02/03/2026
Some of you know bits of this story. Here it is in full.
In early 2024, before NCSUN existed, I was a person in crisis who needed support. I thought I had exhausted every possible avenue that claimed offer support across Norwich. Then we were offered a property in Easton after six months in temporary accomodation following our private property being condemned by Environmental Health.
After seeking food support and finding none locally, I was referred to Your Own Place CIC alongside Norwich Foodbank Trussel Trust, the British Red Cross and St Giles by The Feed, and for the first time I experienced what it feels like when services actually work together around one person. Someone kept checking in. Someone followed up. That shouldn't be rare. But, in our City, it is.
That experience, and what my husband, H, and I heard from hundreds of other people over the following year at the Easton Community Cupboard (ECC) about how fragmented and exhausting the support system is to navigate, is exactly what NCSUN was built to address.
ECC started as two stacks of crates in our new driveway in July 2024 with surplus foods we advertised on local Facebook Groups that we wouldn't eat (both H and I are diagnosed neurodiverse), which quickly snowballed into a funded shed which has now served 1,200+ people. Conversations between visitors and H happen organically and that's where NCSUN's "conversational methodology" started.
Your Own Place have now published their full Lived Experience Project report covering the first six months of our Panel. My journey from February 2024 through to founding NCSUN in October 2025 is documented in it as a participant case study. I'm proud to share it, and I'm proud to say that NCSUN would not exist without the people at Your Own Place, Norwich Foodbank TT, The Feed, St Giles and British Red Cross who treated my lived experience as something worth building on.
This is what community looks like when it works. We're building more of it.
www.yourownplace.org.uk
