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How much do you love your neighbourhood? Enough to fund its development through your own cold hard cash? Nope, we’re not talking about council tax. The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is asking Londoners to pitch to improve their local areas through a crowdfunding scheme.
That means if you have a lido that needs restoring, a community garden you want to reopen or a statue of Wiley that needs erecting, you can start a crowdfund for a chance to attract financial pledges not just from the public, but from the Mayor's office. The selected schemes could receive up to £50,000.
One of the most high profile beneficiaries so far is Well Street Market in Hackney, which relaunched last year after the local traders’ association raised more than £80,000 on the Spacehive platform, including £20,000 from the Mayor. The money went towards a live music stage, wifi and a ‘Students Market’ – a space where young people can produce and sell their own goods.
For this Mayoral term, The London Economic Action Partnership (LEAP) – which is the Local Enterprise Panel for London – is allocating £4 million in funding to pledge, but there’s going to be a whole lot of Londoners looking for a slice of that money pie. According to Sadiq, they’re after the most ‘most innovative projects Londoners can come up with’ though they also have to be ‘deliverable and have the support of local people’. Sounds like a giant slip ‘n’ slide might be off the table, then. But we can dream.
Do you have a London passion project you think deserves funding? Find out how to submit your idea here.
Photo: Chris Beckett/Flickr.
In other news, a fifth of London's grassroots music venues could be facing closure.