YoCo News (December 2022)

 We kept out coats on in St Barnabas at our open meeting on 11th December, but the ideas kept us warm – here’s a round up of our December Monthly Open Meeting.

York Central Strategic Board

YoCo were asked to speak at a York Central Strategic Board event earlier in 2022. We talked about the My York Central Big Ideas and Vision and the YoCo Community Plan for York Central. Following that event YoCo has been invited to share ideas for community-led involvement at the next Board in early 2023. Here are the ideas we’re going to take.

·      An incubator to grow our own local economy

We want to create an incubator space in the Foundry Buildings, off Leeman Road. We've been working with Spark York to learn from their experience and to help us generate an initial business plan. The idea is to grow local businesses that will ultimately take on premises on the site and contribute towards the local economy (And, while you’re pondering that, do check out our new blog exploring what we mean by community wealth building for York Central).

·      Learning Hub for York Central

The second idea we’ve been developing is a Learning Hub, which we’ve been working on for a while (and featured in the My York Central Big Ideas). We were joined at the Open Meeting by Angie Padfield from York Learning to talk about the brief for a central adult and community learning space. Angie talked about the range of learning activities that could be supported in a York Central Learning Hub from skills related to electric car maintenance to welding to a kiln for pottery to heritage craft skills.

In terms of funding there is the possibility of the Shared Prosperity Fund’s focus on a skills hub. We're also talking with the York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership to make connections and get advice on both the incubator and learning hub ideas.

·      Feasibility study for the co-owned neighbourhood

We also want to do a feasibility study for a preliminary co-owned neighbourhood focused on forever affordable housing, local businesses, spaces for community and growing. We are interested in relatively small amounts of funding to build a development partnership and for researching and designing the economic model.

York Central Heritage Forum

We then moved on now to talking about a new initiative:- York Central Heritage Forum... working strapline 'linking pasts and futures; connecting communities of now with communities to come; redistributing tourism wealth'. Events on archaeology, archives and local history to come in the new year. (And here’s a blast from the My York Central past to get you in the mood… York Central: Archaeology Above and Below Ground).

Six month programme of YoCo Monthly Open Meetings

The final part of the meeting was talking about a programme of Monthly Open Meetings and different activities and themes for the first six months of 2022. The idea is to do the YoCo updates as we do now but also explore another theme. In particular we want to connect the here and now with the York Central future. The January Monthly Open Meeting (21st January) ‘Warm Homes’ will focus on insulation, retrofit and the kind of ‘low running cost and high standards’ we want to see on York Central, along with the work this might create.

YoCo Research Agenda

We’ve published our research agenda and are looking for connections with York St John’s Institute for Social Justice and the University of Leeds’ Horizons Institute - calling all economists, researchers who work on anti-gentrification, active travel and playful and inclusive streets!