Viva Brighton Issue #82 December 2019

MY SPACE
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Ben Szobody
Projects Development Manager at One Church
One Church is so called because there were
originally two Baptist churches: this one on
Gloucester Place joined with Florence Road,
where the Sunday services continue, and together
became One Church.
That left the church with room to be flexible
and inclusive inside an historic space in the
city centre. Dave Steell, the minister who came
to Brighton around ten years ago, had a vision
to be of service to the city and wanted to reach
out to marginalised people. We didn’t have a lot
of money to get things going so we had to get
creative. We started opening up the space, taking
out the fixed pews and reusing the wood. We
were respectful but not too sentimental. People
were desperate for affordable, socially-minded
community spaces and so that’s been the focus of
this building for the last six years.
We use the space for our inhouse charity and
social projects. Those include Pro Baristas:
a project that links unemployed people with
jobs in the speciality coffee business. We train
them in all aspects of barista work and offer
longer-term mentoring and support where it’s
needed. We’ll have engaged over 350 people in
that project this year and work with most of the
quality coffee companies in Sussex. We have also
opened the building as a homeless night shelter
in the winter months and for Chomp, our
holiday lunch club for low income families (see
pg25), amongst others.
Other organisations also rent the space.
Groups like Justlife who work with people in
emergency and temporary accommodation, and
the Real Junk Food Project – who rescue surplus
food – run a Friday lunch club. It’s possibly the
biggest one of its kind in the country, serving up
to 200 hundred people each week. We also hire
the space out for weddings and events. We’ll
host 30 gigs during the three days of the Great
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