Squash is a bold and ambitious community organisation, rooted and home-grown on Windsor Street in Toxteth, Liverpool since 2010. Embracing an arts, food and environmental focus, we are a diverse group of local people with a broad range of skills, committed to affecting creative, participatory, positive social change in our neighbourhood.
Ours is a 100-year vision, inspired by nature; we are actively transforming our Windsor Street Neighbourhood into a people-powered place that is known throughout the world for being a playful, resilient and loving community where everybody thrives! So we’re a decade into this century street vision, which began in 2010 inspired by the lifespan of apple trees planted in the Grapes Community Food Garden. 2020 has clearly shown us it’s a crucial time to build sustainable community resilience, creativity and more loving ways of being, together.
We are a Community Interest Company (CIC) – a not for profit membership organisation that is accountable to our community. We work alongside local residents, embracing food and art as essential tools to improve health and well-being. We promote food growing, cooking, craft skills and enterprise, provide meaningful training, work & volunteering, create special, seasonal events, rituals & festivals, and explore new ways for our neighbourhood to flourish.
Squash is housed in our community-designed building which opened to the public in 2018. As well as an events and workshop/gallery space, meeting and office rooms and a food garden, the Squash building also houses our community business comprising:
- an affordable, sustainable, ingredients-based food shop
- a cafe and catering facility (cafe currently closed)
We were really proud when we won Best Shop in the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2019 and when last year we won the People’s Prize in the Alliance for Sustainable Building Products Awards – see here for a short film about it!
