Our residents at Lok Fu Gardens’ in Cheetwood, Manchester saw their street turned into a sports and games zone this weekend as they hosted an Active Street event in partnership with Manchester City Council, MCRActive and Strong Roots.

The whole street was closed to traffic so that sports and community stalls could be set up and enjoyed and included:

  • Pop-up badminton
  • Basketball
  • Swingball
  • Giant Jenga
  • Giant Connect4
  • Giant Noughts & Crosses
  • Hula-hooping
  • Chalk games
  • Bouncy Castle
  • Face Painter
  • Flower and hanging basket planting

The event was supported by Greater Manchester Fire Rescue and Service, Greater Manchester Police, NHS, Biffa and Manchester City Council Neighbourhood Services and The National Trust, who ran gardening activities and gave each household plants and flowers. 

About Lok Fu Gardens

Lok Fu Gardens is home to many YHG residents and is rich in diversity with families from different faiths and cultures including Black Afro Caribbean, White British, South Asian, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, and Jamaican.

It was actually the residents who first approached Strong Roots and our Customer Connect Panel then agreed to give £1,000 from our It’s In Your Hands community funding initiative.

One of our Customer Services Committee members, Anver Zeria, is also involved and says, “Strong Roots is a not-for-profit organisation whose aim is to provide community solutions to enhance social understanding and cohesion which is so important in places where there are diverse backgrounds coming together. They also try to reduce the fear of crime and even crime itself, by building stronger relationships between neighbours so they look out for one another more, so I am thrilled to see this event come together.

Active Streets, which is run by MCRActive also runs other community events such as recycling and street cleaning, hosting 14 different events last year.