Shining a light on the Mayor's Charity of the Year: Brickworks Community Centre

The new Mayor of Islington, Cllr Anjna Khurana, explains why she has chosen Brickworks Community Centre as her Charity of the Year 2024-2025.

Our amazing borough is made up of people with so many different stories and experiences. As Islington's new Mayor, it is and will continue to be a great honour over the next year to meet so many of them.

This incredible diversity is one of our greatest strengths, along with another old Islington tradition - we are a community that works with and for one another.

In keeping with this, my chosen charity for the year is Brickworks Community Centre. The work they do represents the very best of Islington and the heights we can reach when we work together.

Brickworks is a vibrant, multipurpose facility and friendly meeting place based in Crouch Hill, but open to everyone.

The centre offers an array of services supporting our community, ranging from a food bank, a nursery, stay-and-play sessions for under-fives, accessible yoga, after-school clubs, ballet classes, health and wellbeing workshops, a popular and fun lunch club for over-50s, and acts as a gateway to many other services in the borough.

I hope to shine a light on the vital services that Brickworks offers to our community - and how anyone and everyone can support its work.

In my first speech as Mayor, I stressed that at Brickworks the doors are open to all, no judgements, no questions, just support, care, and compassion.

My partnership with them will centre around building connections with residents to raise awareness of Brickworks and encourage wider communities to get involved.

Through this, we hope to grow volunteer numbers, donations, and use of the centre's services.

This partnership is already in full swing with joint Mayoral engagements planned soon, including events for Windrush Day, a Tranquil Health and Wellbeing Workshop Summer Party and the Brickworks Community Nursery Graduation Ceremony.

If you need help, Brickworks is there for you. At Brickworks, people come first and the staff are there to serve.

If you'd like to help Brickworks with its work, they will be glad to hear from you.

For further details on how to sign up as a volunteer, email: [email protected] or visit: https://hanleycrouch.org.uk/volunteering/.