My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
Yes
I am 18 years of age or above, by the application deadline.
Yes
My organisation is a registered UK entity and has a London-based address.
Yes
My organisation is a non-profit (e.g. school, university, or local authority) — not a for-profit, which can only join as a partner.
Yes
If there is a for-profit organisation as a partner in my initiative, they work on a cost-recovery basis only.
Yes
My solution is implemented at scale, or if not, I have a clear business plan, a minimum viable solution (prototype, pilot, or proof of concept), evidence of access to a lease for the space you are leveraging, and evidence of work or impact in London within your coalition.
Yes
I am aware that, if I am submitting more than one application to a Challenge run by Ashoka and Go! London, only one of them is able to progress through the stages.
Yes
Are you an employee (and their children and grandchildren) of Ashoka or any of its respective affiliates and participating advertising and promotion agencies?
No
I have read and accepted the Challenge Terms & Conditions.
Yes
First Name
Anne
Last Name
Waugh
Pronouns
She/Her
Email address
I would like to receive notifications and updates about Go London!, Ashoka, Ashoka Changemakers, and other Ashoka opportunities.
1
Are you an Ashoka Fellow?
No
Are you applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow?
No
If you are applying from an organization founded by an Ashoka Fellow, please specify the name and organisation of the fellow below.
Lead Organisation Name
RollaDome All Skate
Year that you started/ registered your organisation
2010
Initiative Title
Reimagining Community Spaces for Sport, Skills and Opportunity.
My initiative is designed for and delivered in London
1
Website URL(s) or Social Media Handles
www.rolladome.org.uk
Initiative Stage
Scaling (You’re expanding impact to many new places or in many new ways)
Sectors/Themes: What topic does your project most directly relate to?
Children & Youth
Initiative Summary: Describe your initiative in one sentence
A partnership-led model transforming under-used community assets in Ealing into open-access youth hubs through shared stewardship, activating ‘dead time’ for sport, skills and belonging.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve and who will benefit the most from your solution? How close are you to the problem and/or community impacted?
Across Acton and Ealing, a structural misalignment exists between community assets and youth need. Many young people, specifically those who are NEET, excluded or navigating instability, require consistent, safe spaces during the day to build routine and trust. However, access to existing facilities is often conditional, time-limited or gated by referrals. Paradoxically, valuable assets like ‘Bollo Brook Youth Centre’ and ‘Acton Gardens Community Centre’ sit under-utilised during these critical weekday hours. The problem is not a lack of infrastructure, but a failure of access models. Current "venue hire" systems treat community spaces as transactional assets rather than social anchors. This leaves high-need youth locked out of safe spaces precisely when they need them most, forcing them into unsupervised environments. We are intimately close to this issue. As a provider embedded in West London for 17 years, we daily witness young people who are motivated to engage but are blocked by appointment-based systems. They do not need another short-term intervention; they need a consistent "Third Space" that bridges the gap between the street and formal institutions. The current system fails to align the availability of space with the reality of young people's lives.
Your approach: How are you/ will you addressing the problem outlined above? How does your solution unlock or reimagine access to spaces for sport and physical activity? What role do landowners, local authorities, or other decision-making stakeholders play in your approach? We'd love to know about the origin of your idea, and what was your "aha" moment" that led you to take action?
We address this by replacing "transactional hire" with "shared stewardship." Our solution does not build new infrastructure; it unlocks the dormant potential of what already exists. We have negotiated a strategic partnership with Ealing Council and local landowners to activate under-used weekday daytime hours (9:00 am–3:00 pm) at Bollo Brook Youth Centre, establishing it as an open-access "Anchor Space" for sport, employability and mentoring. This connects to Acton Gardens Community Centre, which functions as a flexible "Hub" for structured training and enterprise. This model removes financial barriers to entry for us (no hire costs) and access barriers for youth (no appointments). Landowners provide the space and flexibility; RollaDome provides the activation, safeguarding and progression pathways. Our "aha" moment came from observing the cycle of youth being referred between fragmented services while community buildings stood empty during the day. We realised the solution wasn't to secure funding for a new building, but to reimagine the governance of existing ones. By aligning "dead time" in buildings with the "unstructured time" of NEET youth, we create immediate value for both the community asset and the young person.
Collaboration with young people and the community: In what ways does your initiative engage young people and community members closest to the problem? What role do they play in building the solution you deliver?
This initiative is not service delivery to young people; it is activation with them. The "Open Access" model was directly co-designed with our youth cohort, who consistently reported that "appointment-based" services felt punitive and transactional. They demanded a space that offered consistency without conditionality, a place to belong before they were ready to perform. Young people are active contributors to the solution. At Bollo Brook, participants co-manage the space during daytime hours, taking ownership of equipment maintenance, peer mentoring and session planning. This shifts their identity from "at-risk service users" to "community stewards." Our tiered progression pathway allows young people to move from participants to volunteer coaches and paid sessional workers, directly shaping the delivery for the next cohort. The initiative is deeply rooted in the local ecosystem. We do not operate in a silo; the space is a collaborative platform shared with local youth providers, tenant associations and regeneration partners (London Development Trust). By positioning the youth voice at the center of the stewardship agreement, we ensure the space evolves in real-time response to community tension or need, rather than relying on static, top-down programming. This collaboration restores the "Community" in Community Centre.
Potential for/Evidence of Impact: How do you imagine your initiative will make a difference in unlocking spaces for and access to physical activity and sport so far? If you have already implemented it, what difference have you made so far? What is the impact your initiative has had , and or what impact do you envision having in the future?
We project engaging 200+ distinct young people annually, with a core cohort of 50 NEET/at-risk individuals supported into sustained education, employment or training (EET) pathways. Early Evidence: Our pilot work in Ealing demonstrates that "sport as a hook" works. We have already transitioned over 40 young people from casual skating participants into accredited leadership training and employment within our own provision. This initiative scales that success by removing the bottleneck of venue availability. Dual-Level Impact: 1. Human Impact: For young people, the impact is a restoration of routine and trust. Short-term, we measure increased physical activity minutes and reported wellbeing (WEMWBS). Long-term, we track hard outcomes: accreditation achieved, CVs built and entry into the workforce. 2. System Impact: For landowners and the Council, the impact is the revitalisation of dormant assets. We turn empty halls into vibrant, supervised hubs, reducing anti-social behavior in the immediate vicinity and increasing the "Social Return on Investment" (SROI) of the building. Future Vision: We envision this as a blueprint for "Spatial Justice" in London. By proving that a low-cost, shared-stewardship model delivers higher social value than commercial hire, we aim to influence council policy on asset management, unlocking a network of safe spaces across the capital for the next generation.
Innovation: What is different about your initiative compared to other solutions that are already out there? How is your approach original and innovative?
This initiative is innovative because it challenges the dominant commercial model of community asset management. Most spaces operate on a "pay-to-play" hire basis, which excludes grassroots organisations and forces provision into short, funded windows. Our approach disrupts this by establishing a "Social Lease", trading rental income for social outcomes and asset activation. Originality in Three Areas: 1. Temporal Innovation: We are aggressively reclaiming "dead time." While most provision focuses on evenings, we recognise that for NEET and excluded youth, the danger zone is the unstructured weekday. By activating the 9 am–3 pm window, we provide a safety net that currently does not exist. 2. Spatial Connectivity: We are not running a single club; we are creating a spatial ecosystem. By linking the informal "Anchor" (Bollo Brook) with the structured "Hub" (Acton Gardens), we create a physical journey that mirrors the young person’s developmental journey, from safety to skills. 3. Systems Thinking: We are shifting the role of the provider from "renter" to "partner." This is a structural shift in how local authorities and Housing Associations interact with the voluntary sector. It moves beyond grant dependency toward a symbiotic relationship where the building relies on the charity for vitality and the charity relies on the building for stability.
Viability and Scalability: How are you setting your initiative up for success, and what is your plan to ensure operational sustainability of your solution and its impact? What are your ideas for scaling your initiative to the next level?
Operational Sustainability: The core viability of this model lies in the elimination of our largest overhead: venue hire. By securing "partnership use" agreements with Landlords (L&Q) and Ealing Council, we decouple our delivery from rental market pressures. Operational costs are covered through a blended income model: grant funding covers core coordination, while our established commercial streams (paid extended-day care and merchandise) cross-subsidise the free access provision. Scalability: This is a "Plug and Play" activation model. The problem we are solving (under-used community halls) exists in every borough in London. Our framework, standardised partnership MOUs, safeguarding protocols and activation schedules is designed for replication. We do not need to build new centers to scale; we simply need to apply this stewardship model to the existing stock of dormant assets. We are currently building an evidence base to present to other Housing Associations, framing "Asset Activation" as a key strategy for tenant welfare and estate management.
Roles and Responsibilities: Describe how responsibilities are shared among your team or partners.
RollaDome All Skate acts as the lead organisation and is responsible for overall programme design, delivery and safeguarding, as well as coordination across partners and stewardship of the shared model. We hold accountability for quality, compliance and ensuring that young people experience a coherent and well-supported pathway across both sites. The Local Authority provides strategic alignment with borough youth, skills and place priorities, and supports facilitation of cross-sector relationships that enable sustainable shared use of community assets. Landowners and asset managers contribute access to space and work collaboratively with us to align community activation with long-term social value and place-based objectives. Community partners support referrals, co-delivery of activity and shared learning, strengthening the local ecosystem rather than duplicating provision. Young people themselves are not passive participants; they are co-creators and peer leaders who actively contribute to programming, culture and the activation and care of the spaces they use.
Upcoming Milestones: Please provide an overview of the milestones that are required for your initiative to come to fruition/to grow.
Over the coming months, the first priority will be to formally secure and document the shared stewardship arrangements with our partners, ensuring clarity of roles, responsibilities and long-term alignment around the use of space. Following this, we will move into coordinated activation across both Bollo Brook Youth Centre and Acton Gardens Community Centre, aligning daytime, after-school and evening use so that young people experience one coherent, connected pathway rather than fragmented provision. In parallel, we will strengthen and refine our impact monitoring framework, introducing clearer utilisation tracking, progression metrics and space activation data to evidence both youth outcomes and increased community asset use. As delivery stabilises and learning is captured, we will begin structured replication discussions with additional borough stakeholders and landowners, positioning this model as a transferable approach to unlocking under-used community space across London.
Capacity-Building Participation and Support Funding: If you were to make it as a finalist, you will be required to participate in an 8-week capacity building programme. If funding/ cost is a barrier to your participation, we may be able to offer up to 10,000 GBP of grant money available to support you. Please break down below, if it is the case, what costs you would incur and you would need covered. (Please note that there are restrictions on how the grant money may be used; please refer to the T&Cs for further details.
Capacity-Building Participation Support Budget (Up to £10,000) Senior Leadership Backfill/Contribution toward operational oversight and safeguarding cover during 8-week programme participation./£4,000 Legal & Governance Review/ Review and formalisation of shared stewardship agreements and partnership documentation./£2,000 Monitoring & Evaluation Development/ Strengthening utilisation tracking, impact measurement systems and reporting framework./£1800 Replication Framework Development/Development of documentation, partnership toolkit and borough expansion materials./£1700 Administration & Programme Participation Costs/Travel, materials, coordinates time and capacity-building implementation costs./£500 Total/ £10,000
