A Viva Slough Column, by Vineet
The secret of happiness, they say, is something to do, something to love and something to hope for. For Slough, I would add one more: somewhere to meet.
Slough has plenty to do. Finding somewhere to do it together can be an endurance sport.
A community centre may look like a building with stackable chairs and a temperamental kettle. But what happens inside can be remarkable. An exercise class becomes a friendship group.
A coffee morning gives someone a reason to leave home. A youth activity offers somewhere to belong.
This is how community cohesion happens. Nobody ever made a lifelong friend by reading a community cohesion strategy: Across Slough, we have several good-sized community spaces, yet they remain largely underused. Every empty hall is a missed opportunity to bring neighbours together, give young people something worthwhile to do or make a lonely week more bearable.
We worry about isolation, inactivity and antisocial behaviour while places that could help tackle all three sit largely idle.
So, what is getting in the way?
First, some buildings were so uninviting, that they could use a wellbeing session more than the people arriving for one. They had the warmth and charm of a council tax reminder. Fortunately, colour, care and imagination can work wonders.
Viva Slough has helped transform Langley Pavilion. Wexham Parish Hall and Upton Lea Community Centre.This was achieved at minimal cost, with paint donations from Crown Paints and AkzoNobel and an army of corporate and community volunteers, including teams from Equinix, Barclay Bank and Tesco Mobile. Our Brush & Bloom project brings people together to improve places they share. Volunteers meet, laugh, learn and leave knowing they have done something useful for their town.
The best part has been the response from those using the refreshed spaces and those who helped transform them, especially the students who spent part of their summer painting. Alina Ansari an A-Level Stu-dent, said “I’ve completed 40+ volunteer hours over the years, but this one felt completely different. I left with new friendships and a real sense of belonging”.
There is satisfaction in improving a room, even if some of the improvement ends up on your trousers. A lick of paint will not solve every problem in Slough.
But put paintbrushes into enough willing hands and it is surprising what you can achieve. Freshly painted rooms, however, still need to be accessible.
The booking experience of Community Centre makes a modest community activity feel heroic. The council website says it aims to reply within five working days, and then the reply comes back to say they need at least five days of notice. In the age of TikTok and AI. 5 days is a lifetime.
We can take a virtual tour of Mars online. Yet finding out whether a hall in Slough is free next Thursday requires diplomatic correspondence.
I am sure the SBC staff are trying to do the best they can with the hand they have been dealt. It is the mammoth bureaucracy around them that needs to change.
Then there is price. A reason-able-looking charge can still exclude those who most need the space. Why not offer free or discounted off-peak sessions for activities with clear community benefits? One councillor wants to demonstrate the social value of giving community groups free access. Credit where it is due. I hope that type of practical thinking becomes the rule across the council benches rather than an exception.
We have started by painting the walls. Now we need the Council to tackle booking and affordable access.
Let us put the community back into the community centres.
