Kirkstall Valley Development Trust is a community benefit society set up this year to develop a learning and leisure park over 200 acres of inner Leeds. It is owned and run by its members.
Projects include reclaiming Abbey Mills for community and work use plus a Future Cities Centre exploring what we should do about energy, housing and food growing. It also wants to add paths and develop a park and hopes to add a bridge in the area.
KVDP also aims to develop St Ann’s Mills as a potential location for the first Centre for Alternative Technology in England.
In a guest post for the Dispatch, they write about who they are and their aims for the future:
Flyover of the green space we want to open up to public use. How many know it even exists? pic.twitter.com/cMfASdY5kQ
— Kirkstall Valley DT (@kirkstallvalley) October 18, 2016
We’d like to introduce ourselves.
Kirkstall Valley Development Trust was established in Sept this year to implement ideas for Kirkstall valley that have been fostered for a decade or more.
Over the next three to five years we want to open up the Abbey Mills and St Ann’s sites in Kirkstall to educational, community and leisure use, linking the developments to making the parkland more accessible.
We have great partnerships with the University of Leeds, Leeds Beckett University and the Centre for Alternative Technology with support from Leeds City Council. We now need to build our community links and membership.
The tasks ahead are fairly daunting, but the prize of two community driven heritage mills attached to 200 acres of parkland is worth the struggle.
Funders are interested, but we need to assemble an army of supporters on the ground to show we have local backing.
The Trust is member owned and will be calling people together in the near future.
As a first step we would like you to look at our website and encourage anyone that might be interested to sign up to our mailing list. The contact details for our Development Director, Chris Hill are available on our website if you would like to get in touch.