“My good life is the the people I love, in the place I love.”
“My good life is having somewhere to belong and just be me.”
· What are the ingredients that make up a good life?
· What does a good life look like for our community in South Norwood?
· What gets in the way of us living the life we want?
We think everyone should be able to live a good life, whatever that means for them. We wanted to know what living a good life means for the people that come to South Norwood Community Kitchen, and what a prosperous South Norwood looks like.
Lots of people at the kitchen have been talking about how South Norwood is changing, and who it is changing for. We realised that the voices we were hearing weren’t part of decisions being made about the future of our area. We want the regeneration of our neighbourhood to improve everyone’s lives, not just those lucky enough to be at the table, so we decided to listen to the voices of those not often heard, and share and amplify them here.
In order to explore these questions we’ve used a combination of participatory research tools such as semi-structured interviews, participatory arts workshops, round table discussions, photography and visual art with 60 SNCK guests We then organised what we found out into broad, recurring themes, looking for patterns and similarities. We’ve tried to use people’s first hand descriptions and artwork as much as possible. Our findings are inevitably informed by our own world view and assumptions and are by no means a scientific analysis of the data.
Our journey to a good life for all looks like this:
Listening to each other
Taking time to understand and reflect on what we’ve heard and what we’ve said to each other
Sharing what we’ve learnt, our understandings and using it to create an action plan
Taking action and doing the work together
We are currently at the beginning of this journey at the listening stage and what we have shared here is what we have heard.
We hope that what we are sharing will serve as a springboard towards achieving greater, more equal prosperity within our community, and will go some way to rebalance the systems and structures that prioritise the voices of those with status and power over those who are disadvantaged and less likely to be heard. We’ll also be using the findings to shape our own work as we move towards the next chapter of SNCK’s life at Socco Cheta.