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Oxford Indymedia

Planned new kitchen at EOCC

MrDemeanour | 29.09.2004 10:49 | Oxford

This is a brief summary of what (seems to me to be) happening at EOCC. I'm going to try to keep my own ill-informed prejudices out of the picture, but I'm not exactly over-equipped with facts.

A proposal was put forward to build a new community kitchen at the front of the East Oxford Community Centre. The appearance of the new kitchen would not be in keeping with the frontage of the existing building, and construction would involve the chopping-down of a mature and attractive cherry tree.

A consultation process was undertaken during May and June, involving the groups that use the centre, but apparently not involving other segments of the East Oxford community! The eight trained facilitators of the consultation process, of whom seven were wholly independent, commented as follows:

"Our feeling as participatory facilitators is that this process has happened a bit late in the day. There should have been better communication in the first place. Participatory processes require time and though we were happy to undertake this work, it is not ideal conditions under which to operate."

The outcome of the consultation exercise was a vote in favour, by 244 to 86 (76% in favour). However opinion is strongly polarised - there is no concensus. Tha facilitators said:

"Voting is not conducive to concensus building. But there is clearly a lot of support for the kitchen proposal."

The building of the kitchen would be financed by Oxford City Council. OCC have for some reason declared that if there is any further delay in the project, funding will be withdrawn. A condition for the funding is that the building be maintained as a public community centre for twenty years; so if the proposal falls, presumably the future of the centre is at risk.

The men with chainsaws will be moving in on the cherry tree imminently (early next week?).

Here is a link to the facilitators' report:
 http://jackpot.uk.net/NOF_meeting_Full_write_up.doc

That's a 300Kb Word document - sorry (and that's partly why I didn't upload it). If someone wants it converted to Open Office (or plain text), I may be able to do that. However the document contains pie charts and tables that might not make it through the conversion process.

MrDemeanour
- e-mail: mrdemeanour@jackpot.uk.net

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

What are we trying to achieve?

30.09.2004 08:00

There are loads of factual inaccuracies in this which I will clear up when I've had a coffee, but...

What are all these threads actually trying to achieve? There are some points about
a) the existence of the kitchen
b) the siting of the kitchen
c) a tree
d) the future of the community centre

and I'm not sure we're looking genuinely at anything useful around any of them.

I know this is a discussion board and it's up to people to just discuss what they like, but pooling ignorance on this matter doesn't seem to be a very productive use of such a great resource.

becky
mail e-mail: lazorraguapa@hotmail.com


more kitchens

30.09.2004 14:01

I've heard of other people getting new kitchens but wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read about it on Indymedia. I, myself, was thinking of getting a new chair, possibly, a stool - Hey i might even make one. I could get some bits of scrap and have a truly autonomous recycled chair. I don't like shopping in Argos. I don't like shopping full stop. But then ig I had a nice chair maybe I would just sit. And write rubbish. is this a fucking newswire or what.

ps we have all your IP addresses logged.

The FIT


Angry at last comment

03.10.2004 16:18

This is obviously not someone's domestic kitchen, but an important community resource for the people of East Oxford. By discussing it on indymedia, a process which has been hidden from many people in the community is being aired openly. I, for instance, who regularly attend functions at EOCC, was not fully informed of the two sides of the argument. By reading indymedia, I am getting more information.

There is a tension currently between the development of a local indymedia, which should deal with precisely these issues of local interest, and the fact that every news article is currently archived on indymedia uk. I understand that this will be resolved soon, by letting posters choose if they want their articles to go national or not. I assume the above contributor is not from Oxford, and therefore it's not of much interest to you. But what is absolutely outrageous is your last comment about "IP addresses being known". Well, as a moderator of this site, let me respond. If you try to stifle legitimate discussion on this imc with such sinister threats in future, your comments will be hidden straight away.

richarddirecttv


But where do we go from here...

06.10.2004 13:57


There seems to be a lot of people saying that they feel like they do not have a good understanding of the arguments which have gone on with the development of the kitchen and other things at EOCC. This is fine, particularly where people are local to the centre, but I wanted to make a couple of points.

The first is that it is down to the Management Committee to involve the members and let people know what the plans are. It is also the responsibility of the local community to get involved with this committee and recognise that they are volunteers with limited time and experience. Any member of EOCC can join the MC - for all those people who claim to be so interested in the kitchen I would suggest you do this. There are some posts on Indymedia which are from MC members and I would suggest that these do not represent the facts and discussion which has gone on so far and as such are somewhat mischievous and unhelpful; ref my post on the ‘cherry tree’ thread. It is the MC’s duty to support EOCC in achieving its charitable aims and objectives, not to push their own agenda.

The second is that just because you as an individual did not hear about something does not automatically mean that there was no consultation. The kitchen proposal was originally written in 1998, and, during the main consultation period in 2000-2001 there were numerous meetings which involved all the on-site partners and user groups as well as street work with the wider community. One of the main issues with the kitchen has always been the amount of time it has taken to actually get going, and the fact that the constituency of people using EOCC changes over time, with people expecting to be brought up to speed on all the issues.

As I said before, debate is good but I am unclear as to what people want to achieve with this discussion. Building work will be going ahead in the next week or so, and if this doesn’t happen, NOF (the main project funders) will pull the money. This will have disastrous consequences for EOCC and possibly the Cowley Rd as a whole.

If people are as concerned about EOCC as they claim to be on this issue I suggest you get involved with managing it in the future.


becky
mail e-mail: lazorraguapa@hotmail.com


Join the EOCA!

07.10.2004 11:36

I'd like to say thanks to Becky for her comments on this thread. One of the reasons this is being discussed on indymedia so late in the day is that oxford imc didn't even exist when the kitchen development process started, so there's a certain amount of catching-up to be done. The fact that controversy still rages about the kitchen means that it will still be debated here, even if the building work is a fait accompli.
As Becky says, the best thing for East Oxford residents who care about this and other aspects of the way EOCC is run is to join the East Oxford Community Association. For the registration form, see my post on the newswire:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2004/10/298705.html

richarddirecttv


Keeping the EOCC going

07.10.2004 16:12

Surely the most important thing about the EOCC kitchen is the risk of losing all the funding that has been made available for it and, as a consequence, risking the future of the EOCC itself. The EOCC has not been doing fantastically in recent months/years and wouldn't it be quite a shame to miss an opportunity to vitalise it? Which, I presume, the kitchen is meant to do.

The cherry tree: a bit of a red herring surely? I don't wish to be callous, but Oxford is hardly a barren concrete jungle, so if there is a good reason for it surely one tree can be sacrificed?

Lack of consultation: I have no idea about the real facts of this, but there seems to have been consultation done at some point, but just it noiw seems an awful long time ago. Unfortunately public capital projects invariably take a long time and, as someone else posted here, you will never get 100% support for a project.

Losing space for classes: This is obviously really bad if it seriously and negatively effects the EOCC's income, but I don't believe renting space to instructors of classes constitutes the best use of community space. I don't want to be flippant, but space for classes should not be all the EOCC is about. The kitchen, IF (and that's a big if) utilised properly could be a real asset to the community of East Oxford. Such an opportunity should not be thrown away lightly.

The funding: apparently this could be forfeited if work doesn't start soon which would be a big shame. More importantly though, the future of the EOCC is assured for 20 YEARS once the kitchen has been funded and built. If East Oxford lost its community centre, whether now or years down the line, I think we'd all be pretty gutted whether we wanted a community kitchen or not.

Ruth

Ruth
mail e-mail: froggitt@hotmail.com


trees and kitchens

07.10.2004 22:44

This discussion seems to be concentrating on the EOCC and the effects of the kitchen. The loss of a tree and the extension to the building affects us all in the neighbourhood. Many of us knew nothing about the plans to change the character of the building and the neighbourhood and many still don't. Lots of buildings on the Cowley Road have changed over the years. Spare a thought for us residents who have lived here for years and will continue to do so when planners, officers and politicians move on!

annie


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