Our Story
SusCoHulme started in 2021, as a small group of residents in the St. Mary’s area of Hulme. The neighbourhood faces a range of challenges, being positioned between one of the largest colleges in Greater Manchester, Loreto Sixth Form College, and a retail park with a range of takeaway restaurants like McDonalds and KFC. Litter was a key challenge but so were other forms of pollution, particularly air pollution from the huge number of vehicles dropping-off students and picking them up. We didn’t have any significant green space for flowers and pollinators. Together, we hoped we could do something to improve our area. You can learn more about the committee that run SusCoHulme here.
Our first success
As a group of residents, we identified local issues of traffic as a key problem on our streets. We reached out to local councillors Annette Wright, and Lee-Ann Igbon, and together with Manchester City Council Highways we closed our road to cars speeding through our area and polluting our air. Following the closure St Mary Street to through traffic, we reduced air pollution by 70%.
Following this success, we incorporated in to Sustainable Communities Hulme C.I.C. and expanded our vision to create cleaner, greener, safer streets.
Growing our community
We have applied for funding and successfully secured over £3,000 which we have used to provide litter picking equipment to two communities of Hulme, and develop a small patch of land at the corner of St. Mary’s and Parsonage Street. We looked to expand our membership and began reaching out to our local community to consult them on what they’d like to see happen in our area. Gradually, we built our connections, drew on expert knowledge of sustainable growing, and designed plans for our patch. Before long, we had a group of people come together to turn those plans into reality. Now, there are fruits, vegetables and flowers thriving at the corner of St. Mary’s!
Expanding our reach
We engaged our local community of residents in consultation events, bringing people together to imagine different futures for our local spaces. We used people’s diverse (and sometimes conflicting!) views to inform our efforts. We worked with different branches of the council, with experts on sustainability, regeneration and community engagement, and we worked towards a few big projects to help bring about change in our community.
We also started to grow across Hulme. More residents engaged with us who lived at the other side of Hulme in Loxford development. So we worked with them to set-up a regular litter pick and to begin working towards a major green space uplift project. Together we can all do more to bring about our hopes for our shared spaces!
The future
In 2025 we secured £15,000 from the EU to co-deliver a green space training course over 2 neighbourhoods with 10 sessions covering 5 topics. Check out our calendar to see when the next event is.
We’ve had some successes and some failures as we’ve tried to generate significant changes for our local community. We’re proud of our accomplishments so far and we hope for more in our future. We have further plans and will continue to consult local residents of Hulme as we develop those plans and try to implement them. If you’d like to shape our work and get involved in changing Hulme, then join our email list and find out more!
