The Land of the Fanns is able to offer the workshops run by Locality as it has received a grant from a partnership between Co-op’s charity, the Co-op Foundation, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The ‘Space to Connect’ funding will be used to deliver community workshops to locate and record local heritage sites and valued green spaces, discuss how best to use them and give them better protection for the future. Space to Connect was launched in June 2019, at the same time as Co-op’s Endangered Spaces campaign to protect, support and improve 2,000 community spaces by 2022.

The Land of the Fanns is one of 57 organisations across England to receive a grant from the £1.6 million partnership, designed to help communities tackle loneliness by improving and protecting local spaces that bring people together. Space to Connect follows commitments made in the Government’s Civil Society and Loneliness Strategies, published in 2018, to help create sustainable community hubs and spaces where they are most needed. Funding also builds on the Co-op Foundation’s work to strengthen community spaces where people can connect and co-operate.