Skip to main content

MISSION

Vital Kingston is a community-led social enterprise. Our mission is to put the heart into our community by ensuring that our residents, our visitors and our workers, have and use a full range of informal places for social interaction, by day and by night.

 

VALUES

So far, we have identified six values that characterise Vital Kingston:

  1. Community led
  2. Not for profit
  3. Champions for local residents, visitors and workers alike
  4. Individuality, independence
  5. Placemaking which puts people first.
  6. Synergy with progressive local businesses that are the lifeblood of the community

 

GOALS

So far we have identified three goals for our work:

GOAL 1
A short term goal of trying to influence what becomes of the former Borders (UK) book store and trying to broker a positive solution for the community.

GOAL 2
The longer term goal of engaging with stakeholders and supporting places for informal social interaction outside in the community both for pleasure and for work. One of the ways in which this can be done is by trying to incentivise landlords to give preference to a mixed use of space so that the town centre has a balance of amenities. Another way is to fundraise for support grants to extend the range and opening times of community amenities. Another is providing a structure for local business, especially small business, to feed into and draw from the placemaking process, thereby increasing their sustainability.

GOAL 3
Organising a calendar of our own ‘pop-up' events that help to build community spirit.

 

INSTRUMENTS

Three important instruments that we can use to achieve our goals and realise our Mission are:

Empowerment - Communities have been given the power to make a difference to our quality of life. We can and must use it. No one else will put the heart into our community for us. We will use that power to negotiate win:win solutions with stakeholders.

Managed Third Places - Special places which sustain the community, where there support for or work and life balance and in which we feel a sense of belonging.

Events Management - Organising and running community events, ploughing surplus funds back into achieving our goals.