each pitched their project ideas to a panel comprising of United Boarders, Drip Punch and Beyond The Box’s Founding Director.
Kamarll and Kyan, two young Black men passionate about business development for young people, with their project ‘Young And Rich’ were awarded £2,000. Their project aims to make young people more financially secure through business planning and business development workshops, looking at currency trading, investing in stocks and shares and product purchasing and up-selling.
Safiyyah’s project, ‘3 Steps To Success’, is designed to provide bespoke opportunities for young people to diversify their skills through professional development workshops, mapping aspirations to future opportunities such as summer schools, university access schemes, work experience and specialist lectures, measuring the success of the project throughout the process.
The third team saw Patrick, Nathan and Chouaib present their project, ‘All-Star Mental’. The project looks to explore mental health through a welcoming youth club that provides communication and team-building through basketball, using sport as a vehicle to open up and speak confidently about issues connected to well-being, exploring toxic masculinity and issues facing young people today.
SKILLS EXCHANGE PROGRAMME
Our Skills Exchange programme saw us design a series of skills, knowledge and networking exchange workshops for the local community of South Kilburn, forging relationships between local residents, organisations, freelancers, businesses and the local youth community.
We know there is so much hidden talent within communities, so we began by inviting community members to share what skills, knowledge and expertise they have in order to help us programme the series of workshops all aimed at the wider community of South Kilburn.
Participants were able to gain new skills and acquire knowledge through a platform of exchange, whilst building relationships between generations and the wider community, all took place at the Granville Centre in South Kilburn.
The workshop series ran over two during the half term holidays in April and was free to attend for local residents. We delivered 10 workshops over 10 days, they ranged from floristry, graffiti art, funding workshops, card making, life drawing, cake making and more.
