Welcome to our Newsletter for July and August 2026.
Summer is here! And much hotter than expected
Hornsey Vale has just registered as a Tier Two “Cool Space” which means that we offer lower temperatures than outdoors, free seating for people to rest and recover from the heat and free drinking water.
The Cool Spaces scheme is London-wide and you can see all the other registered spaces on this map. If you want to know more about what a Cool Space is, here are the criteria.
Our long-awaited solar panels were finally installed at the end of July. We’re hoping that eventually some of the cheaper electricity generated by the solar panels could be used for air-conditioning in parts of the community centre thus allowing us to offer a Tier one “Cool Space” in the future.
We have also had fibre broadband installed to increase the quality of internet access at Hornsey Vale.
Summer Break
Some of our activities pause in August, including the youth club and some of our Ageing Well activities.If you attend a regular class here, please get details from your group leader leader, or check our timetable here: What’s on at Hornsey Vale Community Centre
As usual, the centre will be entirely closed for the last week in August 2026 (24th to 28th) for our annual maintenance week. We are open as usual at at the weekend (29th and 30th) and closed again for the late August bank holiday (31st).
If you would like to help during Maintenance week, we have a wide variety of both small and large tasks to choose from, please contact Laura info@hornseyvale.org to find out more about volunteering.
Meet Nikki Rockell – Trustee and Centre User
Nikki is a trustee at Hornsey Vale. She comes from near High Wycombe, just outside London, and she’s a professional speech and language therapist who practices at Hornsey Vale, among other places.
Nikki uses play to help children with speech, language and social differences, including autism, to develop their communicatio skills. “I have a cupboard full of toys at the community centre. I try to find out what children are really interested in and what motivates them, and show them that people are fun and communicating is fun,” she says.
“I joke sometimes that I chose my job because I get to play with bubbles all day, which is not entirely untrue.”
Hornsey Vale is a good location for this kind of supportive work, she says, because the working arrangements there are flexible and the community centre already offers a lot of activities which are focussed on families and children.
So how did Nikki become a trustee at Hornsey Vale? “I didn’t really know much about community centres before,” she says. “But it’s a really amazing space and I wanted to be part of something that’s giving back to the community, not just as a space where people can hold events or do classes but also by offering additional activities at low cost.”
Nikki says that Hornsey Vale has a strong offering for elderly people from the community. Looking forward, she’d like us to strengthen what we offer to younger people and families, LGBTQIA+ people and people who are neurodivergent.
“Spaces like community centres can attract people who don’t always completely fit into the mainstream and maybe those people have other skills to offer, like creativity,” she says. “Spaces like community centres have a lot to offer everyone in the community and the community often has a lot to offer the centre too”.
Hornsey Vale is a ‘GoodGym’ refferer
Hornsey Vale has registered to refer individuals to GoodGym, a charity which connects running, walking and cycling with help for people in the community.
What this means is that people over 50 can apply to get volunteer help with:
- Food shopping, foodbank and prescription deliveries
- Tasks to facilitate hospital discharge
- Light bulb/smoke alarm battery changing
- Face to face welfare checks
- One-off dog walking
- Some gardening tasks
- Furniture assembly, hanging curtains etc
Please note that volunteers cannot do skilled tasks such as plumbing, cleaning or painting indoors, handling people’s finances or personal affairs, caring tasks or befriending. People who are under 50 cannot be referred.
Regular centre user Breda had this to share about GoodGym: “I have been using the Good Gym for a long time. The volunteers are always very helpful, patient, and they always try very hard to meet my needs. I have recommended this service to my friends many times, and I think it is a great initiative”.
If you would like a referral, please email info@hornseyvale.org giving your full name, date of birth, address and postcode, an outline of the task you would like done and the best times and dates for volunteers to come (with as many options as possible). Please include the following sentence in your email: “I give Hornsey Vale permission to share this information with GoodGym.”
New volunteering opportunity
Hornsey Vale has partnered with Haringey Family hubs and Haringey Community Collective to deliver a new reading programme funded by their Accelerate Fund. Volunteers will use the Toe-By-Toe method to deliver 121 sessions with children and adults who have dyslexia or other reading difficulties.
Training will be provided and tempo time credits are available. Please contact us for more information, info@hornseyvale.org
You can find out more about the Toe-By-Toe method here: Toe By Toe – A highly structured phonics-based reading manual
Want to get involved?
Hornsey Vale still has space on the management committee for new Trustees, or if you are interested in joining one of our sub-committees (volunteer, maintenance, fundraising and events), please contact Laura at info@hornseyvale.org for more details.
We are also looking for more volunteers with a hobby or expertise which they could draw on to run events and activities, for example sewing, singing or languages. We offer Tempo time credits for volunteering. For details, please see the Volunteering page.
What’s On at Hornsey Vale
You can browse our full timetable here: What’s on at Hornsey Vale Community Centre
Browse our newsletter archive
We have uploaded (much of!) our newsletter archive to our website: click through to browse.
Help us connect with others!
Please consider forwarding this email to a friend or neighbour; or they can sign up here to receive the Hornsey Vale Community Centre newsletter in their inbox. You can also follow us on Facebook or Instagram, and we welcome reviews on Google.
Booking our spaces
We partner with booking platform Sharesy to make the room booking process simple and smooth. Visit the Sharesy site to find out more about our spaces, prices and availability.
© 2026 Hornsey Vale Community Association. All rights reserved.
Hornsey Vale Community Association is a registered charity (1011127) and is a company limited by guarantee (02629468).
Our address is 60 Mayfield Rd, London N8 9LP. Tel: 020 8348 4612