We are in London at the Grenfell Health and Wellbeing Service.
It's a service that was
set up by the community and with the community in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire five
years ago.
Bola.
Fatima.
Lovely to meet you.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you.
Pleasure to meet you.
Welcome to Grenfell Health and Wellbeing.
So where we go now, where it says Grenfell Health and Wellbeing, that was actually disused.
Oh wow.
So when we got funding to to deliver a very
bespoke, specialist service to the Grenfell impacted, we renovated it it's now our community-led
service.
Initially we were funded to respond to a trauma, we use evidence based, in response to any
major trauma, so the 7/7 bombings, the London Bridge attacks, but what we quickly found
out is that it's a very diverse community and people deal with trauma differently.
Yes.
And rather than offer an individual approach, we now offer a very collective, holistic approach
to therapy and trauma recovery.
My son and his children lived on the 18th.
The agony of that night I think still haunts everybody, which is why in Grenfell we never
ever forget the reason why we're here.
You know, we never ever forget, because there's this reminder.
I also don't want my grandchildren to feel like victims, I want them to see that bad
things happen, but you can recover, you can heal.
So bereaved and surviving children, we have been coming together for five years now.
Each
year is different and we've seen the the hands on each canvas, each year, the hands get bigger,
because obviously they're growing.
We use a lot of art and creativity to remember together.
As part of the therapy?
As part of the therapy, so our service and Grenfell United have come together, to kind
of work with the children we've been doing this for five years now and each year there's
a canvas like this.
Oh hence the stamp?
Yes.
*General background chatter*
Inspired.
Genuinely, yeah.
Lovely to see you, and that's beautiful!
Bye!
Very nice to meet you I'm Nicholas.
Hello Nicholas.
I'm one of the Community Connectors.
I was a resident from Grenfell Tower and I lived
there for 33 years since 1984.
A long time.
And thankfully my wife and I got rescued from the tower, and we were quite late, and we
were
on the 19th floor and unfortunately after a few months my wife passed away so she's
number 72 as part of the Grenfell inquiry but yeah it was very difficult.
I've
been in therapy you know, I mean, the stuff that I've had to, the journey that I've
been I know that it works.
So it works for me and I understand that I needed
that but other people in the community that they, you know, they may need the service
but
they just don't know how to engage with it.
We go around the community we meet up with
people and they may, it's a little bit easier to talk to us.
We have outreach and and
other things, but that kind of to build those relationships is one to one.
We have a
main road called Ladbroke Grove the area and it's on each side we have different neighbourhoods.
It was a moment in British history, I mean people, you know, sometimes remember
where they when Princess Diana died, where they were they were.
I think is
what we're doing about engaging with the community going out to the community, saying that we're
here, we're visual, we're getting to know them,
they're getting to know us.
After the fire
the community came out and started writing, well there's millions of posters looking for
people, but then they came out and they've done this 'Wall of Truth' they painted it
up
themselves and put lots of information about the families and so it's quite a sacred
place, it's called the 'Wall of Truth'.
And actually my flat is where the wooden board is just
sticking
out so that's a 19th floor, so I don't have to measure or count how many floors that's
my floor.
You can tell.
I'm gonna miss it because it's coming down so.
But I don't know you've
seen the pictures of the horror of the night and what the our community witnessed on that
night was just horrific.
Al the memories, all the love, all the neighbourly, you know, get-togethers
is all within those four walls and yeah it's so it's going to be sad when
it's gone.
The sacred ground, so hopefully they'll probably do a in a memorial garden
just to remember.
We can't just let it disappear out of sight out of mind and then the next
generation won't even know what happened.
I'm Bola.
Nice to meet you Bola.
Good to meet you.
So we're going to come and join your group.
So what have you been growing?
Okay let's start, we start at the end if you want.
Let's start at the end.
Gardening is a great form of therapy and coming together as a community
it means all community members have the opportunity to come and have access to the garden
which brings us as people together.
So it helps break down the barriers that and stigma that might be in the community or out
there.
We've got strawberries.
Strawberries there.
As you can see.
That's coming up a lovely colour actually.
Beautiful colour!
Look!
Look it's got real flowers
That's great colour!
For me, I realised that we're all human beings no matter what, colour, race, or creed we
are, and gardening is
a great way for us to realise that life is just for a moment just like the plants and
just like ourselves, you know?
So, I've realised the opportunities that has come out of such
a sad situation, like the Grenfell fire, has given offers, the opportunity to have some
kind of healing, and it's all about healing
Wow thank you so much.
Made me quite emotion.
It's just so powerful.
I'm going to lose it now in your spinach.
Enjoy that spinach
Have some spinach, we will all have that spinach!
The blessing.
It's natures way.
Thank you very much.
Set against the backdrop of the unimaginable tragedy that the Grenfell fire was, I learned
today the importance of tapping into the strength that already exists in our communities.
Listen to the challenge, listen to the anguish, but listen with intentionality to actually
take people's stories and do something with it.