The Conservation Foundation and O2 invited some of the winning community projects to celebrate with them the success of It’s Your Community. Coinciding with The Conservation Foundation’s 21 years at the Royal Geographical Society,an exhibition in pictures, film and stories featured some of the hundreds of community projects that won support during the past three years from this national award programme.

Enjoying the party – which was held at the RGS’s exhibition centre just before Christmas – was Eliza Rebeiro, whose anti-knife crime booklet Lives not Knives is the voice of 30 young people in print and was published with a £1000 It’s Your Community award. Eliza’s booklet tells the consequence of knife crime and spells out the options to gang culture by young people whose own lives have been affected by violence.

Entertainment was provided by ‘Organised Kaos’ from Wales. Kaos is now the largest youth circus school in Wales and receiving their It’s Your Community award 2 years ago allowed Nicola Helmsley, the school’s founder, to buy enough equipment to get the circus school established. It now has over a hundred young members and receives funding from the Arts Council.

‘And they say the Community is dead’ celebrated three years of successfully slicing through red tape and getting small awards out to grass root projects as quickly as possible. The Conservation Foundation received fantastic feedback from running O2's It’s Your Community, which supported nearly 2,500 projects. These are some of them:



Youth clubs and youth groups 215
Playgrounds 27
Football equipment 242
Cricket equipment 70
Netball equipment 15
Boxing and martial arts equipment 27
Libraries 27
Community cinemas 17
Community theatres 36
Village post offices 25
Local shops 72
Recycling projects 46
Community cafes 45
Community centres 402
Bus shelters 6
Music groups 27
Discos 10
Cheerleading 13
Morris dancing group 1
Break dancers 4
Brass bands 12
Allotments 94
City farms 4
Orchards 23
Community gardens 268
War memorials 10
Local community radios 27
Silver surfers 3
Access for disabled 33
Outreach groups 56
Community help lines 20
Working with elderly 119
Nurseries and playgroups 41
Sports pavilions 7
Scouts and guides clubs 37
Healthy eating cooking classes 66
Fitness and workout 76
Gardening for the blind 2
A huge tent for a small village 1
Woodworking 2
Recycling IT, bicycles, furniture 46
voluntary emergency services 9
Skate parks 10
BMX - bykes and helmets 19
‘Men in Sheds’ 1
Life guards equipment 2
Sailing equipment 8
A kite club 1
Home-work clubs 12
Housing associations 23
Karaoke machine 1
Mosaics on bridges, underpasses, schools 4
A small Viking ship 1
Sewing, pottery and art classes 14
Photographic and recording equipment 16
Oral and printed community histories 12
Hospices and hospitals 16
Notice boards and newsletters 15
Gaelic games 13
Pipe bands 3
Basketball 40
After School clubs 32
D-jing and mixing 13
Telephone box 1
Graffiti art 30
Graffiti clean up and removal 19
Community clean ups 31
Community media 29
Community film and documentary 35
Family support groups 13
Multi cultural integration projects 38
Language classes 5
Cycling clubs 15
Angling for young people 19
Community transport 32
Parks 25
Ponds 4
Trees and woods 127

And one phone box