Not a normal shop: from jam-making to bus driving, community businesses open their doors around the UK

In the middle of a park, on a sweltering Friday at the beginning of the long bank holiday weekend, Marjorie Landals is collaring passers-by attracted by the smell of burgers on the barbecue. “Fill in a survey?” she says to a young family with a baby in a sling and another on a tricycle, handing them a piece of paper. “Survey?” she says to a little old lady.

Landals is the chair of the Myatt’s Fields Park Project, a community group in Lambeth that emerged in 2000 to turn the park from an eyesore into a welcoming place for young mums. In 2010 the group raised £3 million to renovate the park, providing a new playground, a children’s centre and toilets.

Landals and the team are currently trying to secure more funding a rebuild of the park depot, including the greenhouses. Eventually, they want to incubate local food businesses that could provide the park with a much-needed source of income and reduce its reliance on grant funding.

Right now, Landals is concentrating getting surveys into the hands of the growing queue of people waiting for a burger. “We’ll probably get 100 surveys out of this,” she says. “You’d pay a consultant thousands for a survey like that. It’s probably cost us not much more than £100.”

Myatt’s Fields Park Project has often used a little ingenuity to stay afloat in the last decade. It was one of hundreds of community businesses that opened the doors - or set up a gazebo in the park - to celebrate community business weekend over the May Bank holiday. The event is in its third year of shining a light on the thousands of businesses in community hands across the UK.

“The best way to understand what a community business is is to visit one,” says Charlotte Cassedanne from Power to Change, the Lottery-funded charity set up to support such businesses. Cassedanne had been involved in open door events in a previous job in the construction industry. She thought the concept could work in this sector, even for businesses where the doors are open to local people all the time. “If you don’t have a reason to go there, you might not. Often you need to be invited.”

The 2018 figures are still being collected, but last year the event drew 11,000 visitors. This year almost 300 businesses registered to take part, from market stalls, to live storytelling and fashion shows to gardening workshops.

“Community businesses are run by people who are taking control at a local level,” says Cassedanne. “They are taking power through business, which is a more sustainable way than through projects or charities.”

It also means these enterprises can respond to the needs of the area. In East Sussex, Cuckmere Buses has 50 volunteer drivers that run 25 bus services through rural villages in the county where the bigger commercial bus companies won't go. These services provide a vital means of transport for the elderly, taking people to the shops and to their doctors appointments, as well making sure they get out for social events.

The company used community business weekend to recruit new drivers in a shopping precinct in Eastbourne. “We had 14 people express an interest,” says Stewart Fuller, a driver and the finance director. “Even if we get four go through, that would be wonderful.”

In Liverpool, Squash opened the doors on its brand new community cafe and shop for the first time on Friday May 4. The building, make of recycled steel and glass, will provide space for food groups like Nigerian cooking workshops, jam-making and other activities in the heart of Toxteth, one of the poorest parts of the country with high levels of food poverty and food bank usage. Squash has an educational agenda, to help locals learn about where their food comes from and how to cook healthy meals.

“It was absolutely brilliant to open,” says Clare Owens, co-director. “We’ve had quite a few hurdles along the way including a fire and some problem builders, but community has rallied round us. We were inundated with people visiting.”

Squash has benefitted from Power to Change funding to put towards wages, an electric van and some marketing. Owens says: “It has given us some opportunity to launch what we’re doing in an area that might be quite difficult."

But the longer-term goal is to be self-sustaining using turnover from catering for events, education and training, and the profit from the shop and cafe.

Four out of five community businesses use some kind of grant funding to survive. They take part in commercial activities like running pubs, parks, libraries, to social care and running bus services. But they do so for the benefit of the community, making them accountable to the people they are providing services to, rather than to external shareholders or investors.

“Community businesses are a way for people to do things for themselves,” Cassedanne says. “It has a whole host of benefits: pride, making friends, strengthening local networks local economy benefits, developing skills and getting people ready for employment.”

Owens says community business weekend gives places like Squash the opportunity to reach a wider audience. But it’s also an opportunity to show that community businesses aren’t like other businesses. “We’re not a normal shop,” she says. “We work with a lot of people who wouldn’t get work in other shops. Our community owns this enterprise and its important for people to know that it exists.”

At Myatt’s Field Park, the biggest challenge has been getting continuous funding. ‘We’re learning on the job,” says Victorian Sherwin, who has been involved since 2002. “The funding comes and goes.”

In an ideal world, Victoria says, statutory bodies would provide the basic maintenance of the park and the community would maintain it. “We’re a strong community because of the challenges that we have,” she says. “We wouldn’t think about doing it otherwise.”

The park has positive effects that reach far into the wider area. Last year, the greenhouse provided 27,000 seedlings for 27 projects throughout Lambeth, offering people the opportunity to grow their own food in a place with limited access to affordable produce. If it is successful with plans for the depot, those projects could be incubated inside the facilities at the park, allowing new community businesses to bloom.