Stronger community connection = Stronger local venue

It’s a win-win situation when your venue engages with the local community. Not only are you providing locals with access to your awesome space, but you gain:

• Potential for Increased Revenue - Connecting with your local means a larger pool of people who can potentially hire and use your space
  
  
• People Power and Resilience - You’ll find more people who could get involved with your space directly eg. joining your committee, becoming members of the congregation or being hired as staff. Also, the more people care about your space, the more your space is looked after, building its resilience.
  
  
• Social Capital - Social capital is the sum of networks and shared values built between individuals and groups to increase trust in each other and encourage collaboration. Simply put, the more people and organisations you are connected with, the more opportunities for collaboration and support arise.
  
  
• Organic Trust - Speaking of trust, building relationships in your community means that you are also building genuine trust with those around you and the people who work for you! Being a part of a space that gives back to the community boosts staff morale and gives your organisation a sense of meaning and purpose. Also, the trust you build with your locals means more word of mouth; get ready for people coming to know you through genuine recommendations! 

Here are some of the many ways to help you reach and connect with the community around your local venue:

• • Put out bean bags in the summer so people can relax or chat
  • Partner up with a coffee cart and have them set up shop outside your space
  • Create engaging pavement art or wall murals
  • Create a social media posting spot
  • Make some interactive art eg. with Post-It notes or funny signs

1. 1. Ring/email your local board or community officer at council
   2. Check the notice board in your town or community centre
   3. Dig about on Facebook
   4. Ask your local Citizens Advice Bureau
   5. Ask your local MP or Councillor

5. Partner with a school - The biggest active community in most suburbs is around the school - it's the one place most people have some connection to! Therefore, it’s potentially the largest group of people you can build a relationship with locally. To connect with a school community, think about how you can support each other e.g. what do you have that will benefit that community? It could be an affordable venue for a kids party, or a bigger space to hold school prize-givings. Then reach out and try to find a connection with someone on the board or PTA. Work out how you can promote what you do through their social media, newsletters and noticeboards.

6. Fun and family friendly activities - Create a fun experience around your space that will engage people of all ages. For example you could stage a teddy bear hunt in the windows and put a bingo card in local mailboxes for kids to see if they can find all of them (check out our guide on how to do this!). Other ideas include treasure hunts, crochet bombing, fairy houses, drawing competitions or busking!

7. Online networks - Most suburbs have local community Facebook groups that have high engagement and big memberships. There may also be groups for local parks, schools or other organisations. Joining these and posting regular updates about what's going on/what spaces you offer can help people know you exist and bring them into your space.

8. Organise a clean up day - Many people want to make their neighbourhood a nicer place to live, and also want something free to do with their kids. Kill two birds by organising a beach clean up or litter pick and then host a BBQ afterwards to get to know people and say thank you. Your local board or council may even provide a grant to help with the costs of this.  You get to engage more people locally in your organisation AND give back to the neighbourhood.

9. Become a community co-working space - Do you have space that's not used during the day, good wifi and a few desks and chairs? There are many, many people who work from home and would love the opportunity to work somewhere else and meet a few more local people. You could open up your space for a few hours once a week and invite local people to use it for community hot desking. SpacetoCo makes it easy to share and create revenue from these type of bookings. Check out an example of a community hot desking space here. 

Image from https://www.spacetoco.com/space/hot-desk-for-hire-in-community-lounge-at-creative-and-performing-arts-facility-in-onehunga

Our Parters in Community

This guide was produced from our work helping the below councils and community venue organisations to share their spaces. Thanks for Co-creating SpacetoCo with us and sharing your experiences.

Our Why

Sustainability

We believe that there are plenty of spaces and it’s not always necessary to build more. By utilising existing assets more efficiently and by making it easier to book spaces online, we all play a part in a more sustainable future.

Local Economies

We believe in the importance of driving growth to local area economies. By providing a means for people to access local spaces, we hope to stimulate a buzz of activity within towns, precincts & localities . We believe that when local economies thrive, communities come to life.

Community Connection

We believe space activation plays an important role in community development and building connectedness between people.It is through this that we work towards building a supportive, inclusive and diverse society.