Resource Centre

Who we are

The Resource Centre offers a wide range of practical support to community and voluntary groups.

We offer three main services:

• A well-equipped print room for design and production of newsletters, leaflets and flyers.
• Over 170 items of equipment for hire, ranging from badge machines to data projectors.
• Information and support on all aspects of organising and starting a group.

The Centre provides additional support to groups in areas of social housing, black and minority ethnic groups and those composed of disabled people. This work is responsive to requests from these groups and is based on resolving a practical issue they are facing.

Examples are: finding sources of funding and helping with funding applications; preparing a budget and keeping accounts; writing a constitution or getting charitable status; design of invitations, posters and newsletters.

The Centre is open to the public from 9am-4pm Monday to Friday (closed Wednesdays).

841 different groups visited the Resource Centre in 2017-18, and an average of 50 visits a week were made to the Centre. Our website was visited over 500,000 times during the year.

Aims and values of the Centre

The Resource Centre recognises that our society is structured in such a way that some people have more access to money, facilities and influence than others. People in communities with less of these things – whether we call them ‘socially excluded’, ‘marginalised’,  ‘discriminated against’ or ‘oppressed’ – often need to work much harder to achieve their aims. Meanwhile they often have the most pressing need to organise.

We aim to help redress this balance. We therefore give priority to these groups, and especially those of them that receive no help from other agencies, when providing our most time-intensive services: advice, training, examination of accounts and other practical support.

In providing specific support services for these priority groups, we aim to respond to the actual needs of groups, as they arise. While we are happy to pass on our experience of what has worked for other groups, and our knowledge of the law and the current preferences of funders, we take care not to impose our own agenda on any group.

We are aware at all times of the need for our expertise to be a resource that is on tap for the groups we work with, to use as they need it, not something that distorts or overrides their own aims and decisions.

We are committed to being led by the needs of our user groups, and our management committee is made up of, and elected by, volunteer activists from the communities we give priority services to:

• Areas of predominantly social housing
• Black and minority ethnic communities
• The disabled community

Our staff group is run collectively, with everyone receiving equal wages and playing an equal role in the organisation. We believe this maximises the skills and participation of all our workers, and is central to our provision of an efficient and flexible service.

At the heart of all our work are these key principles:

• Providing practical help for specific problems
• Being led by the needs of our user groups
• Supporting people who are working to transform their own communities
• Concentrating our efforts to provide support for grassroots volunteers, not paid professionals.