Urban Space Community

The Community

Urban Space is a creative community of Christians based in the heart of Wakefield, West Yorkshire. The group meets to do morning office every morning before they start work. There are five of us in the community at the moment but we are looking at our community structure at the moment and hopefully there will be a number of people joining us in the near future.

Present community:

Mel Rogers, Ali Rowe, Faith Jones, Ru Telford, Ben Brown

One of the scriptures the community was founded on:

To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter.

Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
And will raise up the age-old foundations;
You will be called Repairer of Broken Walls
Restorer of Streets with Dwellings (Isaiah 58)

The work

Urban Space Community is a non-for-profit organisation that promotes:

Community Arts
For two years Urban Space has delivered a range of community arts activity in the Wakefield District including summer play schemes, youth theatres, work with vulnerable groups, arts installations and a range of evening events. The major projects have been:

Monday Nights at the Garden Room – For 18 months there has been a rolling programme of: story & poetry telling, acoustic music nights, arts talks & workshops, philosophy nights and creative writing. These sessions have been open to the general public and have had a good response from people all over Wakefield.
Heath Travellers Project – Urban Space has worked with both adults and children to produce an outside arts installation at the entranceway to the travellers’ camp. The installation consists of a mosaic floor, wall hangings and sculpture. Our development worker has been researching social need with the community and is now leading a fitness class, line dancing class and looking into a sustainable youth project.
New Hall Prison – Two visual artists have been working one day a week with offenders arriving at the prison. The work has provided creative activity for this vulnerable group who have just arrived in a new environment.
Fitzwilliam Youth Project – For a term Urban Space has worked as a facilitator with young people in Fitzwilliam. The younger group asked for taster sessions in both visual and performing arts whilst the older group decided to create a musical in ten weeks.
Creative Writing – Urban Space has delivered a range of workshops in the central Wakefield area including: adult creative writing, creative writing and illustration, script writing and film production.

Hospitality and Holistic Lifestyle
Urban Space currently runs a community café within the Theatre Royal and Opera House. The café serves wholesome, freshly prepared food and uses a wide range of fairly traded products.

The café provides a venue for our Monday night events and a home in Wakefield town centre where people can find out about the arts activity that we develop and be given advice.

Social Justice
As an organisation Urban Space has been the major partner in setting up the ‘Wakefield Fairtrade City Project’; a group that promotes a better deal for third world producers and is encouraging the council, retailers and business to stock and use these products. Urban Space as an enterprise is run in a socially just manner.