Far-right rhetoric fuelled rioting here in 2024, but Back on the Map is helping to unite the community, through good accommodation, new shops, and an aim to genuinely uplift and improve people’s lives Donate to the Guardian Charity Appeal 2025 here Communities are our defence against hatred.Now, more than ever, we must invest in hopeWhen 47-year-old shop assistant Claire Carter was younger, her mother told her to “never live on the long streets” – terrace-lined roads about half a mile long that lead from the centre of Hendon, Sunderland, to the sea.These six streets have a reputation for being “full of wrong ’uns, full of stolen cars, places getting smashed up”, she says.Close by is Fletcher’s News & Booze, the shop where Tommy Robinson hosted a book signing in 2017 that ended in physical fights and 21 arrests.Sunderland more widely has been a key site for far-right politics: in 2024 violent anti-Muslim riots broke out after misinformation spread on social media, suggesting that the man behind fatal stabbings at a children’s dance class in Southport was an illegal migrant.

About 500 people came to Sunderland’s city centre to a protest that quickly descended into what a judge has since described as “an orgy of mindless destruction, violence and disorder”, with rioters setting a car on fire, shouting Islamophobic chants and throwing stones at the police.Walking through Hendon now, a number of England flags – which, aside from sports matches, are often used as a shorthand for anti-immigration views – flutter in the harsh North Sea wind.Yet there is another colour that also pops up again and again in this area, and which stands out more than red and white: bright purple.The distinctive shade is the brand colour of Back on the Map, a charity that believes creating a strong, hyperlocal community is the answer to many of the challenges that Hendon’s residents face.Purple and lime-green signs adorn the fronts of two community centres and a letting agency, and the charity’s staff members and volunteers can easily be identified around the neighbourhood by their purple shirts and jackets.

Carter first came into contact with Back on the Map three years ago, at a time when she was sleeping on her mother’s floor, having just left a 15-year abusive relationship.The charity owns properties throughout Hendon and has developed a “social letting” service that prioritises affordable housing and reinvests its profits in Back on the Map’s community services.“They bent over backwards and they housed me and my mam and my two kids within four weeks,” Carter says.She and her family were offered a house on one of the long streets, much to the disappointment of her mother.However, later, when Carter’s mother moved into another Back on the Map property on a different road, “she was literally begging” to be placed back on the long street, Carter says with a laugh.

“She loves it, because it has changed … Over the last 10 years, it is making leaps and bounds.I feel safe walking.”“We are a private landlord, the same as every other private landlord, but we do it properly, to the best of our ability, because there’s a lot of bad ones out there,” says Lesley Deneven, Back on the Map’s housing manager.“It’s a lot better around here; it’s a lot cleaner,” Carter says.“You can tell which properties are Back on the Map because they’re constantly being looked after now, whereas before everything would just be boarded up … You can constantly see the vans and people going in and out and doing them up.

”Unlike landlords who have “probably never set foot in Sunderland” and simply rent to the highest bidder, “I run up and down Hendon on a very regular basis,So I know pretty much the names and the postcodes, everything about my tenants,” Deneven says,Potential residents are thoroughly background checked, and must take part in a training session that lays out what Back on the Map is, what renters can expect from it, and what it expects from its tenants in return,“Me and my mam sort of raised our eyebrows and rolled our eyes”, when told about the mandatory training session, Carter says – they had both rented plenty of times before,But she was pleasantly surprised when she went along.

“It’s actually beneficial to sit down and to be able to discuss it and talk about it and be told directly what’s expected of you,” she says, “because normally when you sign a tenancy you’ve got a piece of paper, it’s 14 pages long, you’re never going to read all of it.”I am speaking to Deneven and a group of Back on the Map’s tenants at the charity’s – intensely purple – headquarters.The tenants clearly have a good relationship with Deneven, teasing her about her high standards for tidiness when carrying out her property inspections, and recalling how she has supported them over the years, by explaining how to fill in universal credit forms and facilitating involvement with Back on the Map’s community groups.The community centre we’re in was previously Hendon’s library, which Back on the Map took over after it closed in 2014.It still functions as a library, complete with the original carved wooden inquiries desk, but now it also hosts meetings for groups including “social singers”, “communi-tea” and children’s play sessions.

The library, like well-maintained affordable housing, is one of the services Back on the Map provides that feels like things the state should – and in some cases, once did – provide.“We’re like Expandafoam,” says Back on the Map’s CEO, Joanne Cooper.“We find a problem in our community and we just go and fill it as best we can.So we’ll try to remove barriers of access for residents to be able to live, work and thrive.”Cooper is particularly passionate about providing more than just the basic essentials.

“We can provide the bread and we can help you with your benefits and we can help you with your energy debt and we can give you an advice appointment, absolutely fine, but what we want to do is provide the roses also, so people’s lives are a bit nicer,” she says.She mentions the gardening project the charity runs in local parks, which not only improves the spaces, but also “gets people outdoors.It gets people having that fresh air and meeting other people, which is ultimately great for your mental health and wellbeing.” On top of that, because residents have been part of maintaining those spaces, they don’t go on to vandalise them, Cooper adds.“They’re their spaces and places, and they have made them.

They’ve co-designed them,Why would you destroy what you’ve been part of building?”That message is at the heart of everything Back on the Map does – when it was set up in 2011, it consulted the local people to find out what priorities they wanted the charity to have,“Those are to create a better place, a stronger community and give local people a voice on decision making,” Cooper says,“Belonging to something bigger than yourself is really important and gives people hope,” As evidenced by the work Back on the Map has already done, fostering that sense of hope and belonging makes streets feel safer and helps people to take pride in their local area, rather than destroy it.

Clearly, having pride in where you come from is something that is important to many people in the UK – but the hope is that this kind of community work gives people something tangible to be proud of without feeling the need to scapegoat or exclude.Back on the Map is a member of Locality, a national membership network of local community organisations that the Guardian is supporting through its 2025 charity appeal.The Hope appeal supports grassroots charities that bring people together across divides, nurturing community pride and positive change as an antidote to distrust and hatred.In his response to the racist violence of 2024, Locality’s chief executive, Tony Armstrong, said he and his colleagues, “believe in the power of community to tackle the underlying problems and create a better society”.In the face of far-right rhetoric that encourages people to blame one another for the issues they face, he said: “We need more positive narratives on community cohesion and integration, like the role different communities play in strengthening our society, rather than letting a divisive narrative continue to dominate.

”“This country’s never been so divided.I might only be young, but I’ve noticed that one,” says another Back on the Map tenant, Amy Ingram, 26.The work Back on the Map does counters that, she thinks.Through tenant training sessions and community groups, she says: “It introduces you to people you might not normally talk to.”Ingram, a creche worker and mother of one, lives in a flat above a shop that is also owned by Back on the Map.

Two years ago, the charity bought a row of derelict shops, with a view to breathing new life into the high street and involving local people in the decisions about which traders to bring in.Now, “that whole block, we all know each other,” Ingram says.She has the number of the person who runs the shop below her, “just in case, because I’m there in the hours that she’s not, so anything goes wrong, ring”.It’s no accident that Ingram’s block has become, in Deneven’s words, “one big happy family of traders and renters”.Back on the Map has ensured it, by instilling its ethos into tenants and choosing community-minded traders, such as Claire Wayman, whose fruit and vegetable business, Sunrise Co-operative, is set to open soon.

Like its parent shop in central Sunderland, it will sell groceries, but this shop will also host cooking workshops in collaboration with Back on the Map.“The idea is we’re always more than just a shop,” Wayman says.“We’re interested in how we affect the local economy, your local environment and local people.” Having a vibrant local high street made up of more than just vape shops and takeaways is important, she thinks.“You need a place to connect.

”“Life is hard for people and we’ve seen it get harder for our community and our residents over the last five years since the global pandemic, economic downturn, cost of living [increases],” says Cooper.“There seems to have been one thing after another that has hit people so hard in an area where people already struggled.”Cooper, who grew up in Hendon, continues: “It’s always been a really diverse community.We’ve had people from all walks of life, from all cultures, from all backgrounds.And people have got along very well.

” A decade of austerity has “pushed people to be pretty desperate”, she says.“We can’t ignore there is some grief and grievance.” Certain politicians have been “playing on that desperation and grief” to create division, she believes.“But on the frontline, in the grassroots, what we see is that that isn’t the case.People do care about each other; people will be very generous and work really hard for each other.

”After the 2024 riots, “What you didn’t see on the six o’clock news the following night was the army of volunteers that turned up to clean up after what had taken place the night before,” says Back on the Map’s chair, Julie Gray,Part of the charity’s work involves trying to debunk some of the myths about refugees and asylum seekers, Cooper says,“You can’t change everybody’s mindset, but what you can do is arm people with the facts,” Back on the Map’s policy is to challenge service users calmly,If someone was indicating that migrants are a burden on the local community, for example, they might ask: “What do you mean by that statement? Because actually a lot of people who come to Sunderland are economic migrants, they’re not claiming asylum, they are contributing to our society in our area,” Cooper says.

“That’s a really important message that we try to put out to residents where there’s any potential conflict.It’s about education.”The charity is also proactive about encouraging people to be proud of Hendon because of its diversity.Previously, the charity has collaborated with the National Theatre to put on the community performance Public Record, a show that celebrated the Nigerian community coming together with the traditionally white community of Sunderland.It has also run events with refugees willing to share their stories and dispel some of the myths local people have about them.

That “really put a face and a humanity to people who’ve had that plight and have settled here and have chosen it to be their home”, Cooper says.“We don’t want to stop anybody waving a flag if that’s what they feel they need to do,” she adds.“It’s the tone in which that is done.” Pride in where you come from can’t just be about flag-waving, she adds – Back on the Map instead tries to help people build a local area in which they can feel pride.When asked what would make them feel prouder to live in Hendon, most residents the charity talks to don’t say they would like fewer people of colour, or the deportation of migrants.

They say: “We want the park to be better than it is, we would like to see some plants, we want better shops, we want somewhere for the kids to go, we want a range of activities,” Gray says.So little by little, Back on the Map has set about making those things happen.Its structure could easily be replicated across the country, Cooper thinks – it’s not as if the issues Hendon faces are unique, or Back on the Map’s solutions impossible to implement.“It just requires rolling your sleeves up,” says Gray.“And a lot of hard work.

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