Westfield Better Futures – Programme Update
Connecting people, supporting local action and creating more resilient communities across East London.
Westfield Better Futures is a programme from Foundation for Future London, powered by Westfield Stratford City. It brings people, community organisations, businesses and partners together to take practical action on sustainability and resilience.
We launched the programme earlier this summer with a room full of community organisations, educators, businesses, creatives and local leaders from across our networks in East London. Thank you to everyone who came along, shared ideas and helped shape where this work goes next. Your input is helping us focus where we can make the most difference: creating opportunities to CONNECT communities and networks, BUILD local capacity, TEST new ideas and SUSTAIN what we learn beyond the life of the programme.
Since then, we’ve been listening, following up and building on those conversations. We promised we’d come back and tell you what we heard. A few themes came up again and again:
- Circular economy, repair and reuse: real appetite to work with retailers on what happens to the things they no longer need.
- Community space: places to create, gather and be visible, with Westfield feeling rooted in East London rather than just a place to visit.
- Skills, training and employability: green skills, pathways into work, and mentoring that runs both ways between retailers and communities.
- Accountability and partnership: holding businesses to account on sustainability while building more genuine relationships and exchange.
- Legacy: this can’t be a one-off. Support should help sustain networks, relationships and spaces for the longer term.
We also heard people don’t want another session where we just listen, and nothing happens next, so when we do bring people together going forward, it will be to build capacity, map out actions and the partnerships needed, and identify practical ideas that can be developed and funded as next steps.
With that in mind, this update isn’t just a summary; it’s our invitation to get involved.
How to get involved
CONNECT – BUILD – TEST – SUSTAIN
One of the clearest messages from the launch event was that local groups are already leading sustainability work across East London. They don’t always use that language, and they’re often left out of wider conversations and networks about it, but they’re tackling these issues in their own communities, often in ways that institutions, councils and funders don’t see. A food project redistributing surplus, a faith space opening its doors during a heatwave, a youth club running clothes swaps, a community centre keeping its doors open against rising costs or local leaders supporting communities having power over the resources, relationships and decisions that shape their lives. This is sustainability work, even if it isn’t called that.
So we’re not starting with a fixed definition. As with our COLLABORATE: Safer Spaces programme, we want communities to define what sustainability means to them and where it matters most locally. That might be:
- Climate and heat resilience: cool and warm spaces, preparing for extreme weather
- Repair, reuse and waste: repair cafés, swaps, textiles
- Food: growing, surplus food, community kitchens
- Economic sustainability: green skills, local jobs, cost of living, keeping a community space open and thriving
- Nature and green space: gardens, greening streets, access to nature
- Creativity and wellbeing: using arts, music and storytelling to bring people together around climate and place
These are examples, not a checklist. If your local priority looks different, we want to hear about it. We also know no one can do this alone. Sustainability is something we make progress on together: community groups, councils, funders, businesses and residents each bring something different. Part of this programme is making sure local knowledge reaches the people who make decisions, and that Westfield retailers and partners learn from communities as much as the other way round.
Rather than one big open call, the programme is a series of steps: small ways in first, with the chance to grow into bigger ones. Whether you’re already working on sustainability in your community, have an idea you’d like to explore, or simply want to connect with others, there’s a way in for you.
Register Your Interest
CONNECT with people, ideas and opportunities across East London.
Sign up to our partner register to hear about new opportunities. Tell us about your work, what support you’re looking for and how you’d like to connect, whether that’s funding, a venue, skills, partners or something else.
Sign up to the Partner Register – Google form
Become a Westfield Better Futures Hub
Are you a community space or network already bringing people together around a local sustainability issue, such as heat, food, repair or green space? Or would you like to BUILD space for this work with some extra support?
Better Futures Hubs are about strengthening the people, spaces and organisations already making a difference in their communities. We’re offering up to £6,000 to community spaces in East London, plus resilience training, tools and practical resources with London Resilience (GLA) and partners. Hubs also get connections to Westfield Stratford City and a place in a growing network of hubs across London. There’s no full application form, just a short registration.
Find out more about Westfield Better Futures Hubs.
Come to Pitch & Pizza
A networking evening with a difference: come along, develop an idea, form a partnership, and get funding to take it further.
Bring an idea, a question, or something you haven’t had the time to explore properly. Join around 40 people from across East London to work on local sustainability challenges together, explore ideas you might like to take forward collaboratively, and work out what support you’d need to move them on. Ideas developed on the night can receive seed funding to TEST them in your community.
There’s up to £5,000 in seed funding available to support ideas. That could pay for: mapping local networks and who isn’t being reached, testing a pop-up repair or reuse session with a Westfield retailer, a small piece of community research, time for new partners to meet, plan or develop a joint funding bid, etc.
No formal funding applications are needed. You’ll shape your idea with others at your table on the night, and we’ll follow up with everyone afterwards.
The first session will take place in the new year. A date, time and venue to be confirmed, so look out.
Got a partnership in the making?
If you’re starting to work with another organisation, a school or a Westfield retailer on something that fits the programme, talk to us. We have flexible funding to help new partnerships get off the ground and build confidence, capacity and practical solutions that respond to local needs. We can also help with introductions, space and advice.
We are especially keen to hear from young people with an idea they may want to lead themselves.
We’re already supporting community-led activity through programme partnerships. This year, that included the Treasures of the Tide community carnival parade in Redbridge and Creative Newham’s Creative Spaces Symposium.
Get in touch → Ashton Mullins, Interim Head of Programmes and Grants, at ashtonmullins@future.london.
Collaborate with us
Have an idea for a workshop, training session or event? Over the coming months, we’re shaping a programme of free, practical sessions with our Community Ambassadors, Tiwa King and Piarvé Wetshi. It will include networking, peer learning, one-to-one support, and sessions where community organisations share their expertise with councils, funders and businesses. If you’d like to lead one or deliver something in collaboration with us, let us know.
We’re also exploring ways to connect community organisations with retailers and other partners at Westfield Stratford City, creating opportunities for collaboration and shared action.
Get in touch → Ashton Mullins, Interim Head of Programmes and Grants, at ashtonmullins@future.london.
Coming in 2027
Everything above builds towards COLLABORATE – Better Futures, a larger fund opening in February 2027 to sustain the longer-term partnerships that come out of the programme. Alongside it, we’ll create opportunities for everyone involved to share experiences, learn from one another and explore what to take forward. This will help us understand what makes community-led action work, share learning more widely and support ideas and partnerships that have the potential to create lasting local benefit.
The best way to be ready is to get involved now.
Join the network. Share your ideas. Find support. Take action. Learn with others.
Together, we can help create more resilient communities across East London.
About the Programme
Westfield Better Futures is a one-year creative, skills and community impact programme powered by Westfield Stratford City and delivered with Foundation for Future London. It creates hands-on creative, digital and environmentally focused opportunities for local people across East London: Barking & Dagenham, Hackney, Newham, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.
Through practical workshops, cultural programming, circular fashion initiatives, green skills training and school-to-career pathways, it aims to strengthen the local creative ecosystem while opening new routes into future-facing industries. By uniting retailers, educators and grassroots partners, the programme turns investment into impact, helping East London communities flourish in a more sustainable, connected and resilient way.
Westfield Better Futures builds on our award-winning Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund, a five-year programme that invested £10 million in the local communities of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest, supported by Westfield Stratford City.