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The projects have been developing innovative ‘meanwhile’ solutions for vacant land and buildings, transforming them from local eyesores into a range of facilities benefiting the local community such as local street markets, pop-up art installations, youth spaces, retail and business incubators, planting displays, residential housing and much more.  The new wave of initiatives that will be receiving support are:

• - Local group Lee Green Lives, specialist charity Make Believe Arts, the youth group Level-Up and Lewisham Youth Service will be receiving support to take on the lease of a shop in Leegate shopping centre, Lee Green, South East London, to be used for young people and the wider community.

• - West Itchen Community Trust will be working with a group of local traders to spark new investment in the local retail economy of Northam Road, Southampton, an area once considered the hub of the city but now suffering with a high level of empty properties.  The initiative will: set up a street market to increase footfall to the area; bring three redundant units back into use and encourage local enterprise by refurbishing and launching three retail incubators for new business start-ups; and install local art and planting displays in and around vacant units to create an attractive and unique shopping environment.
• - Dover Pride will convert a 28,000 sq ft store which is currently held by Sainbury’s, into a much needed youth space in an area where no youth provision currently exists.
• One Community Development Trust will be taking over an empty property in Dock Road, Tilbury and turning it into a one-stop shop where local people will be able to find out about regeneration plans as well as providing a base for the Trust’s Community Champions programme and use by the newly formed Credit Union as well as other agencies.
• - The Community Partnership in Newmarket will be using a shop that had previously been closed for 14 months, turning it into a training shop to teach retailers how to improve their sales, merchandising, security and marketing skills.
• - FABRIC, a  Bradford based arts umbrella organisation, is to convert two acres of the Westfield Hole, a delayed development site into an urban park and is developing pop-up arts space in a flagship building in Bradford’s Centenary Square, including a pop-up cinema as part of Bradford film festival.
• - Fresh Horizons, a development trust based in Huddersfield, will bring two empty dwellings into meanwhile residential use and will work with the Meanwhile Project in developing a Meanwhile Tenancy Agreement that could open up more empty homes to help meet housing shortages.
• - Meanwhile Space CIC will be working with development trust, the Shoreditch Trust to establish the Hoxton Meanwhile Centre as a ‘meanwhile’ training, advice and meeting space.
  
• - Leeds 14 Trust

The Meanwhile Project, which is led by the Development Trusts Association (DTA) and funded by Communities and Local Government, aims to bring all kinds of vacant assets back into productive use for the benefit of local communities.  Ross Bolwell, from Make Believe Arts, one of the partners in the Leegate Shopping Centre initiative said the support to the project in Lee Green, South East London, will “really help to bring the area back to life”.

Alongside direct support to a wide range of projects across the country the Meanwhile Project has also developed tools and resources to support the use of vacant assets for ‘meanwhile’ initiatives, including a model Meanwhile Lease that provides mutual legal assurance for landlords and tenants.  The Project is currently developing a new model Meanwhile Licence for land to facilitate the use of vacant land for ‘meanwhile’ schemes.