““It genuinely gives me so much hope for the future”
We’ve just hit another milestone for Railway Gardens – the end of the first year of our current National Lottery Grant. In the last twelve months 7,218 people have taken part in an activity or event at Railway Gardens, volunteers have given over 1000 hours of their time, and many, many more people have popped in to enjoy the space.
But numbers only tell part of the story; how does our community really feel about Railway Gardens?
Over the summer we invited you to take part in our ‘community check in’. This is a survey we run every two years to help us understand the needs and experiences of our community. Nearly two hundred and fifty of you responded – thank you so much, and congratulations to Emma, Terrence, and Rebecca who were the winners of the prize draw!
Over the last couple of months we’ve crunched the numbers and worked through your comments and feedback, and today we wanted to share some key findings with you, as well as some of the ways we’re acting on them
🤔 Firstly, how do people feel about our local area of Splott, Adamsdown, and Tremorfa?
This year’s survey showed a marked drop in people’s satisfaction with our local area.
In 2023 87% of you told us that you felt that the local area is friendly and well connected; this has dropped enormously down to 46%, lower even than when we asked the same question in 2020 when 57% agreed. The figure for the UK as a whole is 61% (2023 – 2024 figure)
It’s not just a sense of community connection that’s fallen; across every category people are less happy with the local area.
15% of respondents feel the area is unsafe, down from 18% in 2023.
55% of people feel there’s lots to do locally, down from 65% in 2023.
40% feel there’s enough green space compared to 52% in 2023
And just 27% feel that people locally care about the planet, compared with 56% in 2023
Why do you feel this is? The cost of living crisis and media messaging that stokes division in communities may be two possible reasons. With regards to crime and safety, the picture for our area is complex; crime rates in Splott have decreased consistently over the last four years and yet we feel less safe in our day to day experiences. We’d love to hear your thoughts on why we’ve seen this shift in perceptions of the local area – you can share them with us using the form at the end of this post.
📍What do people feel good about in the local area - and what could be improved?
“When diverse people know each other and really care for each other and have great natural spaces to get together… I believe communities thrive.”
Despite the drop in satisfaction with the local area, there’s a lot of positivity too: many of you described how welcoming the area feels, and a strong sense of community spirit and pride. One source of this pride is local organisations and grassroots community activity, and it’s clear that the work of local groups and volunteers is really valued.
Four really strong areas for improvement also emerged. Local people want to see:
- More accessible public social spaces and activities;
- Lower rates of crime and anti-social behaviour;
- Less litter, fly tipping, and dog poo;
- More and better managed green spaces.
These responses were backed up when we asked which issues mattered most to you. The following priorities for our area were chosen by 25% or more respondents:
- Having good parks, green spaces, and access to nature
- Having a friendly, well-connected community
- Making sure people of all cultures and backgrounds are safe and welcome here
- Having good activities and spaces for children and young people
- Crime and anti-social behaviour
- Litter, fly tipping, and dog poo
- Having good shops and social spaces
- Having good travel and transport
🌻How do people engage with Railway Gardens?
“It brings people in the area together. I’ve met lots of new people I didn’t know previously.”
From your responses we were able to learn that 66% of Railway Gardens participants come from the immediate area of Splott and Adamsdown. 26% come from further afield in Cardiff, 5% come from the Vale of Glamorgan, and 3% come from elsewhere.
One thing that was really interesting to learn was that word of mouth is our most powerful method for helping people discover Railway Gardens, which is amazing news! Thank you to everyone who has told someone else about the Gardens. After this, facebook, our website, and walking past and seeing it are the most common ways people discover us.
We were also interested in how people are most likely to engage with Railway Gardens:
85% of our community have attended a workshop, community meal, or celebration.
45% have spent time in the gardens with friends or family outside of planned activities
38% have visited a business on site
30% attend a regular group or meetup
And 28% have volunteered with the project at least once!
An amazing 11% have used Railway Gardens to hold their own activity, group, or event!
🪴 What has changed for people as a result of coming to Railway Gardens?
“it has opened so many doors for me to lead on a group and taught me leadership skills I can put forward into my other commitments”
59% say it has made them feel more connected to their community
59% say it has improved their wellbeing
48% of people say they’ve tried or learned something new
46% say they’ve found out about other local services or opportunities
27% say they’ve changed something in their life to care for the planet
💚 Does Railway Gardens make a difference in the wider community?
“It makes a big difference. Not even talking about all the great events and services, but for people to know they have somewhere to go, a third space, is so important.”
93% of you say it makes a positive difference. The themes that came out of your responses were…
- It helps build connection and belonging
- It offers a safe, welcoming, and inclusive space within the community
- It’s a place for learning and developing skills
- It helps people care for the planet
- It contributes to wellbeing and quality of life
The remaining 7% of comments were either suggestions for improvements (more on this below) or along the lines of ‘not sure’ or ‘I don’t know.’
Finally, we wanted to find out how you feel about our current programme of events. The short answer is: most people feel positive about most aspects! Our most popular activities are:
- Wellbeing and creative events
- Skills workshops and skill sharing
- Opportunities for swapping and sharing
- Suppers, lunches, and food based activities
- Gardening and food growing
- Social groups and meet ups
Some of these results felt surprising to us! For example, skills workshops and skill sharing was rated our second most popular type of activity, yet these sessions are some of our worst attended, to the extent that we often have to cancel due to low numbers. We’d love to explore this more: please do share your ideas in the form below if you have any thoughts about why we’re seeing this discrepancy.
🌼 What could we be doing better at Railway Gardens?
“Some outreach into local spaces like playgroups, schools and the clubs. It can feel like a hub for the middle class people of Splott (I know you are more inclusive than that, but sometimes it feels like there’s a split generally) and finding ways to broaden that would be great.”
We really appreciated reading your helpful, constructive and practical comments. We were able to see seven clear themes in the feedback you gave us:
- More and better publicity (more on this below!)
- Improve the timing and accessibility of events
- Offer more of everything: events, activities and workshops
- Conduct more outreach and community engagement to grow a more inclusive community
- Make physical improvements to the site, including making it greener and more accessible
- More food! More community meals, food festivals and cookery.
- More signage and information about wildlife, what is growing, and how it’s grown
We’ve shared more below about how we plan to act on these.
👍 What would you like to see more of at Railway Gardens?
“Sharing food activities should be more. We can share food and culture from different countries.”
WOW, we were blown away by incredible responses to this question! We received 159 different ideas for new or different activities you’d like to see at the Gardens. The top two categories of activity were…
1. More opportunities to learn practical skills:
When it came to practical skills, swapping things and learning from each other was a common theme: As we mentioned above this is a challenging one for us as these sorts of events are some of our least well attended. A number of you mentioned how frustrating it has been to lose the library of things.
2. Activities for families and children:
More support for new parents was a popular choice of family activity, with suggestions such as breastfeeding support, sling and nappy libraries, and other parents support groups.
3. Creative and cultural activities:
You’d like to see more arts and crafts, open mic nights, performances, and creative groups.
4. Nature and gardening activities:
You’d also like more opportunities to connect with nature and learn growing skills; bat watching, foraging, planting for pollinators, and container gardening are just a few of the ideas mentioned.
5. Wellbeing, mindfulness and movement activities. Examples of suggestions included mindfulness, yoga, clubbercise, singing, a community sauna and sessions around climate anxiety.
6. Activities that boost community inclusion and cohesion. Some for the things you like to see include language practice, opportunities to meet local councillors/ council staff, a local services fair, space to talk about local issues, and ways for people to offer/ access peer support.
🔮 And finally… we asked for you to think ahead a little and help us explore what the future of Railway Gardens should look like.
“I am interested that this should really respond to what the community needs / wants. I think there’s something about continued / extended building community capacity in here too which might open up these options more.”
Right now it costs around £150,000 to run Railway Gardens each year. If this figure feels high to you, we don’t blame you, as so many of our costs are a bit hidden; the background stuff that we need to do to keep the space open and safe. This includes all our basic running costs such as utilities, insurance, IT, waste, security. It also includes site maintenance and repair, and materials and resources to run activities and our a core team of four part time staff from Green Squirrel (66 hours a week between us) plus a small team of freelancers to help run specific activities.
Around two thirds of our running costs are for staff, the rest is for everything else. Right now we cover these costs from grant funding, and we also bring in some money through venue hire but in the future it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to fund the project in the same way: Funds are shrinking, more organisations are ‘competing’ for them, and funders don’t like to find existing projects once they are up and running like we now are.
So our question for you was this: What do you feel would be the best future for Railway Gardens in this situation?
Your responses to this question were so helpful – thank you. The majority of you – 63% – felt the best solution was for more of the day to day running of the project led by volunteers, but for Green Squirrel to maintain a level of staffing to support the volunteer team. 8% of you, or 12 people, said they’d be able and willing to help run the project day to day, while 19% of you said you’d offer your professional skills to help run the project, and 33% of you said you’d run or help run events.
8.5% of you felt this arrangement with volunteers and staffing would work, but that another organisation should take over from Green Squirrel. While no specific organisations were named, start ups, small local businesses, universities and partnerships of local organisations were suggested as possibilities.
One really great suggestion that came up a few times was to upskill and empower our volunteer team to take on leadership roles within the project.
And 21% would like to see the project entirely handed over to community leadership or ownership.
🗣️ You told us: we’re listening
Your feedback was so helpful and thorough that we’ve been able to see some clear ways forward. Some of the short term actions we’re taking are:
- We’re using your guidance to help make decisions about which groups and projects to prioritise when free community use of the space is available;
- We’ve commissioned new information signage for the front of the site to provide a warmer welcome and featuring community languages – look out for this before the end of the year!
- We’re building more creative and cultural events into next year’s programme – keep your eye on St David’s Day!
- We’ve created three new lead volunteer roles to focus on volunteer communications, wellbeing, and supporting our advisory group, the RG Circle (check them out here and apply if you like the sound of them)
- In June next year we’ll hold a series of accessible ‘town hall’ meetings (if you can think of a better name please share it with us!) for anyone who is interested to explore the idea of community leadership for Railway Gardens further. Please click here to receive more info about these closer to the time.
- We’ve created a monthly training programme for our volunteers based around planning and running events – this is also open to non-volunteers for a donation. Find out more and sign up here.
- We’re working on how to create more free use of the space in evenings for groups who want to lead on community events that match the needs identified in the survey. We’re also ring-fencing more use of the space for volunteers and advisory group members to work on projects.
- We’re working on an exciting two day ‘Festival of Swapping and Sharing’ for 2026 – watch this space!
- We’re running a ten month gardening course in 2025 – more info coming soon.
🌸 Some of the things we’re already doing
Whenever we run a survey a big learning for us is that lots of information about our work and activities just aren’t reaching you – more on this below! So we wanted to mention some of the things you asked for that we already offer, or that community members or others groups are offering at Railway Gardens:
- Mother and baby group: The Honeycomb run a free stay and play group plus a toy library every Tuesday, 12:30pm
- Work with Oasis: We’ve been working with Oasis in various ways since 2019, and a number of Oasis clients and team members are part of our community. Right now we’re really lucky to have specific funding to work more closely with them and we’re exploring the most effective ways to do that – as always we welcome your comments. We’ve also received training with Oasis to help us understand how to better support people seeking sanctuary in our community.
- Get a facebook page: You can find us here! We’re also on instagram here.
- Gardening opportunities: We run a free gardening club once a month, led by our community gardener Helen. No gardening experience is needed and it’s a great way to learn and get hands on. This takes place on Saturdays, please see our programme for dates.
- Seed swaps: We run a free community seed swap every February – all welcome! In 2026 this will take place on February 14th. We also have a seed library but it’s a bit tucked away so we’re exploring ways to make it more accessible.
📢 Publicity: What is going on, and how do we fix this?!
Your number one suggestion for improvement, beating all others by a mile, was ‘DO SOME PUBLICITY!’. This presents us with a challenge as – from our perspective – we’re doing quite a bit. Here’s what we do right now:
- We post several times a week on facebook and instagram, and we share on local facebook groups
- We have printed flyers for our activities on site – we definitely don’t get them out into the community as much as we’d like though due to a need for more helpers to do this.
- We have a big noticeboard outside our front gate
- We have a monthly email newsletter
- We email around sixty local organisations with our activities every fortnight
- We have a website with our programme on
- We have a google profile
- We try to take any media opportunities we can!
However, it doesn’t matter whether we’re doing it, it matters whether you’re seeing it or not – and right now it very much looks like you’re not! We want to try and crowdsource some solutions. If you have any thoughts on the following then we’d love to hear from you, using the form at the bottom of this page:
- Why do you think people aren’t seeing our online and offline promotional materials?
- How could we improve what we’re already doing?
- What else could we try (time and budget allowing)?
🌩️The challenges we face, and how you can help
Finally, we want to share a bit about the things that make it difficult – perhaps impossible – to make all the improvements you’ve suggested, and bring all your wonderful ideas to life.
The big one, obviously, is money. We’re so lucky at the moment to be in the second year of a four year grant, so right now our staffing and running costs are covered, but these cover a very specific set of activities and don’t leave a lot of wriggle room to do extra.
The second one is time. The classic image of a duck, calm(ish) on the surface but paddling frantically below is a perfect fit for the day to day of running Railway Gardens. We never could have predicted the number of plates that need to be kept spinning for us to operate safely, legally, and well, plus there’s always the unpredictable: the blocked toilets, the break-ins and so on! There is so much stuff that we’d love to be able to do – such as more community outreach – but like most small organisations we work at capacity.
And a third one is the site itself. We don’t own the land Railway Gardens is built on, we lease it from the council, and that comes with some quite strict rules about what we can and can’t do on it, where we can put stuff, even things like the kind of pathing we can have.
Despite these challenges we’ve achieved so much together already, and with you help we can continue to make Railway Gardens work for more people. Here’s how you can help us:
Give your time
To make some progress on your feedback we urgently need additional volunteers who can give their time regularly, including on weekends, or who are able to take on lead roles. Could you join the team?
Come to our events
This one is such a biggie: if you value the kind of things we do at Railway Gardens please do come along! As we explored in our recent blog post, showing up and getting involved is one of the greatest investments you can make in the future of the project. Find out what’s on.
Help fund our work
Making a regular donation as a Squirrel Supporter, making a one off donation, or supporting us when you shop online (at no extra cost to you) through our easyfundraising scheme – it all adds up and helps make us more sustainable. Another way to support us is to book us – many people don’t realise that we offer consultancy, workshops, coaching, and content creation.
Hire our space
Railway Gardens really relies on the income we get from venue hire; booking our space for your event, group, or meeting is an incredible way to support us.
Steal the ideas from the survey!
If you’d like to see something specific – such as a messy play group, a film night, a language cafe or anything else – at Railway Gardens please consider whether you could pick up the idea and run with it yourself. We offer free trial periods for people to use the space and test out ideas, then we can talk about whether we can offer you free or discounted room hire. We can also support with advice on things like getting insurance or funding for your activity, running it safely, and promoting it.
🙏 Finally , thank you for being part of this process - let's keep the conversation going
We appreciate this has been a long read but we feel it’s really important to share with you. As we move forward, and consider the future for Railway Gardens beyond large multi-year grants, it’s more important than ever to listen to you, learn from you, and share an honest picture of how things are going. We hope you’ll stay involved and be part of our story in 2026!
