Green Shoes Arts: creating a community village
- Borough: Barking & Dagenham
- Organisation: Green Shoes Arts
- Topics: civil society, community life
Who we are
Green Shoes Arts works with the Barking & Dagenham community to deliver creative projects, helping people of all ages and backgrounds with confidence, artistic expression, and building social connections.
Exploring the theme of community through origami
On Monday 5 February 2024, we carried out an origami workshop where different community members learned new skills and made new friends.
Together, they created a paper representation of their community which is now displayed to the public at Chadwell Heath Community Centre.
Building a community from paper
Origami was chosen as a workshop topic as it can deliver surprising and beautiful results in a short timeframe, with participants learning collaboratively and helping each other to create artwork.
The origami village built by the workshop participants responded to the topic of ‘What makes a strong community?’. Together they built a paper community, a collection of miniature houses surrounded by flowers. The paper village built is an expression of a shared vision of a strong community.
This miniature community represents our community as a whole, an area that is enriched and built by the combined efforts of people of all backgrounds.
Origami village surrounded by flowers.
An origami home built by workshop participants working together.
Young people at Green Shoes Arts have fun at origami workshop.
This represents their collaborative desire for a positive, flourishing community that includes people from every background.
Fun, friendship and increased wellbeing
We engaged with children and adults from across our projects, most of whom did not know each other previously to this activity.
Children who are current participants in our projects brought their parents, along with adult participants from our Creative 4 Life project, which supports adults with mental health issues.
Coming to Green Shoes has given me a great sense of community that I never had before, and to do something I love in that community is great too.
During the session, the participants commented that they felt calm and peaceful taking part in the activity. Having a positive shared activity allowed people to build new intergenerational friendships and connections, increasing empathy and understanding as they worked towards a shared goal.
This helped me make new friends and find a sense of community. Thank you for this opportunity to attend Green Shoes as I believe it's made me a happier person so I'm very grateful.
The community spirit of the activity was reflected in the attitude of the group, adults and parents moved around the space to help young members and other people’s children with the origami activity.
We addressed the challenges of a changing community facing inequalities, poverty, and social exclusion by bringing together diverse community members in a positive space to improve empathy, understanding and increase community cohesion.
Where some young participants and people with learning disabilities were struggling, people offered support and a young carer who attended the session left in a very positive mood having really enjoyed meeting new people their age.
The changes we would like to see
We would like to see a concerted effort on the part of both VCFSE organisations and the Local Authority to find ways for people from Barking & Dagenham’s diverse backgrounds to meet and work together on positive shared activities.
Creative spaces are underfunded and often under valued when they can be such a positive space for change.
Find out more
Get in touch
If you have any questions about Green Shoes Arts you can get in touch at [email protected]
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