Our impact
Bankside Open Spaces Trust works to:
• Transform open spaces
• Empower and engage local communities
• Enhance health and wellbeing
• Champion sustainability
Read on to find out about our work and its impact in 2023-24, or download our Year in Review 2023-4 report here.
You can read our full Annual Report 23-4 on our Governance page, here.
Transforming open spaces
In 2023/4 we worked to transform open spaces by:
• Maintaining 16 open spaces.
• Planting 612 trees and plants and 2,000 bulbs.
• Caring for 5 wildlife ponds and 1 raingarden.
• Creating 3 log piles and 3 dead hedges for wildlife.
Our parks won four Green Flag Awards, four London in Bloom Awards and the Britain in Bloom Urban Community category.
Empower and engage local communities
Green Hub: helping local people grow
Our Green Hub actively works with 18 different, resident-led projects, offering a wide range of support including gardening advice and workshops, tools and materials, assistance from our dedicated Green Hub Facilitator and BOST volunteers, and more.
In 2023/24 Green Hub:
Helped to plant 206 new plants and 728 bulbs.
Distributed 34 new tools.
Installed 7 new raised beds, 3 sheds, 2 new polytunnels, a 3,000L rain-capture system and 6 new composters.
Hosted 32 group gardening sessions and Green Hub workshops attended by a total of 129 local residents.
Living Space: a community hub
Our community centre in Waterloo makes space for community activities such as afterschool clubs and family holiday camps. Hall and office space hire boost our income.
In 2023/24, Living Space:
Facilitated 1,016 hires and had 16,006 attendances.
Delivered activity sessions in the school holidays in partnership with Oasis Hub Waterloo and South London Kings. We had 1,641 attendances over 11 weeks.
Partnered with London Play and Lambeth Council to repair our playground equipment. The partnership brought groups of corporate volunteers into the centre to help maintain the equipment and tidy the space.
ontinued to work with the Ministry of Justice’s Restorative Justice, who facilitated Community Payback teams undertaking weekly ‘unpaid work’.
Future Gardeners: growing careers
Future Gardeners is our free horticulture course for those out of work or seeking a career change. It’s designed to tackle skills shortages and get people work-ready in just 10 weeks.
In our 8th year of Future Gardeners:
43 people participated in the course, 93% graduated.
Of those that graduated, 73% are now in employment or further training.
63% of our students had a disability or long term health condition.
We launched a pilot Future Gardeners programme in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, run in partnership with the London Legacy Development Corporation, Build East Skills Centre and idverde. 10 students took part with 70% graduating and finding jobs or further training.
Community events
Bankside Open Spaces Trust loves inspiring people to celebrate and connect outside. Our events bring people into urban green spaces and promote fun, sociable activities.
In 2023-24, we entertained an estimated 20,500 people with our events. Together we celebrated the seasons with an Easter family fun afternoon, two spooky Halloween craft sessions and a festival community gathering. We also threw open our spaces and gave tours and hands on advice.
The highlight of our events calendar is our Bankside Open Spaces Festival, which in 2023 welcomed an estimated 20,000 people into our green spaces for an afternoon of music, performance, craft and more! 93% of visitors surveyed felt the festival was great or excellent.
Enhance health and wellbeing
Our community volunteering sessions, corporate work days, park steering groups, Green Hub, wardening at Crossbones Graveyard and trusteeships give people opportunities to get involved in our outstanding green spaces.
Volunteering
Our volunteering sessions make a huge difference to our work, and have huge benefits for our participants too. Gardening and spending time outdoors is proven to be beneficial to people’s mental and physical health.
In 2023-4 we ran 312 community volunteering sessions. and a whopping 4,826 hours of volunteering was given to our sites. 42 Crossbones Wardens helped us open the garden for 6 hours a week. After volunteering in 2023-4:
88% of our community volunteers felt more connected to the local community and 74% felt that their volunteering had an impact on the local community.
100% of corporate volunteers had fun and enjoyed themselves.
“There’s no better catalyst for volunteer work than people who are passionate about the task at hand. Bankside Open Spaces Trust has that, and it makes the whole experience special.” Corporate volunteer, 2024
Marlborough Sports Garden
Marlborough Sports Garden (MSG) is our community sports facility. We host accessible, free or low-cost coaching and pitch hires to benefit a diverse area lacking open space for sport and play.
At MSG in 2023/24:
272 children registered for our free afterschool sports sessions. 10 different sports were on offer, led by trained coaches.
132 children accessed the free places on our sports holiday camps.
Thanks to our funded teaching assistant programme, 19 children with additional needs attended our camps.
We ran a pilot SEND sports programme benefitting 18 neurodiverse children from two local schools.
44 children and young people took part in free weekend football coaching.
Outreach
In 2023-4, to expand our work people from marginalised and minority communities and those managing disability, we worked with other charities and groups to create and deliver micro volunteering sessions. These sessions were designed to encourage people to take part in gardening activities while developing the skills and confidence needed to sign up as a regular volunteer. Many participants also express a desire to connect with nature and the community.
In 2023-24, we also laid the foundations for making our gardening and volunteering sessions more accessible by building easier to reach raised planting beds, and by buying adapted tools.
We are developing a programme of activities designed to connect a wide range of groups with nature and gardening. These include the Exploring Anxiety Through Nature programme, and our work with Waterloo Community Counselling and Drumbeat College.
Champion sustainability
Bankside Open Spaces Trust aims to reduce our impact on the environment by gardening without chemicals, choosing drought-resistant plants and using peat-free compost.
We now have four zero green waste sites:
Red Cross Garden
Tate Modern Community Garden
Waterloo Millennium Green
Diversity Garden
All have composting facilities, sustainable planting and rainwater capture.
Marlborough Sports Garden: A sustainable build for a sustainable future
The new entrance to Marlborough Sports Garden, providing shade, indoor facilities, seating and space for climbing plants to help cool the local area and clean the air. Work on our new sports garden begins in 2025 and will benefit over 75,000 people a year.
In 2023-4, we continued to plan and fundraise for our development of Marlborough Sports Garden. Sustainability is at the heart of our award-winning designs.
The garden’s £5million+ building and refreshed sports pitches won’t just give our community more opportunities for sport and play, they’ll also be low impact in the way they are built and run.
Sustainable build
Circular economy principles.
Zero waste; materials will be repurposed or recycled.
We’re part of the ZAP project, which is developing solutions to combat the prevalence of plastic waste in construction.
For a sustainable future:
Air source heat pumps and solar panels.
Rainwater collection.
Climbing plants and food growing for shade, environment cooling and encouraging healthy lifestyles.
Activities and events will be run with robust environmental policies around recycling, packaging, and waste and water management
Future Plans
Over the next year, Bankside Open Spaces Trust will hold ourselves accountable to our strategic plan by focusing on the following key projects:
Transform Open Spaces
Finalise our fundraising and begin to transform MSG into a community hub where people can improve their health and resilience in the long term.
Working with Landsec and the community to finalise plans for the transformation of Crossbones Graveyard.
Enhance Health and Wellbeing
Ensuring our local community can access a local green space known as The Grotto.
Empower and Engage Local Communities
Expanding Future Gardeners across London.
Relaunching and developing our park steering groups
Champion Sustainability
We’ll begin to measure our biodiversity baseline to help us work towards our aim of being net zero across our parks and green spaces by 2030.
As a member of the Mayor of London funded Southwark Climate Collective, we’ll aim to increase our recycling by 10%.