The Community Gateway story
Community Gateway is a flagship engagement project enjoying a long-term partnership with Grangetown residents and businesses since its launch in 2015.
This area in the heart of the capital is the largest electoral district and one of the most culturally diverse in Wales. Working with residents we saw and heard about their love for their community as well as their ambitions for its future, and identified nine themes for investment in future partnerships which have steered what followed. Read more about our projects.
The story of Grange Pavilion perfectly illustrates this work. We worked with the community to raise over £2 million to design and build the resident-led facility situated in Grange Gardens in the heart of this community. It now houses a café, coworking spaces, rooms to hire for community events and a biodiverse garden and green for play, health and wellbeing, and seasonal growing.
Achievements
Our work in Grangetown has created wonderful pathways between the university and community and, so far, has seen:
- 85 projects come to life (chosen from over 307 expressions of interest) and deliver lasting benefits for the community
- over 700 students from Business, Medicine, SOCSI and Architecture courses working on 35 ‘live’ teaching projects with over 200 students and graduates volunteering on Grangetown projects. You can meet our latest ambassadors here.
- collaborations with the 24 academic schools across all three colleges, and with our professional teams from Widening Participation, Careers and Employability, and Procurement and Estates who have helped develop career and enterprise pathways between the university and community
- work with over 30 sector partners, including Cardiff Council and Welsh Government
- a RIBA Research Trust funding award, a Cardiff University Celebrating Excellence award, a Leading Wales award, a National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement award, a CIPR Cymru Wales award and the inaugural international Professor Sir David Watson Award