Welcome to the online home of Northern Heart and Soul CIC
We offer you a warm Wigan welcome
It’s difficult to offer someone a warm welcome online. You’ll need to imagine being warmly welcomed – a smile, a hand shake, a hug, maybe a brew and a biscuit.
If you’ve taken the time to visit us visit us then maybe you are curious about the journey we are on – dreaming into becoming a self-organising and renovating community that centres the feminine spirit, children and young people. Trusting that we can walk together towards a commoning future where racial, economic and climate justice can be realised.
Northern Heart and Soul formed as a CiC in August 2021 after spending a couple of years cultivating community as co-founders of Springfield, Beech Hill and Gidlow CommUnity, a mutual aid group, covering the ward of Wigan West. It’s during those dark and unjust times that the possibility of a more connected and just future revealed itself. So, we decided to make this the work, rather than ‘go back to work’. And thanks to investment from Lankelly Chase Foundation, we’ve been able to step into the journey at a very hyper local level. You could say our feet are firmly on the ground.
We’ve created this website as a living record. To share the joy we create, the new mistakes we make and the insights we glean. In doing so, we imagine, that we’ll discover more and more companions from across the globe. After all, as Rumi eloquently articulates, ‘We’re all just walking each other home’.
The Story So Far
Behind the scenes work that relates to the theory of change. To hold the looking glass as we walk.
Goodbyes and Good memories
We didn’t know it at the start, but 2025 became a year of endings and transitions. A year of personal reflection and deep soul searching. Juggling the complex and challenging life of community a
Rippling in Wigan – action learning
This is a long read and acts as an online repository of learning resources collected as part of a ripple effect capacity building programme in Wigan. Funded by a successful application to Awards for A
annual report
It’s been customary for us to produce an annual report. We do it to be transparent and also to record the journey in our mission to become a self organising and renovating community. This year i
Community Led Play
I think it’s fair to say that play has been at the heart of community building efforts in this community. From parties in the park, to afternoon tea, trips to the seaside, play in the woods and
James and the lemon drizzle cake
I first posted this story on the 3rd February 2021 on the website of my currently sleeping training company RIPEN. As anything shifted / changed in the last 4 years?…. Imagine if, our call to he
Festival of Learning fireside chat
On the morning of Monday 12th May 2025 we began the Festival of Community Led Learning with a fireside chat. With hindsight, with the good weather and deck chairs in the public living room perhaps we