Roots, Reset and Radical Care: One Year Into Our Civic Partnership

Jul 27

7 min read

July 2026

"A little rest, a little reflection, a little ridiculousness - the perfect reset." - Naomi

A year ago this summer, Footwork and Platform Places formally joined forces, two teams becoming one stronger team of seven, sharing an office, an advisory group and a belief that neighbourhoods thrive when local people hold the power to shape them.

A year into our civic partnership, we wanted to mark the milestone by getting out of our usual context. We went to Totnes not simply to spend time together, but to spend time with people whose work embodies many of the questions we grapple with ourselves: how communities build ownership, how care becomes part of practice, how knowledge is shared, and how people keep going when efforts to create change don't succeed first time.

Here are our highlights.

Beginning with the Land

Our route to Radical Plant Folk took us forty-five minutes along the water and out of town, past happy swimmers and dappled light falling through the trees. The scenery did what good scenery does: it quietened us down, vast and glorious and a world away from the city we'd left that morning.

We reached a metal gate that opened onto rows of crops and a small hand-painted sign, Herb Garden This Way. It felt like arriving somewhere between a working garden and a small utopia, full of buzzing insects and quiet purpose.

There, we met Mariam, community herbalist, medical herbalist trainee, grower and mother. Sitting together over freshly infused water, she told us her story before leading us round the garden plant by plant, describing what each one does and how it heals. We also met Ilani, a local artist and Co-op member who runs workshops in the garden, including one with the inks she makes from flowers, vivid yellows we'd get to play with later. Between Mariam's plant knowledge, Ilani's natural dyes and herbalism books scattered around the space, it felt like a masterclass in learning by doing, candid and unhurried.

After the garden tour, we were sent off with a brief: sketch three things. Then sent out again, this time with a twist, patterns only, single line drawings, none of the colours we could actually see in front of us. It sounds like a small ask. It turned out to be one of the most freeing exercises of the whole trip, a reminder of how much creativity opens up when you take away the obvious choice, and how observation itself is a practice worth slowing down for.

Making Space for Rest

Fruit, hydration and local fudge carried us back toward the river on foot, and by the time we reached the water, the day had settled into something slower. Night one ended with a team picnic by the riverbank, joined by our Footwork Chair, Bridget, and Platform Places co-founder Frances, ducklings testing their nerve against our plates, an impromptu improv session as the light dropped. It was the kind of evening that reminds you why the people around the table matter as much as the work itself.

Day two carried that same instinct forward: a run and a wild swim for some, a long breakfast for the rest of us, then a wander that ended somewhere we didn't expect, a community area holding a school, a venue, a park and The Somewhere Sauna, Dartington, all within a few seconds of each other.

What stayed with us wasn't just the sauna, but how deliberately the whole space had been shaped to hold that much, learning, gathering, play, rest, all fitted onto that one piece of land, largely built by hand. It was a good reminder of what's possible when a community decides a modest, overlooked space is worth the effort, rather than waiting for a bigger one, or treating rest, learning and gathering as things that need separate places at all.

We spent an hour there properly resting: sauna, cold bath, salt scrub, poetry read in the sun. It reframed something for us. Rest isn't a departure from this work, it's infrastructure for it, built deliberately, the same way that sauna was, out of very little, on purpose. The people doing this work well aren't sustained by willpower alone.

Practising Collective Ownership

Feeling fresh, then came the visit we'd all been looking forward to. We sat in the garden and got comfortable while Bex presented a washing-line projector and told us the story of building their Co-op: finding the right location, securing the funds to make it safe, and structuring it so that every member holds an equal vote. It was fully, deliberately community-minded from the ground up, and hearing it laid out so plainly, the scale of what they'd built really hit home.

We toured the buildings and heard their history, meeting the people who'd generously opened their home to us for the day, people with a genuine stake in the place, not just permission to be in it. Lunch, prepared by everyone, was eaten outside.

We took a moment there for team appreciation too, a small but mighty team, and a year into our civic partnership, one we don't take for granted.

Then we split into task forces, cooking, gardening and DIY,. work that had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with upkeep, the unglamorous, ongoing labour that collective ownership actually asks for once the founding story's been told. As table and door knobs were sanded down and painted blue, It struck us that governance isn't only the equal vote, it's also who turns up to paint the door.

Tasks done, we sat for a family dinner, joined by Co-op members and Aunty. Plates and drinks passed around the table, including Bex's homemade elderflower champagne, no agenda, just people who'd built something together choosing to sit around a table as a result of it.

Later that evening, a live show from Palestinian hip-hop artist Tamer Nafar at a local grassroots music venue, The Barrel House Ballroom, with opening support coming from a Totnes-based hip hop group. A beautiful way to close a beautiful day.

Learning From What Didn't Happen

After breakfast on our last morning, we headed back to Totnes station, not to leave yet, but to meet Frances at Atmos, the disused former Dairy Crest site right beside the platform.

Walking around the edge of the site, she told us its story. Nearly fifteen years ago, the community came together to bring the building into community ownership. Years of negotiation followed, thousands of contributions from local people, a Community Right to Build Order, a referendum won overwhelmingly. By any measure, the community had done everything right. Arts Council backing was secured. The dream was within reach.

Then, overnight, the broker who'd helped them get that far brought a private buyer to the table. The deal was done. The community was locked out, not because the process failed, but because someone else in that transaction held more power and made a different choice.

Standing there, the rage and the unfairness of it were grounding, in the truest sense of the word. Years on, the building still sits empty while nature slowly grows up around it. It was a hard story to sit with, and an important one: doing the work properly, building consensus, winning the vote, none of it guarantees the outcome when the balance of power sits elsewhere. Frances was clear, this wasn’t a reason to stop, exactly the fuel that keeps the fight for community-owned spaces going.

From Loss to Possibility

We didn't end there. We walked into town to a community space the same organisation did succeed in securing, now a fully operating, genuinely buzzing community space. Through a small makers' market and exhibition at the front, into the courtyard for coffee, we heard the second half of the story, this time one of engagement leading to inspiration rather than loss.

That honesty, about what was lost and what was won, reignited something in all of us. It felt like the right note to end the trip on, not a tidy resolution, but proof that the fight is worth staying in.

What We Take Home

One last look round Totnes' independent shops (don't be surprised if we're all wearing Totnes clothing from now on), and then back to the station, this time to actually say goodbye.

We miss it already.

One year into working as one team across two organisations, this trip was a chance to do what we rarely make time for: space to see our own questions reflected back in other people's practice. How communities build ownership. How care becomes infrastructure, not an afterthought. How knowledge gets shared on its own terms. How people keep going when the outcome isn't the one they fought for.

None of it was theoretical. It's the same territory we work in every day, at Footwork and Platform Places, just seen from someone else's side of it. Community asset development, at its core, is a bet that ordinary people can hold and shape the places that matter to them, and this weekend was a reminder of what that bet actually looks like in practice: gardens that double as classrooms, saunas built by hand on land that’s occupied by other community spaces, a co-op run on one member, one vote, and a fifteen-year fight for a building that didn’t pay off. We're taking home a sharper sense of what care actually costs to build in properly, not as a gesture, and a steadier resolve for the moments when the work we're backing doesn't land the way anyone hoped. That's not a neat lesson to file away. It's something we'll keep testing against our own practice as the civic partnership moves into its second year.

"For me, this time of year is precious. It's a chance to come together as a team, take a well-earned breather, laugh (a lot), reflect and appreciate what we've navigated so far, and recharge for the next chapter of the year. A little rest, a little reflection, a little ridiculousness - the perfect reset." - Naomi

Here's to year one, and to everything still to come. Until next time, Devon.

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