The Forge Community Partnership
The Forge has always called itself a community partnership, because that describes its essential features. It brings together people involved in a wide range of local community groups who want to work together to achieve more than they can do separately. Its strap line since the very earliest days has been Building on community strengths to which has recently been added Responding to community needs.
Throughout its 25 years, this is exactly what the Forge has done. Listening to what the needs of the local community are, and trying to identify ways in which they can be met using the resources already existing and, equally importantly, attracting or generating new resources.
In this the Forge has been remarkably successful. From a small project with one employee, it grew in little more than a decade by the end of 2014 to an organisation with 50 staff. Since then, significant change has taken place with the ending of the Children's Centres (formerly SureStart) but new areas of activity have been developed, particularly in the area of environmental projects.
Whereas throughout the early years almost all of Forge's work was funded by a variety of grants, now in 2022 almost everything is either income generating or commissioned activity. There's much more detail on this website about the people who make up the Forge, our history, current projects and the various partners with whom we work and who we support.
