2022 - 2024

Grow Your Own

The childcare sector is in crisis. Lack of affordable childcare, combined with low pay for childcare workers, is a major cause of poverty and inequality. Childcare in London is 30% more expensive than the rest of the country. Many families and settings in the most deprived parts of London are at breaking point. We need to increase awareness of the systemic causes of this situation, build a stronger voice for parents and better work for childcare workers.

Running from 2023 -2024, Grow Your Own is sharing past experiences of organising for better childcare with people working to improve the situation we face today. We are engaging directly with past and present childcare campaigners from across London to co-produce a set of resources including a podcast series, campaigners' toolkit, a 'stay and play' resource and a digital map of childcare campaigns and projects. We will collate a body of information that can be disseminated to wider audiences and will provide skills to volunteers to use in their campaigning work.

Children at Dalston Children's Centre. Photograph Copyright Rio Archive.

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Childcare Voices Podcast

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If you have been involved working in childcare trade union organising, early years campaigns or projects past and present from any area of London, please contact us to find out how you can get involved.

We’d particularly love to hear about Hackney's Children's Centres at the moment, especially from nursery staff – past and present – to learn how how childcare and early years has changed,  and the impacts of planned closures.

Do you know anyone who worked, or works, at Fernbank, Sebright and Hillside Children’s Centre? Did you or your children attend these nurseries?

Grow Your Own is run by On the Record, in partnership with Post-Pandemic Chilcare Coalition and is funded by Trust for London