Common Ground Community Garden Celebrates Success with Party on 6 September!

After a year and half of green-fin­gered, com­mu­ni­ty-spir­it­ed direct-action, we — the organ­is­ers of Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den — are cel­e­brat­ing suc­cess … and we invite all our friends, neigh­bours and sup­port­ers to join in the fun!

Since open­ing the gar­den in May 2007, we have resist­ed being crim­i­nalised while fight­ing for green, com­mu­ni­ty-man­aged space in our neigh­bour­hood. Since turn­ing a coun­cil owned derelict plot into a beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ty gar­den, we and our neigh­bours have ignored injunc­tions, protest­ed evic­tion attempts and even faced arrest. But final­ly, we have not only def­i­nite­ly won new sites for at least one com­mu­ni­ty gar­den, but Com­mon Ground itself has been grant­ed a legal license! Suc­cess*!

Read­ing Grass­roots Action (RGA)** who run the gar­den, have been work­ing with Kates­grove Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion (KRA) and have man­aged to agree the license for Com­mon Ground with Read­ing Bor­ough Coun­cil (RBC), which sees the gar­den being insured by KRA and re-opened to the pub­lic until the coun­cil demol­ish the exist­ing build­ings***. We have also vis­it­ed three sites in Kates­grove which could be used for one or more long-term gar­dens. We have cho­sen our pre­ferred sites and hope to agree terms as soon as pos­si­ble****.

To cel­e­brate this suc­cess, we will be hold­ing one more com­mu­ni­ty event at Com­mon Ground Com­mu­ni­ty Gar­den on Sat­ur­day 6th Sep­tem­ber — and this time we have the full con­sent of the coun­cil! The event, run­ning from 2–9pm, will fea­ture fun for all the fam­i­ly such as games includ­ing a raf­fle, face-paint­ing, fresh food and drink and a live graf­fi­ti exhi­bi­tion pro­duced by local artists. In addi­tion, we will have diverse acoustic music from acts includ­ing Lon­dons ‘Babar Luck’ and ‘The King Blues’ as well as oth­er local acts. And of course, vis­i­tors will be able to find out more about what else we are up to and get involved in the new com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove.

We would real­ly love to wel­come every­body to the gar­den one last time and thank every­one who has sup­port­ed the project, so we hope to see you there!

But thats not all… Sup­port­ers of Com­mon Ground are organ­is­ing an all-night after par­ty at a near­by venue! There will be a room for band (punk, ska etc) and a room for DJ’s (hiphop, drum n bass, dub­step, tech­no etc) and con­firmed acts include Bro­ken Note and the Bath Dub Soundsys­tem. See you there!

Thanks,
‘Com­mon Ground’, part of ’Read­ing Grass­roots Action’.

NOTES FOR THE EDITOR:

* Whilst we are cel­e­brat­ing, we want to thank every­one who has sup­port­ed us for mak­ing this project a seri­ous of suc­cess­es from day one. Com­mon Ground has always been about bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er, mobil­is­ing peo­ple into tak­ing action to improve our com­mu­ni­ty with­out wait­ing for those in pow­er to do it for us (we reck­on you might wait for ever oth­er­wise!). It has been about a small piece of land tak­en back under com­mu­ni­ty con­trol and used to ben­e­fit the neigh­bour­hood, in con­trast to the usu­al sit­u­a­tion where resources are used sole­ly to make prof­its and ben­e­fit boss­es and share­hold­ers. In this way, Com­mon Ground was a suc­cess every time peo­ple joined us to ignore injunc­tions, each time we saw off evic­tion days, each time peo­ple took the ini­tia­tive to work in their gar­den. It has been a suc­cess as it was respect­ed by young peo­ple, as it was enjoyed by local work­ers and fam­i­lies and as diverse peo­ples — from squat­ters and anar­chists to res­i­dents of all back­grounds — had con­ver­sa­tions we wouldn’t oth­er­wise have had. So, thank you!

** Read­ing Grass­roots Action (RGA) aims to help increase the col­lec­tive pow­er of ordi­nary peo­ple like our­selves, improv­ing our liv­ing and work­ing con­di­tions and cre­at­ing new demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions which act as exam­ples of the world we want to see. We are guid­ed by our hope of one day liv­ing in a soci­ety of gen­uine free­dom and equal­i­ty, with all resources com­mon­ly owned and demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly organ­ised by every­one for every­one. Sev­er­al peo­ple involved in Com­mon Ground were already RGA mem­bers and in April 2008 the groups became one and the same, with RGA look­ing for­wards to help­ing cre­ate a long-term com­mu­ni­ty gar­den in Kates­grove and mov­ing on to tack­le oth­er cam­paigns in Read­ing. If inter­est­ed in join­ing or sup­port­ing RGA, peo­ple are encour­aged to email us at rgacollective(AT)hotmail.co.uk.

*** The build­ings from Crown Street round to the begin­ning of Sil­ver Street have unfor­tu­nate­ly been left by RBC to fall into a state of dis­re­pair over the last few years. We would pre­fer them to be ren­o­vat­ed, as we believe they could be brought back to life as good-look­ing and use­ful build­ings. How­ev­er, RBC wish to demol­ish them as soon as pos­si­ble, as they hope to sell yet more pub­licly owned land to a pri­vate prop­er­ty devel­op­er.

**** RBC have offered three poten­tial sites which could be used for green, com­mu­ni­ty space in Kates­grove. Of these, the site on the cor­ner of Southamp­ton Street and the one on the cor­ner of Elgar Road are our favourites. Over the next few months, RGA and KRA will work to agree terms with RBC in order to gain access one or both of these sites. We appeal to the local com­mu­ni­ty, and to any­body who sup­ports this project to get in touch, and any help with work or dona­tions would be very wel­come!

rgacollective@hotmail.co.uk
http://www.rgacollective.org.uk