Case Study 11 - Coventry grows
Coventry Grows is a community growing programme, funded by the Strategic Energy Partnership between Coventry City Council and E.ON, and will establish community growing sites in Coventry to increase the number of accessible green spaces in the city.
The programme supports the Marmot Principles create and develop healthy and sustainable places and communities and pursue environmental sustainability and health equity together. Working in a Marmot way enabled us to work differently to understand that growing food can be an opening to create a greater connection for marginalised groups within communities.
Engaging communities that don’t typically get involved in growing is an important part of the project and will be delivered through a series of training sessions for interested members on growing organically and creating spaces for wildlife.
What our organisation did
We had identified a list of unused sites across the city that could be transformed into growing sites and mapped them alongside allotments and existing growing organisations active within the city. We used several data sets to narrow this longlist of potential growing sites down to three sites, using proportionate universalism to allocate resources proportionate to need. We used the Index of Multiple Deprivation Decile to understand where general deprivation sits within the city, and the Accessible Natural Greenspace Inequality and Deprivation (ANGST) data to highlight which neighbourhoods have the least access to natural green space. In addition, the Coventry Green Space Audit highlighted the quantity of green space per 1000 population by Ward. There were some small variations in these data sets but similar themes which highlighted the areas in most need of more green space.
Interest in community growing is high in the city and existing organisations are also keen for funding so it was important to ensure that the programme will generate benefits where it is most needed to help tackle inequalities. Using this data to determine the final sites where the resources do not already exist means we can support a more equitable network of growing across the city.
Successes
As the programme and sites progress, monitoring the impact of the sites on the health of both the local communities and wildlife will be key to understanding how these spaces can create value in cities and help address a variety of social and environmental challenges.