Since April 2024, Zebra has held the lease on the Neighbourhood Centre, the former school nursery and a community space familiar to most Mount Wise residents. We’ve been running our youth club here since March 2023, and some of us have worked out of this building since the 1990s.

 

We're working to restore the Centre, and our hope is that it becomes once again a much-used community space. As soon as we took the keys we opened all the long-closed shutters we could, and in October finally got all shutters open. Young people from our youth club chose the colour scheme, bought the paint, and began the paint job - already we've painted outside and in, through some community painting sessions plus workplace volunteering days from Babcock and Succession Finance.

 

We are taking a phased approach to restoring the building, beginning with essential and urgent remedial works, while in the longer term we're looking to larger scale improvements such as a change to the internal layout to enhance possibilities for simultaneous community use. We're also keen to improve the building's environmental performance.

We held a 'Community Day' 6 weeks after acquiring the building, and around 200 people came: children played while adults drank tea and shared their views on the future of the centre and how they’d like to be involved.

We think this should be everyone’s Centre – so we're always asking  local people, "What would you like to see happening here? And how would you like to be involved – e.g. volunteering, starting new groups etc.

The centre has been reappointed as the local polling station, and we've hosted a health fair, vaccination clinics, monthly cafes run by the Cancer Champions team, cookery courses, training courses etc. Steadily, the building is coming back to life.

 

Zebra is now based at the building, keeping it open every weekday.