This group is formed by 7 environmentally focused local community organisations joining together for the benefit of all. We were all known to each other, some had worked together formally some informally. We first met as a collective in early October 2020, having worked together in different ways and numbers prior and since that date.

Following on from our first research and collaboration project we have continued to support each other and collaborate. At the beginning of the year we hosted a facilitated evaluation of the project, where certain things pointed towards us working together again to see if a collective approach could support community events across the city. We cannot be at every event and activity that we are requested to attend, sometimes this is due to capacity, sometimes it’s due to funding where as a minimum we need to cover costs but it is vitally important that we are seen to be there for the benefit of the communities we support.

We know that we can work in this way with respect and transparency but how will the event organisers respond to having 2 organisations rather than 7 .. we hope that this will show that we can truly be representing our collective whilst meeting the needs of the community.. support them to understand the true costs and value of having us as part of their offer and the fact that we can’t always do things for free, that there is always a cost, sometimes it doesn’t need to be passed on, sometimes it can be shown as match funded or added value, but then the funder needs to be acknowledged too.