Needs & Outcomes
Within South Manchester there is widespread recognition that Levenshulme needs better community facilities. Recent years saw the steady decline of Levenshulme Community Centre, located nearby, which was finally closed in July 2006. Many of the activities that operated there have had to relocate outside of the area, make do with inappropriate facilities for their activities, or cease to happen altogether.
Formal identification of the need for a local community facility came from the official evaluation of the Council’s SRB5 regeneration scheme where the need for greater community facilities in Levenshulme was recognised with a separate section of the report. The more recent South Manchester Strategic Regeneration Framework has informed thinking about the focus on local enterprise and training and the creative arts and media theme.
The Inspire Centre will be open to all. Its café and community activities will draw people from across south Manchester but the primary focus of its activity will be for local residents in Levenshulme. It is calculated that in its first year of operation more than 3000 people will come through its doors – to make a radio programme, to volunteer, to hold a meeting, to start a business, to have a coffee … or simply to have some fun.
Following three significant community consultation events and an extensive community survey, the centre will target its activities and its outreach work on three specific groups who have been identified as being particularly in need to the centre’s services:
- Young people
- Older people
- Refugees and Asylum Seekers
The centre is committed to making sure that over its first two years of operation, as many as 40% of all of its users will fall into one of these people groups.
The Inspire Incubation service will also target local businesses needing support and entrepreneurs looking to start-up new businesses, especially social enterprises.
To address the needs set out above the Levenshulme Inspire Partnership has set the following high-level outcomes:
- More than 3000 people from south Manchester will have access to a revitalised, accessible community facility in the heart of Levenshulme during the first year following its re-opening. This will grow by at least 5% per annum in the following 2 years.
- There will be at least 30 different services provided from the building, from community meetings through to business incubation, many with a focus on the arts and media. (In its first year, 50% will have this focus giving the building and its stakeholders a strong creative synergy.) The number of services will grow by at least 15% per annum in the following 2 years.
- At least 40% of support, activities, training and business development opportunities will be taken up by young people, older people, and refugees and asylum seekers through carefully tailored programmes in the first two years after re-opening.
- People from Levenshulme will have opportunities to shape the management and activities of the community centre and a platform from which they can influence wider community issues through at least 30 building users attending regular Inspire Forum meetings in year one, rising to 50 by the end of year three.
- The community centre will be run as a financially-viable social enterprise, making a surplus by the end of year 3, managed by a dynamic partnership between the church, building stakeholders and the Levenshulme community.
- The community centre will be a local and regional beacon for environmental sustainability through its design, refurbishment, energy efficiency and recycling, not exceeding annual targets for energy and water use and waste.
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Needs and Outcomes
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