Community Engagement Guidelines for the Rose Lipman Building

Mill Co. has a commitment to community engagement that is driven by our ethos that sits at the core of our business. The Rose Lipman Building is a unique and wonderful resource looked after by Mill Co. Over the years we have carried out a large amount of community engagement work with the local community as well as communities in the whole of Hackney. We will continue with this commitment to engage and have formulated the framework we use below to build on our work so far. We hope that this will form a clear, consistent, and joined up approach to community engagement which sets out exactly what we plan to do, and how.

What is Community?

“A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.”

“The condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.”

When we say community, we mean the following groups:

• Local Community – People that live and work in the local De Beauvoir area.
• Wider Community – People that live and work in the wider Hackney area.
• Hirers – People that hold events within the Rose Lipman Building.
• Residents -The businesses and people that call the Rose Lipman Building home.
• Employees – Our employees, contractors, and freelancers.
• Creative Community – People that work within the creative industries.

What Does Community Engagement Mean to Us?

At the Rose Lipman Building Community Engagement means:

Informing

We want to keep community informed and up to date with what’s happening. We want them to know what events and opportunities there are at the Rose Lipman Building and how they can get involved. We have a commitment to being transparent and informing everyone about who uses our resources and how.

This year we have created a new website to make this process easier. You can now view what’s upcoming, opportunities to get involved and read information about how our resources have been distributed.

Next year we aim to make more use of the website to give easy to find data about who uses the Rose Lipman Hall and for what – so watch this space!

Asking

We like to listen to the local and wider communities and find out what they think and feel about the Rose Lipman Building. We are adding a feedback form to our new website so that everyone can let us know what they think. We are increasing our feedback system at the end of hires to make sure that we know how every booking went, and if there are things we can do better.

We will be conducting a survey asking the local community what they would like to see included in the Rose Lipman events calendar. The results of this survey will form part of the way in which we design the events program and will be available on the website.

Collaborating

Work in partnership with our community groups, residents and those who hire the hall to join up all of elements of our engagement activities to create a vibrant, strong and exciting events program.

Some examples of our collaborative projects can be found in our Events section!

Investing

We encourage the local community to propose events, helping them with all parts of the process of putting on an event we can support. Next year we will be adding more details about workshops and other opportunities provided by the Rose Lipman resident creative businesses to the website.

What’s the Plan?

We want to create a place where a wide variety of communities are proud to belong and feel at home. Therefore, we will do the following:

Engagement:

• * Continue to engage with local people to help us develop a program that reflects their needs and wants
• * Use community engagement to explain to the local community the competing demands on the Rose Lipman Hall and help to manage expectations.
• * Build the capacity for people to take part in our engagement activities.

Monitoring:

• * Implement a better monitoring and measuring of our performance and make it visible. Quantitative and qualitative assessments will provide us with feedback that will help us monitor how we’re doing.

Feeding Back:

• * Be clear about what we’re asking.
• * Make our aims clear.
• * Provide clarity about the opportunities we have available.
• * Be honest about what can and can’t be achieved.

Inclusivity:

• * Try to engage with all communities (N.B. we have a policy of not hiring the hall out for religious events or to religious organisations).
• * Ensure that everyone has the opportunity to express their views and know that they will be listened to and respected.
• * Research ways of increasing involvement with communities who are not in touch with us.
• * Engage with people of all ages.
• * Ensure that engagement methods are accessible and appropriate to the people who are participating.

Fundraising:

• * Aim to put in place a stronger fundraising element to our non-profit model that enables more people to engage with The Rose Lipman Building.
• * Acknowledge that both human and financial resources are needed to ensure good quality events and that organisations will have differing access to these.
• * Recognise and build on the strengths of residents to encourage community engagement.