Client: Portman Group / Local Alcohol Partnerships Group 

Project: Safe Space Toolkit 

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What were MAKE asked to do?

The Local Alcohol Partnerships Group and Portman asked MAKE to follow up its pioneering research into the development of safe spaces (e.g. night hubs, safe buses, street pastor refuges etc) to produce a Safe Space Toolkit to support those who were setting up new schemes to avoid the mistakes that earlier safe spaces had made and to learn from the growing body of evidence about what works, what doesn’t and what’s promising in safe spaces. 

How did MAKE do it?

  • We took the best practice from our safe space study and distilled it into ‘10 steps to safe space success’ 

  • These included critical stages such as building a partnership, ensuring sustainability and measuring impact. The latter is particularly crucial. 

  • We worked with existing safe spaces to ‘sense check’ our recommendations and we are grateful in particular to Hereford and Weston who offered invaluable advice. A particular area of importance was in adding a new chapter on ‘managing risk’. 

  • We designed the Toolkit so that it looked nice and launched it with partners at a government Local Alcohol Action Area programme event with 30 safe spaces from around the UK at the Home Office. 

What happened next?

The Toolkit has since been used by a number of locations to develop a new or improve an existing safe space. In particular, it was the blueprint for the new Soho Nigh Hub and Soho Angels scheme run by Westminster City Council and the LGBT Foundation.

What unique value did MAKE bring to this project?

Through our government contacts we were able to drive awareness of safe spaces a potentially fruitful area for NHS investment. Whilst a major safe space study was being conducted separately by Cardiff and Sheffield universities this was not due to publish for at least another six months  and so our research and Toolkit allowed NHS England to consider safe spaces worthy of trialling and they subsequently supported a number of safe spaces to either rapidly set up or enhance services (e.g. Nottingham, Newcastle and Westminster) in the winter of 2018 to test the concept more broadly.