East Coast Community

East Coast Community (previously known as Placetalk) was a programme delivered by Lincolnshire Community and Voluntary Service (LCVS), in the Mablethorpe, Theddlethorpe and Withern communities and gave an opportunity for the local community to have a voice and take collective action to benefit themselves, their families and the whole community.

This programme received Community Investment Funding awarded to LCVS from the Theddlethorpe GDF Community Partnership. 

The programme aimed to gather over 1,000 conversations, in an informal and sometimes in-depth way, in various public spaces, to gather information of the challenges, experiences and positives in the communities of Mablethorpe, Theddlethorpe and Withern.

These conversations would identify themes which could then be fed into and discussed in various Community Advisory Groups, which were made up of equal numbers of professionals working in the area as well as members of the public.

It was used to encourage and empower local people to address the diverse nature and issues of neighbourhoods through the stories, experiences and phenomena that make each community unique, and connect into sources of support and additional resources to develop ideas and wishes for their community.

Questions we asked included:

“What do you like about your community?”

“What would you miss if it was no longer here?”

“What would you like to see changed?

“Do you see a way this could be changed?”

“How do you think you could help with this?” 

“What do you hope to see in the future?”

By having these conversations and being heard it will empower residents and visitors to access asset-based community development through the original 'Placetalk' model to enable local people to develop projects and explore issues on their terms.

This will help community groups become more visible and connect them into community development networking, funding and training opportunities as well as making sure that the value of small community groups and start up groups is recognised, capacity is enhanced, and local ambition is shared more widely to raise aspiration and increase community cohesion.

The statistics information graphic below shows how we achieved various programme goals. As our part in the programme has now concluded these are our final statistics.

Our team were present at the So Festival in Mablethorpe on Sunday 16th June 2024 and invited members of the community to come along and to take part in creating a large-scale graffiti art piece using spray paints. This was created with help from the street art professionals at iMAGESKOOL who we jointly hosted this with.

This Street Art wall is proudly on display at its first home in Lincolnshire Libraries in Mablethorpe for all to see, so why not pop over to take a look.

The slider below shows the wall before and after so you can see what a wonderful job all the community did in creating this.

Below is a selection of images that showcased the types of activities and projects that we assisted in.