‘Over the past 10 years it feels as though Coram’s Fields has steadily been run into a near nonentity’

• I HAVE lived in this community for 12 years and my young daughter and I are frequent users of Coram’s Fields, (Save our park! Fears keepers at historic park will be axed, February 10).

As someone who has worked on various community projects over a lifetime I cannot fathom the lack of care over, and lack of reinvestment, in this neglected, under-utilised, community facility.

Over the past 10 years it feels as though Coram’s Fields has steadily been run into a near nonentity for the children of its community.

Even though the facility has been awarded grants, and the management uses both the goodwill of its community to fundraise and volunteer within its grounds, there is no sign of any significant reinvestment or transformation of this valuable resource.

The loss of the petting farm and the lack of truly engaging green spaces are both unnecessary and detrimental to the wellbeing of the children of this community.

When you visit Spitalfields City Farm, you can see what a true community resource is. It is run with great integrity, heart, and transparency.

You know without a doubt you are in a place that has the wellbeing of its community and its children at its core. You feel this also at Calthorpe Gardens and Camley Street Natural Park.

You do not feel anything close to this level of community spirit and care at Coram’s Fields. Instead at Coram’s the community are patronised by the management and not included in its development or potential.

Rather the community is spoken down to. The conversation only ever seems to be about a lack of finances and never about the potential of the resource the community holds.

One example of this is when more than half of the area of what is essentially a community resource is rented out annually to corporate events which have no relation to the community.

This commercial venture is then sold back to the community as “residencies”, which is just an insult to the intelligence of this community.

None of these ventures have resulted in any great trans­formative change. So either the vision is wrong or the management is bad.

This is an under-utilised community resource which requires community involvement from the bottom up and not the top down heavy management which is currently in place.

And that so far has only served to create a feeling of disregard and mistrust between the community and itself. In this situation nothing adds up, and nothing can be transformed whatever the financial situation.

In this regard I no longer hold any confidence in the management of Coram’s Fields, and their “consultation process” to sack their long-serving ground staff once again feels like an action taken with little regard for the community it is in place to serve.

SUKI JOBSON
Lamb’s Conduit Street, WC1