[Church of England] A church in the heart of one of the country’s most underprivileged areas is bringing local people together and helping them with their mental health and wellbeing, thanks to the launch of a series of environmental projects.
Ten thousand people live in East Marsh in Grimsby. For many years it was home to those working in the fishing industry and at the port. But with the collapse of the fishing industry, things have changed in this community.
East Marsh is now one of the poorest places in England on every metric: income, health, crime and education. More than a third of children in the area live in poverty, according to the End Child Poverty coalition, and within one square mile in the area, there are six food banks.
One of them is linked to St. John and St. Stephen’s Church. It provides food for over 150 people three times a week. But the church is doing more than this; through changing its environment inside and out, it is aiming to bring people together, help with their mental health and wellbeing, and change the mindset of what’s possible, as well as greening the environment. Big ambitions for one church community.
“We want to show people what can be done in a small place,” said the priest-in-charge, the Rev. Kay Jones. “So, we started with the church environment being different.”
Inside the building, a bequest provided for LED lighting and thermal boards. ‘It’s not freezing anymore,” said Jones. “We can have warm-space activities. People like being here.”
The church runs a dinner providing a main course and a pudding for £2.50 — or about $3 — which is “becoming more popular,” according to Jones.
Outside, things have changed too. A gardening project has led to planters providing vegetables for the church kitchen, a potting shed and attractive planting. Nearby, the church plans to use a piece of waste ground to create a small orchard and a meadow.
This was all funded through partnerships with grant-making bodies. The church was first approached by East Marsh United community group to build the potting shed using grant money from Grow Wild, the national outreach initiative of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Further funding was also given by the Royal Horticulture Society to build the planters at the front of the church. And a desolate patch on the street corner at the church will be transformed into a wildflower meadow and orchard thanks to the Native Species Project funding by Kew Gardens.
“We have 0.07% tree cover,” said Jones. “It should be 15%, and the national requirement from the Tree Equity Score UK tool will be 30%, so we need people to buy into that. They need to see something small that they can connect with.”
And people are connecting with it. An open day to launch the potting shed brought 17 adults and 27 children together. “It was hard to get rid of them at the end,” Jones joked. “It is changing things for lots of people,” she added.
Those people included local youths, who destroyed the planters several times and threw things at people doing the gardening. But in the end, curiosity overcame them, and they helped “grafting” in the garden to help get the landscaping done.
Older members of the church community are becoming grandparent figures to younger people who aren’t well-parented.
“What I’m seeing is people wanting to be part of what we do,” said Jones. People are trying different foods grown in the garden, learning how – and what – to recycle in the church’s recycling bins, and crucially, learning where food comes from, helping to reduce their food bills.
Many people live their whole lives in East Marsh, she said, unable to access the beautiful countryside around Grimsby, so greening the area is really important. “We have to be able to see that the natural world is beautiful, and the artificial world isn’t always working as well as it might for us,” she said. “If we can talk enough about that, people will see things differently.”
Plans are afoot for a foraging garden, where you can touch and smell the plants, and pick raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and herbs. “If you sit among the plants, you will learn,” said Jones. “It won’t be forced. Our ethos is not about doing this to people, it’s working with them.”
Local resident Melissa, who is recovering from drug addiction, regularly visits the church and enjoys the gardening club. She said, “I first came into the church when I was in a really vulnerable place. I was going back into active addiction and was in a bad way. This is a hard area to live and sometimes you can come here and be in a bad way – mentally and emotionally – but you will be cared about here and met where you are at.”
East Marsh United Community Group member and local resident Rachel enjoys the church’s gardening club. She added, “When you are digging away or planting it gives you a chance to switch off, it’s so good for my mental health.”
The enterprise shows that lives can be improved by simply enhancing the environment and naturally, people will come together, join in, and benefit from the changes.