Customers and communities

Trowbridge Future is a small, independent charity based in Trowbridge, Wiltshire who offer support and advice to the local community. We recently spoke to Zoe, the Community Manager at Trowbridge Futures to find out more about the charity, and how funding from Selwood Housing has helped their projects.

Can you tell us a bit about Trowbridge Future and some of the projects you run?

Trowbridge Futures have both a youth and a community provision. On the youth side, we run a series of youth cafes and outreach work, targeting three key areas: Studley, Seymour and the Longfield estate.

I'm the Community Manager and on the community side, we have the 'Hub' in the Shires shopping centre in Trowbridge, which is a drop-in open four days a week. We position it like a public living room, where people can come in for a cup of tea, a chat, signposting. We run a community café on a Thursday which is about people coming in and feeling like they are part of something, and an opportunity to make friends. We also help people fill in all different types of applications and benefits forms. 

We also have a hub up at the Seymour estate in Trowbridge where we run a craft group on a Monday, a community fridge on a Thursday and a community café on a Friday. The hub here at Seymour is actually owned by Selwood Housing. We also run community fridges out of our portacabin on the Studley Green estate and Longfield Community Centre on a Tuesday. 

Our Kindness Cafés run every Friday at our Seymour Hub 10.30am-1.30pm. For friendship, support and a very warm welcome! #WorldKindnessDay pic.twitter.com/vGlnfHEDH0

— Trowbridge Future (@TrowFuture) November 13, 2021

We also work with a lot of partners in Trowbridge and try to offer up the space to local partners to come and showcase what they do and engage with the public. So we just try to maximise the space as best we can. 

Moving forward we are looking to expand provision out so that we have all of the provisions open every day. I am also moving into a neighbourhood focus where we are looking at things like regenerating community allotments and other neighbourhood projects. 

How long has Trowbridge Futures been going for? 

Trowbridge Future's origins go back to the 1990s when a group of residents came together to address issues concerning local people. We became a registered charity in 2016.

What makes Trowbridge Futures unique? 

There isn't another provision like this in Trowbridge or I can't think of any charities locally that offer the kind of provision we do. So what makes us unique is that we listen to the needs and wants of residents, children and families and then help people to regenerate their communities.

What funding have you received from Selwood Housing in the past and what has that funding helped to do? 

Selwood Housing has supported us throughout the whole time we have existed and have made a massive difference to what we can do in the community. During my time and certainly in the last 6 months we've received funding from Selwood Housing for the community fridge project, enabling us to feed bellies not bins. On average I would say every couple of months we are feeding 2500 bellies so that's a difference Selwood Housing have made there. More recently Selwood Housing has very generously provided funding for the new Community Connector role to help us further provide on our provision. So all the work that we do we couldn't do without the help of Selwood Housing.

We have proudly pledged towards the Longfield Community Fridge, which plans to redistribute leftover food from local supermarkets to a community fridge for local residents and families. #FeedingBelliesNotBins

For more info and to support, click here 👉 https://t.co/qsDZ2SlpgJ pic.twitter.com/oXgiZX6YK5

— Selwood Housing Group (@selwoodhousing) September 27, 2021

Can you tell us more about the Community Connector role? 

Yes, funded by Selwood Housing we are taking on a Community Connector and we are looking for the person to be in post probably by February. It's looking at reaching out to supported housing developments, working out of shared spaces in those areas and other community projects like community allotments on Studley and Longfield. Really it is an outreach role, go and talk to people about what they want and deliver back to the community. Very exciting.

What's your favourite thing about Trowbridge Future?

I absolutely love working for Trowbridge Future. I've never worked for a charity before and it was a completely different career change for me. What I love about the role is that I get to meet lots of lovely people and I get to help them move their lives forward in a really positive way. So for me, that is a massive sense of achievement and it makes me feel good about life.

What are Trowbridge Future plans for the future? 

I did some outreach work with the Selwood Housing Neighbourhoods team recently where we walked around the Studley Green estate and found some allotments. I've since spoken to the Town Council and put in some funding applications to put together a project team to redevelop the allotments. And I see a synergy there with the community fridges because the allotments would encourage people of all ages to go along, maintain the allotment and then we can feed the produce that is grown to the community fridges. It also gives us a real opportunity to get together some really good community events and maybe bring in some partners to work alongside us. So that's my next plan really. 

We are looking to expand the youth provision, hoping to get more funding to run a few more sessions. I want to do a community survey in the Longfield estate to find out what people want and what they want to see, find out if there is Neighbourhood Residents Association and if so I want to get involved with that. It is about us gaining more intelligence about these neighbourhoods and making people's lives a happier place really. 

To find out more about Trowbridge Futures and the projects they run, click here.