Pop-up Market and Community Engagement

On Saturday 10th October, Barnet Council and our team of appointed consultants held a pop-up in the town centre to host a small market and trial the closure of Albert Place.

We were joined by Dr Bike, who offered free bicycle maintenance and cycling guidance to the community. On the day they serviced 10 bicycles, from road and mountain bikes to electric bikes. If you want to find out more about where you can next see Dr Bike in the area visit: www.cycleconfident.com/courses/dr-bike/

We were also joined by Grow, a community organisation who run a farm in Totteridge that provides opportunities for young people to reconnect with farming, food, and nature. Grow brought along a fabulous spread of produce grown on their farm, including squashes, chard and even flowers. To find out more about their work, visit www.wearegrow.org/

The council also hosted a stall at the market. We were there to ask the community for feedback about the public realm in the town centre. As part of the wider project for Finchley Central Town Centre, Barnet Council are developing principles for the future of the public realm in the town centre – this includes the roads, the pavements and any publicly accessible spaces. The town centre is defined as the area from Victoria Park all the way down to Hendon Lane and Regents Park Road. When any future public realm works are brought forward in the town centre, whether by the council or developers, these developed principles will become form the basis of the designs. These principles will also form the basis of Barnet Council’s own developing proposals for Finchley Square.

We collected comments from over 130 people, but if you were unable to join us on the day, you can still let the council know what you think about these principles for the public realm. The form will be live until the end of October.

You can download the presentation boards here:

Please provide feedback using this online feedback form by clicking this link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FCTCFeedbackForm