YoCo Events
Table Top Sale
Table Top Sale
9-11am, Saturday 18th May
St Barnabas Church, Jubilee Terrace, Leeman Rd, YO26 4YZ
Come and sell from a table in the church: pre-loved items, home grown produce or home-made items.
Sellers from 8.30am, space limited first come, first served or book via yocoinformation@gmail.com
Also:
Holgate Councillors’ Surgery
Family activities for all ages
Leeman Road Community Heritage
Refreshments
The Table Top Sale is co-organised by St Barnabas Church and YoCo: York Central Co-Owned
YoCo Open Meeting
Things are changing on York Central. Things are changing on York Central. The roads and infrastructure continue to go in and the strategic developers - McLaren Property and Arlington Real Estate – have now been selected by landowners Homes England and Network Rail. YoCo has also been busy – not least working on proposals proposals for a community wealth building incubator in the Foundry buildings and for a community-led neighbourhood, with forever affordable homes. In this informal Open Meeting, join us to catch up on recent developments and help us shape our next steps.
If you’ve never been to a YoCo meeting before and are just interested in finding out more, this is a great meeting to join. There will be a very friendly welcome and tea, coffee and cake.
Severus Hill – What are our options?
Severus Hill is up for sale. The ward Councillors have negotiated with Yorkshire Water to delay the sale – but only for the time being. What are our options?
On 18th November, a first meeting explored the history of Severus Hill and pooled our local knowledge and memories. We also started to share ideas of what we’d like to see happen.
On 16th December, we will look more concretely at options for fundraising, ownership and management.
Co-organised by Holgate Ward Councillors, Friends of Severus Hill, York Civic Trust and YoCo: York Central Co-Owned.
York Central Heritage Forum / Tim Hedley-Jones, The Railway Heritage Trust: Giving our railway heritage a sustainable future and YoCo AGM
Tim Hedley-Jones is Director of the Railway Heritage Trust (and a York resident). The Trust has almost forty years’ experience of supporting organisations to restore and re-use our railway heritage from waiting rooms to water towers. In his talk, Tim will show how railway heritage can be practically re-used with a particular emphasis on York’s railway heritage.
This event will be followed by the YoCo: York Central Co-Owned A.G.M.
Severus Hill
Severus Hill.
Copyright held by City of York Council / Explore York Libraries and Archives Mutual Ltd
Severus Hill is up for sale. The ward Councillors have negotiated with Yorkshire Water to delay the sale – but only for the time being.
Join us on 18th November 3.30-5pm to explore Severus Hill in more depth and develop ideas for its future.
We’ll explore the history of Severus Hill - from the cremation of Emperor Severus to the reservoir that was created in late 19th century. We also will pool our local knowledge and memories of Severus Hill.
We’ll also share what we collectively know about the wildlife and ecology of Severus Hill – bring your bird sightings with you!
The final part of the session will explore the future of Severus Hill – what would you like to see happen?
This event is co-organised by the Holgate Ward Councillors, Friends of Severus Hill, YoCo: York Central Co-Owned and York Civic Trust.
York Central Heritage Forum: Christine Waddington – A Shop On Every Corner
Christine and her husband Duncan used to run the Post Office in Leeman Road. Over the years, they’d heard many snippets of stories about Leeman Road from how the neighbourhood developed in the early 1900s to dealing with second world war bombing to the more recent closure of many of the areas shops. One day Christine and Duncan stuck up a poster in the Post Office window making an explicit call for memories. Many more people came forward and the result is the wonderful A Shop On Every Corner: Memories of Leeman Road, York, reissued and updated in October 2021.*
We are delighted that Christine will join the York Central Heritage Forum to share her memories of the area, the process of writing the book and to reflect on the economic changes that has seen so any of Leeman Rod shops converted into flats. Through connecting with Leeman Road’s past, we’ll ask: What ideas might A Shop on Every Corner prompt for the kind of economy we want in Leeman Road and in York Central once it is developed?
• Print and e-copies are available from Amazon.
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting
Join us for our regular Open Meeting where we will share updates on the York Central development and what YoCo is doing to shape its future.
If you’ve never been to a YoCo meeting and are curious - this is a great meeting to come to. They’ll be cake and a very warm welcome.
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting + Wild Streets
Join us for our regular Open Meeting where we will share updates on the York Central development and what YoCo is doing to shape its future.
As well as our usual updates this YoCo Monthly Open Meeting will be in collaboration with Wild Streets. Come and explore the wildness already in the streets of the Leeman Road and Poppleton Road areas and ask how much wilder streets might be on York Central?
Don’t Extract, Redistribute! How to Co-Own Your Local Economy
An extraordinary campaign by local residents and supporters, which led to Coin Street’s purchase and redevelopment of a 13-acre site on the southbank of the Thames. Hear from Coin Street’s Iain Tuckett in the opening session of ‘Don’t Extract, Redistribute!’.
Too often the economy is seen as something over which we have no control. Yet around the UK communities are creating the kind of local economies that will make and sustain the places they care about.
Join ‘Don’t Extract, Redistribute! How to Co-Own Your Local Economy’ to hear the stories of community-led initiatives – both long established and newer – and engage with policy leaders’ and funders’ perspectives on the next directions for economies that create the homes and neighbourhoods we need and build community wealth.
Sign up for one zoom link to join any or all of these sessions and to join a community of communities finding ways to keep wealth circulating and to make money work for local people
40 years of Coin Street, the London community group with a commercial head and social heart , 1st June, 7.30-8.45
Coin Street Group Director, Iain Tuckett, on lessons to be learned from a campaign in the 1980s to create a thriving and inclusive community on London’s South Bank, and how embracing commercial opportunities has provided funding to make the area a better place to live, work and play.
Local Economic Co-Ownership In Practice, 2nd June, 10.30-11.45
Paul Brannigan, Executive Manager, Calder Valley Community Land Trust, Calder Valley on how responding to local opportunities has pieced together an economic model that is addressing systemic housing inequality.
Rhoda Meek, Founder/Director, Isle Develop CIC, Tiree on how to co-own a local economy heavily shaped by tourism and second homes.
Paul Oster, Mayday Saxonvale, on bringing forward a new community led development model that puts the community in the driving seat, for a significant town centre site in Frome, Somerset.
Natasha Almond, Good Organisation, York on how tourism wealth can be captured and redistributed in a heritage city.
Policy perspectives: Next directions for Local Economics, 2nd June, 12-1.15
Angie Doran, Head of Self-Commissioned Homes, Homes England on how self-commissioned and community-led approaches to housing in mixed-used developments can support community wealth building.
Danielle Walker, Friends Provident Foundation on their 4 D Economy Model and how decentralised, democratised, decolonised and decarbonised approaches can enable a fair and sustainable economy.
Leah Millthorne, Head of Local Economies, Centre for Local Economic Strategies on the role of public anchor institutions in building community wealth’
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting + Plant Swap + Exploring Local Food Networks + Green Spaces on York Central
The Glut Share at Holgate Allotments.
Drop in
Join us for our regular Open Meeting where we will share updates on the York Central development and what YoCo is doing to shape its future.
This month open meeting will be a drop in event with different activities going on.
Come, bring, swap and/or take plants and get advice for the planting year – in collaboration with Edible York.
Help build a map of our local growing systems, where is food being grown, where are our local glut shares – in collaboration with Morrell House Co-Operative.
Join a discussion about the green spaces on York Central, as set out in the outline planning consent.
From Great Park to ‘public spaces in which to be collectively creative’
The My York Central Big Ideas called for ‘public spaces in which to be collectively creative’ – the masterplan and outline planning consent depicts a ‘great park’ with people flying kites and walking dogs. How can we re-think the green space on York Central? If we thought of it as a common or commons what would that mean?
Beyond ‘park’ and ‘street’ to connected outdoor space
If – as in the YoCo Community Plan for York Central – we moved cars off the streets how could they become shaded, green and places for sitting, growing food and spending time. How might this take us beyond ‘park’ and ‘street’ to think in more connected ways about public space?
Co-owning public space
What different qualities might be offered by the community management of public space – might this, to return to the idea of commons, enable a rich mix of uses (such as growing) as well as access?
They’ll also be a YoCo stall where you can come for an informal chat and find out what we’re up to generally.
York Central Heritage Forum: The Local Histories of the National Railway Museum
Meet outside the old front entrance to the museum (the entrance closest to the Railway Station)
29th April 1-3pm
Join Andrew McLean the National Railway Museum’s Assistant Director and Head Curator to explore the local histories of the National Railway Museum – including the changing uses of buildings from a good stores, a mineral office and a canteen and the trains that were built and maintained on the site. Along the way we’ll also hear about a stunning survival on the night of the 1942 Bedecker raids and how British Rail were intimately involved in design the museum we see now.
The old front entrance of the museum is now closed and the entrance further up Leeman Road is now being used. For this walk, we’ll meet at the old front entrance, the entrance closest to York Railway Station.
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting + Holgate Open Studios Tour
Join us for our regular Open Meeting where we will share updates on the York Central development and what YoCo is doing to shape its future.
As well as our usual updates this YoCo Monthly Open Meeting will celebrate our hyper-local artists and makers. Join us for a YoCo tour linked into York Open Studios, asking how York Central can support creativity and creative businesses?
We will be visiting:
Ruth Claydon (Moth and Magpie) - who ‘creates one off pieces from gifted, preloved, heirloom and ancient finds, which also make their way into her peaceful, experimental paintings and collages’.
Duncan McEvoy - who photographs the working railway. ‘Frequently abroad. Looking East. Always looking for anachronisms. Industrial settings. People and place, everyday sights. Because the present moves constantly to the past’.
Jane Atkin - who ‘working in silver and gold Jane produces wearable unisex sculptures, inspired by brutalist architecture and good design’
Leo Morey - who ‘uses painting as a means towards exploring Cuban identity, using the human figure and its body language as a vehicle to connect the public with his culture and heritage’
The images are taken from the artistis Open Studio pages with permission.
York Central Heritage Forum: What’s in the city archives?
What different types of archives might shed light on the history of the Leeman Road, Poppleton Road and Holgate Road areas?
Join Holly Waughman, from the City Archives, to explore a number of different routes into the history of area. With a focus on Leeman Road, Poppleton Road and Holgate Road areas, we’ll look at maps and plans, photographs, the Poor Relief records and even a Pawn Shop receipts book. We’ll look at what we can learn about the past and ask the question – what kind of archive might we want to create of the changes on the York Central site?
York Central Heritage Forum: Holgate Windmill
Holgate Windmill sits with views over the York Central site, sited on the hill created by the glacial moraine that defines the area.
The Holgate Windmill is York’s last surviving windmill and the oldest 5-sailed windmill in the country. The Holgate Windmill Preservation Trust and their volunteers have restored the windmill to working order and produce traditional stone-ground flour to sell.
In this talk and visit to the Windmill join Richie Green and Helen Hoult – Chair and Vice-Chair of the Holgate Windmill Preservation Trust – to share the history of windmill, getting it back into working order and how they’ve created an economic model to make the windmill sustainable long term.
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting + Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about co-housing
Join us for our regular Open Meeting where we will share updates on the York Central development and what YoCo is doing to shape its future.
As well as our usual updates this YoCo Monthly Open Meeting we'll exploring current trends in co-housing. What is happening now with housing in York? What kind of strategies and models do we need to ensure York Central addresses York’s housing crisis (rather than making it worse)?
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting + Launching York Central Heritage Forum
Join us for our regular Open Meeting where we will share updates on the York Central development and what YoCo is doing to shape its future.
As well as our usual updates at this YoCo Monthly Open Meeting we'll be launching the York Central Heritage Forum.
We’ll be joined by Andrew Morrison, Chief Executive, York Civic Trust and member of the York Central Design Review Panel and lead for Placemaking for York's Culture Executive and Forum.
Andrew will open up the pre-railway history of the York Central, Leeman Rd and Holgate areas from the impact of the glacial moraine, to the evidence of neolithic trading and settlements to roman burials and pre-railway cricket pitches.
Andrew will also suggest ways in which the York Central Heritage Forum might work together to add to the existing York Central heritage statements and York’s Local List in ways that might inform the site’s development.
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting + Warm Homes, Insulation, Retrofit and more
Join us for our regular Open Meeting where we will share updates on the York Central development and what YoCo is doing to shape its future.
As well as our usual updates this YoCo Monthly Open Meeting will look at home energy and retrofit from a YoCo standpoint – thinking both of the existing communities around the site and the potential new buildings which will be there.
What can we all do right now to make our own homes more comfortable and more affordable to heat?
What are the processes and skills involved and how might we explore beyond what we can individually do, to think about the kind of jobs which home energy and retrofit might create?
And how might this point to the sort of homes which should be built on York Central, and who builds them?
If you’ve never been to a YoCo meeting and are curious - this is a great meeting to come to. They’ll be cake and a very warm welcome.
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting
Join us for our regular Open Meeting where we will updating on the York Central development and what YoCo is doing to shape its future.
If you’ve never been to a YoCo meeting and are curious - this is a great meeting to come to. They’ll be cake and a very warm welcome.
YoCo Annual General Meeting
Join us for our YoCo Annual General Meeting. Alongside crucial YoCo business, we’ll also be doing our usual Open Meeting job of updating on the York Central development and what we’re doing to shape its future.
If you’ve never been to a YoCo meeting and are curious - this is a great meeting to come to. They’ll be food and a very warm welcome.
What Makes a Vibrant Place - Look at Your City
A YoCo / York High Street Forum event
York Central Co-Owned (YoCo) is proposing the creation of a mixed-use, fifteen-minute neighbourhood on York Central – built upon an economic framework which animates buildings and public spaces. York High Street Forum is working to reimagine the city centre as a place which is about more than retail – a participative place which engages families and draws in residents.
A question which is common to these two processes of enquiry and design is “what makes a vibrant place?”. What mix of activities and environment creates life in cities? What economic framework enables citizens to take part in creating the living heart of their own city? And a key element of YoCo’s thinking on York Central – how can the design of this new part of York act as a mirror to explore issues which affect the city as a whole?
The event will be structured around a guided walk through the city centre of around an hour’s duration, with a route chosen to explore a variety of spaces which vary in their character and quality, and which highlight the ways in which use of public space can be encouraged and provided for. The walk will finish at a very consciously-designed public space – Spark on Piccadilly, where we’ll gather in the community space to unpick what we’ve seen and start to structure ideas for future thinking. Refreshments will be provided.
Numbers will be limited to ensure discussion is manageable, so please book your place (and if you’re unable to attend, please notify us in advance so we can offer it to someone else!).
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting
Drop in
What's going on with York Central - and how can we shape what happens there? Join this regular YoCo open meeting to find out.
We’re back in person and we find ourselves thinking about local food systems, community building and, well, our stomachs!
As we do catch ups from all parts of YoCo, we’ll share questions, ideas and food.
Making the most of Leeman Road's green spaces
Meet 2pm St Barnabas Church for the walk / Join the picnic from 2.45 at St Barnabas Church
YoCo is leading a walk around the green spaces of Leeman Raod. Some are hidden away, and there is greenery in the most unlikely spots. There are well-established resources too such as the orchard. This will be followed by a community picnic - bring your own snacks. Join us for either or both actvities. The walk will be a mile or so.
The event is free, and no need to book.
This event is part of York Environment Week 2022.
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting (July)
What's going on with York Central - and how can we shape what happens there? Join this regular YoCo open meeting to find out. Online - all welcome!
York Central Learning Hub: A Community Made Through Exchange
****We know from the weather reports that it will be very hot on Monday but we have decided to go ahead, armed with fans, possble through-drafts, lots of cold water and, cruically, Food Circle Ice Creams. We appreciate everyone will need to work out how best to handle the weather, but if you pop down - even for a short while - we can promise refreshments and refreshing conversation ****
Drop in 10-2pm / 4-7pm
Choose 2 Cafe is located inside Hull Road Park.
No need to book but if you’d like to register interest and keep in touch with the event sign up via Eventbrite
A hub for everyday creativity? A place for growing, cooking and eating together?
Join us to cook, eat, chat and imagine what York Central could make possible for living, learning, working and visiting.
York Central will be a huge new part of York to be built on the railway land between the Station and Water End. It offers so much potential for all of us who live and work in York.
Big ideas that emerged from the public conversation about York Central included a community made through exchange, a space that enables everyday creativity and public and green spaces for growing.
We at YoCo: York Central Co-Owned want to push these ideas further and build a network to bring them to life on the ground on York Central.
On 18th July we want to explore what kinds of activities we want to make possible and what facilities and spaces we might need.
We’ve got some questions but we also wanted to try out some of the ideas floating around, so we can learn through doing. We’re delighted to be collaborating with Choose 2 and Food Circle so we can join in with their innovative and exciting work through cooking and eating local produce and be inspired to imagine what York Central might add.
• Can we make outdoor space on York Central which enables food growing and creativity, alongside truly wild spaces? How might York Central contribute to our local food system?
• What kinds of intergenerational learning and sharing might we want to enable? What would you want to learn or share?
• What sort of facilities and spaces will be needed? How should the facilities be run – who should be involved and how should decisions be made?
• How can we create meanwhile uses on York Central that can incubate local businesses, learning, growing and other community networks to create community wealth and wellbeing on York Central?
This workshop was developed through conversations with York Learning, Food Circle, St Paul’s School, Pig and Pastry, Good Food York, York Collective and many other people who care about local food.
The workshop is funded by the University of York.
Credit: Mikejamesshaw. WikiMedia Commons
Celebrating Localization: An Alternative Future for York Central?
York Central Co-owned (YoCo) is delighted to partner with World Localisation Day and York Festival of Ideas, bringing together global thinkers with local activists to discuss an alternative future for York Central development site. Join us for a free screening of the new film, Planet Local: A Quiet Revolution, followed by an audience discussion.
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting (May)
What's going on with the York Central site, and how can we shape what happens there? Join this regular YoCo open meeting to find out. Online - all welcome!
Growing a mixed-use neighbourhood with YoCo
An in-person workshop to grow community plans for a mixed-use neighbourhood on the York Central site.
YoCo Change Makers
YoCo has great plans for York Central. But how can we make the changes we want to see?
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting (April)
What's going on with the York Central site, and how can we shape what happens there? Join this regular YoCo open meeting to find out. Online - all welcome!
YoCo Monthly Open Meeting – All Welcome
What's going on with York Central - and how can we shape what happens there? Join this regular YoCo catch up meeting to find out.
YoCo is a community-led group seeking to build a co-owned neighbourhood on York Central and influence the rest of the site via the YoCo Community Plan for York Central.
Every month we’ll run online catch up meetings where everyone involved and interested can share what’s going and the questions they might have.
A typical agenda might include updates from the meetings we are having with York Central Partnership, City of York Council, JRF and others to the projects we are running in the Leeman Road/Holgate area.
We’ll have an open slots for any other groups working in the Leeman Road/Holgate area and wanting to shape what will happen on the York Central site.
All very welcome.
YoCo – what’s next for YoCo and the Community Plan?
We’ll use this first workshop of the new year to celebrate the hard work so many of us put into creating the YoCo Community Plan for York Central, share news of what’s happened since November and shape YoCo activities for the coming months.
The event will start at 1pm with a lunch. It'll be a Pot Luck so bring a dish to share!
At 2pm we'll get started with the agenda.
To help us plan, please book your place here.