For Vic Smith-Dunn, life is all about connections.
She’s a sociable person who likes to make links between people with something in common – even if that thing is they don’t know anyone else in the room.
Vic’s own connections have been particularly significant in guiding her to where she is now.
Her grandparents were wardens at the former Oatlands Methodist Church in south Harrogate and she is one of the people tasked safeguarding the same building.
Now known as Oatlands Community Centre, it also housed a pre-school for many years, which Vic’s daughters attended. Vic became a trustee of the pre-school after it bought the building around a decade ago.
Last autumn, the pre-school closed under the growing weight of expectations and regulations, which the small charity’s trustees were unable to meet. However, Vic wanted to ensure the building remained in use and the mortgage could still be paid.
“We decided the way forward and to safeguard the community space was to focus on delivering on our constitution in different ways.
“It said it had to be a service for families with pre-school children. One of the main aims is to work with community groups and social enterprises.”
Coincidentally, Vic had set up a social enterprise a few years before, called MyLifePool. It aimed to bring the community together in a simple, affordable way, creating social groups and events as well as supporting businesses.
For £1 a week, members access discounts from dozens of local partner businesses, from coffee shops to hairdressers, and can get discounted rates to attend a programme of family activities, nights out and more.
There are weekly stay-and-play sessions for children, including dedicated times for neurodiverse children. Drinks and snacks are provided, including fresh fruit from local business and MyLifePool partners KD Fruiterers.
While the membership fee is low, the demand has been extremely high, allowing the trustees to keep paying the mortgage on the community centre. Hall hire for children’s parties and other events has also contributed significantly.
Vic grew up and still lives in the Oatlands area, part of her reason for wanting to build up community activities and networks. She also recognises that the support which used to be on offer elsewhere is no longer as readily available.
“When my eldest daughter was a baby, I saw my health visitor every week.
“She realised I had postnatal depression. If it hadn’t been for her and my GP, I don’t know what might have happened.
“I worry about people in the same position now who aren’t having that regular contact – who is supporting them?”
Social media
Even with the support she had, her depression and loneliness prompted Vic to set up Ready Steady Mums, a free walking group for parents of children up to one, which still meets every Friday at St Mark’s Church.
Her experience of the value it offered to attendees stimulated her interest in doing more in the community – leading her to set up MyLifePool some years later.
“I had seen how social media was becoming really damaging to social interaction.
“People were so busy putting up posts showing themselves living their best lives that they were terrified to actually meet anyone, because you can’t be at your best all the time.
“Then it becomes even more difficult to walk into a room full of strangers.”
In recent years, she has drawn on her own experiences once again to set up a new group dedicated to women going through the menopause. From social meet-ups to informative talks from experts, the group has hit the ground running and already has dozens of attendees at each event.
MeNoPause was launched as one of MyLifePool’s events, but is open to anyone in the community.
Vic Smith-Dunn is the welcoming face of MyLifePool and Oatlands Community Centre
Similarly, there is a working mums’ group, offering mums the chance to socialise over drinks but still get home at a sensible time to be up for the school run the next day. It’s organised by one of the ‘lifepoolers’ who, with support from Vic, set up the kind of group she wanted and discovered there were many others who felt the same.
Vic says her role is always to connect people and give them the confidence to get involved.
MyLifePool has become so successful that Vic has been approached to expand the model into York and, if that works, beyond.
Wherever it goes next, Vic is clear about its purpose.
“I’m all about funding community stuff. It’s about finding ways for communities to become self-sustaining.
“We have to find innovative ways for that to happen.”
