Impact Snapshot of the Bristol Community Resilience Fund

Over the last 18 months, we've been evaluating the impact of the Community Resilience Fund's 4 million pounds capital investment in Bristol-based community organisations. We wanted to find out if the fund achieved its aims of boosting resilience in grantee organisations and the communities they serve. Here's what just some of our grantee organisations told us. Capital funding from the CRF has made organisations and communities more resilient.

If you want to do media, you have to be up with the times. Now, the, the studios we have, they have been there for a while. If we're going to be able to compete, train people to bring me up to speed what's happening now, it was necessary to have the right things in.

So now what we've done, we said to CRF we want some money to purchase the following things, and that's what they said. Uh, we want to have a new studio, we want to have new, you know, desktops, we want to have everything. So what that's what they're funding us to do.

To purchase up to-date equipment so that we're able to compete, so that we're able to expand. With the only organisation that's that specifically works with women who do street sex work. We have 3 services that help us kind of connect with women and bring them into um support.

Our most kind of like unique service, I think, is actually our an outreach. So we go out onto the beach area 7 nights a week or we aim to be out 7 nights a week. Um, so, given that you've been using.

A van since nearly the start, I guess that leads us to the conversation around why you applied for a grant for a new van, like what was the kind of thinking around that. A number, a number of things really. The old van was really um, I, I don't want to say last legs, but it wasn't great.

We'd have like quite a lot of mechanical faults with it. So we actually then weren't able to get the van out because it's in the garage. Um, so we would think around it, and we'd try and do car outreach as a bit of a bridging, a bridging, but.

It's just not the same, and you know, it's a big ask of volunteers and staff for them to use cars and then even, even like the interactions with women kind of getting into cars, it just doesn't feel aligned in terms of the support that we want to be providing out there. Um, so we did have quite a lot of mechanical faults, particularly in the last year of that van's life. Also the feeling when you got onto the van, it was just very much the back of a van.

Um, so it, you know, in terms of giving trauma informed services, physical spaces are really important and there needs to be care and thought put into that. Um, so we wanted a space that actually like women would. Feel really comfortable coming into and actually they deserve a really comfortable space um and the impact of us not being out is that women are not being seen, women are not being supported, the risk goes up incredibly.

What made you apply specifically for the resilience fund for this grant opportunity in, in er specifically? That's a good question. We apply for funding every day, but the resilience funding came, um, and we thought, how can this organisation become more resilient in the face of changing funding landscapes, and, and creating an avenue by which we can Um, increase our unrestricted income. So something that's not related to a project would be beneficial.

So basically the cafe project will be paying rent into the vent site. And to support what we do here already. OK for the children and young people of Blockies.

Now since we've had the windows and doors changed, we're finding that we've actually had to turn the heating down, we've actually had people complain that it's too hot, so it's a bit swings and roundabouts, but it's a nicer problem to have and it's an easier problem to address than what it was previously. We've had new items built, new cupboards built, there's new storage space. We've had lighting replaced to make it more energy efficient.

We've had all the toilets refurbished and changed, everything's been updated and um yeah, it's, it's really helped the community cos now we're getting people coming in and saying wow this is much more appealing. Um, there's been a new community building built across the road which we were concerned about that it might impact what we do and whether they would, even though they came in and said, right, we're not going to duplicate anything you're doing, and if you could, if we could like work in tandem, it'd be helpful for the community, which has been absolutely fantastic. But we've had no downfall whatsoever.

In fact, we've actually got busier even though the new buildings come across. So I would say just cosmetically wise, it's made it much more appealing and much more attractive to the community and. Yeah, our numbers for attendance to all our groups have just gone up.

Before the community's resilience money, we had on an evening, for example, we had 2 nights a week where it was being rented, now it's 5 nights a week. So it's different groups coming in, doing different things. The, it's very much multi-generational, um, you know, we've got people that are still coming here in their, in their 90s who started here when they're in their 50s.

They brought their children in, now their children are bringing their children in. And it's just, yeah, the building wise we are. Yeah, we're at capacity now, it, it's very difficult now for me to get any new groups in beyond the bricks and mortar of the barn.

What's the band to you guys? What it represent what I think it for me it's about a place being loved, and it's like that's what it shows, it's like we care about this place, that's why we got into it and why we did it, you know, it's why we put so much time and effort and money into redeveloping the space for people to come and when you walk around the barn and you see people in there. Really enjoying themselves and you know it makes people's lives better, that's what we do it for essentially. Yeah, definitely, definitely, it does feel loved and it feels loved not only by us but also by the community.

You know, we put some signs up saying it should look like this and put some brushes out, people sweep it sometimes you go in at the end of the day now and it's spotless, which is like, yeah, um. It is kind of a shared space that people can enjoy and love. Yeah, that's the word shared, I think really stands out.

And I think that shows that it's a real community hub. But the fact that it's placed the community. It's not somewhere where people will come and see.

It's more somewhere people will. If you hadn't received the grant, where would your organisation be? What would you have done? There wouldn't be any organisation. It would, it would have been simple.

This building was, uh, we was, uh, using support of the building. And it wasn't welcoming at all. It wasn't, um, the heating wasn't there.

And we was running some, um, you know, welcoming space upstairs. Only part of it was like, you know, heating, electricity, and the basic need was available. But now, thankfully with that fund, we have the whole building been renovated.

It's going to be secured at least, I would say like in the next 2025 years. And I'm hoping that extra space, open up space and the extra office room will be like, you know, a new way to generate fund for the charity by letting out to the community. How would you have coped without funding? Well, I think we wouldn't have been able to create the Women's centre at all, certainly not at this time and not in the way we have.

Um, I think it allowed us to be ambitious, uh, in creating a space that was exactly what we wanted it to be. You know, I think we'd had eyes on purchasing a building prior to the grant, but I think it's the thing that sealed the deal in terms of being something that was actually possible, realistic. And I think it's the thing that made it feel You know, connected to the city as well.

It's Something about this particular fund being around community resilience, you know, it also feels like a right, the right thing at the right moment that the I mean it's the right fund for this, because actually it really answers the questions of the work that we're doing. So it felt, you know, fortuitous. We maybe would have been able to secure funding from elsewhere, but whether it would have been the right funding at the right time, you know, I just don't think we would have been able to do what we've been able to do at the pace we've been able to.

Um, and I think for us, you know, in terms of the relationship it's created with the city council, with our partners across the system, it's, it's, it's, you know, it feels like a little bit of magic at the right moment. Thank you to the community reporters, the organisations who shared their stories, and all of the residents, organisations, counsellors and staff who have been involved in building community resilience together with this fund.