The town of Slough is a juxtaposition; it’s ranked fourth in productivity by TechNation, it’s home to the highest concentration of global HQs outside of London and outranked powerhouse cities like Oxford and Cambridge in productivity in 2017. Yet, somehow, something seems to hold it back from achieving the recognition other towns and cities in the UK do.
Enter Vineet Vijh, founder of The Slough Hub, on a mission to enhance residents' mental, physical and economic well-being. What started out as a project during the lockdowns of COVID-19, the community enterprise has continued long beyond the pandemic to improve the lives of the Slough community.
“During COVID-19, I saw an advertisement for volunteers to help buy medicine and do some shopping. I put a simple message on Facebook [and] within two hours, I had 90 people signed up. I realised at that point the power of voluntary work.”
“We had the whole process going. At the end of all this, we had 90 people filled with what they had been doing. That made me realise the power of getting people together and giving them something meaningful to do. I wanted to harness this ability. I want to get all these people together. And if we can get the community working together, making the place better drove me to the next step.”
Reimagining Slough
The Slough Hub has gone from strength to strength since its inception in 2020, with the team growing from a solo operation to a well-oiled team of five and developing from providing emergency support to a strategic four-pronged approach, generating long-lasting change.
ARTSCAPE
“There's never enough work for everyone. So we wanted to create work as well. We have a group of 45 artists who are closely associated with the Slough Hub. I wanted to create work for them, so I started campaigning for public art around Slough.
Providing meaningful work to people who need it leads to people making it. And 150 people have found meaningful employment with 45 artists who love working with us. We've now got ten murals up and running. We've got another five in the pipeline to go.”
DRIVE
“The first program we launched was about finding people work, and it wasn't just about helping people get into work; it was also about creating work for them.
We take batches of 50 people who are what we call economically inactive. These people are either new to the country or have taken a career break because of children and so on. We focus on trying to get them back to becoming economically active. We give 50 people at a time the confidence to go back to work. We train them in skills and help them with placements, service and work experience. We're now on our fifth drive programme.”
BOOST
“We've recently organised a big sports carnival called Slough OLYMPICA, where we had about 25 sports clubs come together under one roof to encourage more people to participate in sports.
We are also encouraging more and more people to walk a million steps in three months. We've got 600 people signed up already. We’re targeting GP surgeries where they identify people who are pre-diabetic or at risk of heart disease and refer them to the One Million Steps programme. If we can reduce the risk of diabetes to a large number of our population, that will make a big difference.”
IGNITE
“[At the start], we had many people starting businesses whom we were helping. Somehow, it died off after COVID-19, but we want to resurrect that. There's immense potential for starting businesses in Slough, and that is what we want to get back to: motivating people to start businesses.
One of the things we are very keen to do is to encourage and support more startups within the area. Getting more startups into Slough is another way to bring up the image of Slough. So we are now discussing with Plus X Innovation how to support startups next year and get full community engagement, and getting more businesses into Slough after Covid.
A Pioneer of Plus X Innovation
“I have been with Plus X Innovation since its innovation. I guess I was one of the pioneer members, and it has been excellent for us.
As a community organisation, I'm very grateful to the management for giving us a set of desks for my team. We have five employees on my team who can all sit together. Before this, we were just working from coffee shops, from home, etc. It’s given us a place to belong to and a place to meet.
It's been beneficial in terms of networking and meeting the different types of businesses. It's been very valuable - more than anything else. We even got our first customer and partner from a conversation in Plus X Innovation.
Because we deal a lot with employability and there are recruitment agents here, we established connections with these recruitment agents, and it has helped us get to a place with even more people through that. So connections are very important, especially in a people business. We are trying to connect people with people. And this is an ideal place to do that.
The facilities are also excellent. I often use the event space downstairs. I have a forum called Reimagine Slough, where I get all the big businesses, the education sector, and the council together in one place and motivate them to make change. It has been invaluable to what we have been trying to do to move forward.”
And their story does not end there. Just this month, in December 2024, The Slough Hub picked up the Social Impact Award at the Plus X Innovation Slough Changemaker awards, which celebrates an organisation or business that has impacted society through social impact, sustainability or community initiatives.
The Slough Hub, Vineet and the rest of the team are beacons for what is possible through driving a community and transforming Slough.
To find out more about The Slough Hub, follow them on Instagram at @thesloughhub.
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