Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme

The Mayor of London's Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme provides expertise to help protect against threats to London's community and cultural spaces and has been directly supporting organisations working to save spaces at risk.

The programme is specifically aimed at those organisations that are at acute and immediate risk of losing the space they operate from. We provide one-to-one casework for organisations that meet our equity focused casework criteria. We also provide a range of online resources from organisations that do not meet the casework criteria but are at risk of losing their space.

Our one-to-one casework support includes:

• brokering relationships with local authorities or other partners
• providing advocacy letters and lobbying decision-makers
• dispute mediation and negotiation
• research and evidence for local needs and London-wide context
• securing planning obligations
• support with navigating the planning system
• representations for planning or consultations
• fundraising and campaign support
• capacity building
• business continuity and sustainability support
• organisational planning and governance

Eligibility requirements

To be eligible for support, your space should be used to deliver most or all of your organisation’s public-facing work. Please note that your private accommodation cannot be considered as a space.

We will review applications on a rolling basis against the priorities below.

We will prioritise spaces that are:

• led-by and/or serving communities historically excluded from accessing and securing space, including: Black, Asian and minority ethnic, children and young people, deaf and disabled people, LBGTQ+, low-income groups, older people and women-led groups
• contributing to community resilience by serving those most impacted by the COVID-19 crisis (including providing services to Londoners and protecting jobs)
• located in areas of London where there is a lack of, and demonstrated need for, this type of cultural or social infrastructure

In a situation where many applications have similar scores, we will prioritise spaces that match the criteria above and:

• are supporting the Mayor’s strategy for social integration
• are well-established in the local area
• have a turnover of less than £1 million per year
• are located in areas where the Civic Strength Index framework indicates public and social infrastructure is weaker
• are located in areas with high levels of deprivation according to English Indices of deprivation 2019