Importance of growing resilience across province

Growing Resilience is a two year Big Lottery funded programme from the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens, which aims to increase social capital and resilience in the community growing sector in Northern Ireland. Â
By The Newsroom
Published 14th Aug 2017, 11:00 BST
Updated 12th Sep 2017, 11:29 BST

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"Allotments are absolutely fantastic, you can grow so much on a small space. Apart from that the social side of having an allotment is really great. We have regular work days where people try to come and do communal work around the site and these are brilliant craic," says Susan Lynn. Picture: Arthur Allison/Pacenaker"Allotments are absolutely fantastic, you can grow so much on a small space. Apart from that the social side of having an allotment is really great. We have regular work days where people try to come and do communal work around the site and these are brilliant craic," says Susan Lynn. Picture: Arthur Allison/Pacenaker
"Allotments are absolutely fantastic, you can grow so much on a small space. Apart from that the social side of having an allotment is really great. We have regular work days where people try to come and do communal work around the site and these are brilliant craic," says Susan Lynn. Picture: Arthur Allison/Pacenaker

Susan explains: “The aim is to bring various community gardens together into hubs. We are supporting them to share skills with each other.

“So rather than bring in people to teach these skills we have gone to the groups to see what skills levels there are and to see what can be shared among the groups.

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“It has been important for us to develop the confidence among these groups and the people who are members. And so by sharing skills among the groups each individual group grows stronger.”

The project isn’t “something that was plucked out of thin air”, says Susan, and is very much led by the groups and facilitated to meet the demands of the groups involved.

And a pilot project which was run out last year proved very successful.

Susan remarks: “We had actually ran a pilot project last year to see how it would work and to help us iron out any creases in the project.

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“We have called the pilot the Bann Cluster as they are all located around the River Bann included Incredible Edible, Cloughmills, Duneane Allotment Garden, Toome, Garvagh Forest School, Garvagh, and Carntogher Community Allotments/Friends of Drumnaph Community Nature Reserve, near Maghera.

“And through that pilot were able to evidence that the project could work here in Northern Ireland. Running the pilot allowed us to iron out any creases in the project before running it out across Northern Ireland.”

Growing Resilience began in April 2017 for the next two years and will finish at the end of March 2019. It and includes groups in the Ballymena area, in north Antrim, Fermanagh, around the Castlecaulfield and Clogher areas of Co Tyrone, and then also around Strabane.

Susan says: “The programme works to support volunteers in nearby community gardens to deliver skill-sharing sessions to each other, increasing skills, confidence and connections. 

“The stronger the interactions between people are, the greater the sense of community spirit, neighbourliness and civil participation.”

lwww.farmgarden.org.uk/growing-resilience-northern-ireland.

Related topics:Northern Ireland