The Building, The Organisation, The People: Community Links in The Old Public Hall

Six degree of separation: the reach of Community Links

If you are of a certain age or above and have long lived in Canning Town, or anywhere in Newham, you will have heard about Community Links. From youth summer camps, to creche and after-school activities, from employment and benefits advice to education and training, in the 90s and noughties in Newham, everyone knew someone who had accessed Community Links’ services. Their name still adorns the building,  but what else remains of the Public Hall’s adopted golden child?

Using excerpts from oral history interviews and bits from Newham Archives, we will explore the organisation, the people and, of course, the building that made Community Links what it was.

From Public Hall to Community Hub

In their own words from 1993:

“Community Links is a charity set up by volunteers in 1977 and now running a wide range of community projects with children, teenagers, parents, pensioners and disabled people, all involving some 320 volunteers”

(A Short History of 105 Barking Road, Community Links (1993), p.11)

Community Links was founded by Kevin Jenkins and David Robinson. Starting as volunteers taking a youth work bus around Newham to reach communities where they were, once the pair secured the Canning Town Public Hall and completed the equivalent of £1.5 million worth of building renovation, Community Links flourished at 105 Barking Road as a hub made by and for the community.

Below is a selection of excerpts from oral history interviews for this project, from some people that knew Community Links well.

Long-time youth work legend, Bob Goldsmith, born (1960) and bred in Custom House and Canning Town. His dad was a Docker. He remembers as a boy seeing the Canning Town Public Hall and Old Library (which he joined for books and the Chess Club) when he would go shopping with his mum at Rathbone market opposite:

In the 1980s Bob started volunteering with Community Links after meeting founder Kevin Jenkins at Debden. He has been involved in Newham youth work ever since, for three decades with Community Links and then at Ambition Aspire Achieve (AAA) where he still is now.

Bob was part of the original clean-up team from 1990 that helped transform the Canning Town Public Hall from disuse to the community hub it became with Community Links.

There was plenty of coverage in local news about Community Links’ imminent arrival. This would be a great boost to Canning Town and all its communities still reeling from the closure of the Docks that so many families had relied upon for income. For more than a decade, Community Links had already been providing community support and services to the youth and community of Newham.

Though community was at the heart of it, what founders Kevin Jenkins and David Robinson were also good at was getting those with influence (and money!) behind their vision for Links. Testament to their tenacity, is the process by which they turned the Canning Town Public Hall into Community Links.

In 1990 the founders suggested to the Council that they give the building to Community Links, at no cost, on the basis that Community Links would bring it back into community use, also at no cost to the local authority. When this proposal was agreed in Spring 1991 Community Links set about raising the massive resources needed to renovate and convert the building into “a unique multi-purpose Community Centre.” (A Short History of 105 Barking Road, Community Links (1993), p11).

128 companies donated or discounted services, materials and equipment. More than three times that number of individuals and organisations donated cash. At commercial prices, the works would have cost an estimated £1.5 million. Community Links paid a little over 500k, the rest donated in kind. And with a visit from a Prince no less! (the then Prince Charles, who, Bob told me, also donated a ton of books for that inaugural year of the legendary Toy Appeal!)

The Golden era of Links at 105 Barking Road

This is just the beginning.

In its new home on Barking Road, from about 1990 to the mid 2010s, Community Links (and those it served) went from strength to strength.

Meet Jonny Boux, Chief Executive of Ambition, Aspire, Achieve who came to Newham in 2001 to work at Community Links where he remained for more than a decade. In these oral history excerpts from his interview, Jonny provides a unique insight into Community Links at 105 Barking Road and also shines a light on the life and legacy of his mentor and Links founder Kevin Jenkins OBE.

Bob explains how the people of the Dockside communities like Custom House and Canning Town were told their fates were written, that they would live, work and die by the Docks and factories that their people had long served til their decline.

A lot of the time the young people of Newham were written off. They wasn’t gonna get a second chance. When I was at school…alot of the young people…my friends…there was Pinchin Johnson’s, Mattessons, Tate & Lyle and the Docks…and basically we were told you’re not gonna achieve nothing, you’re fodder for those four major industries. Course that came the unemployment.

Under the leadership of Kevin Jenkins, Community Links was a place that believed the young people and community and what they were capable of given the opportunity.

The opportunities that he’s given the young people of Newham, and the building…and that’s how it should be. We believe that we’re not fodder for anything. (Bob)

The genius of Community Links and its founders was that they were tethered in every way to the communities they served.

Homage and Heritage: Kevin Jenkins, the Strongest Link

Kevin Jenkins was a larger than life individual, who left a community legacy that lives on after him. However, there is another legacy that he left Newham, to do with putting the heritage of this borough on the map.

There is a degree of coincidence and irony to discovering this untold story of Kevin Jenkins’s important link to the growth of Newham Heritage, which I am struggling to express. Here is my attempt:

• To date, history’s light has been dim on the role of Kevin Jenkin in developing the first Newham Heritage Week (the precursor to Newham Heritage Month).
• Kevin’s place in the growth of Newham heritage work has been ‘discovered’, by serendipity, within a Newham Heritage-commissioned history project about what seemed a completely different topic i.e, the Canning Town Old Library and Public Hall
• It is a coincidence that this CTL/CTPH project has come about in part to mark the imminent opening within the Old Library of the new Heritage Centre for Newham and (the oral histories below show) that the originator of the vision for a local heritage centre (though he called it a Museum for Newham) came from none other than…Kevin Jenkins!
• How serendipitous that this new CTOL Heritage Centre is next door to the old Canning Town Public Hall – a building that itself was given a new life as Community Links by Kevin Jenkins.

At the beginning of their story these sibling-buildings, the Canning Town Old Library and Public Hall were conceived of by borough architect Lewis Angell, to be “built by the people for the people”. At the end of their story (so far), as the Old Library joins her sister the Public Hall in coming back into community use, arguably there has been a different architect for their reincarnation – and that is Kevin Jenkins.

It is unfortunate that the man who put Newham heritage to the top of the pile, has not had proper attention paid to preserving his story, his legacy and the amount that Newham Heritage owes to him. I hope that this section on Kevin Jenkins’ link to Heritage in Newham will go some way to correct this.

Four of the oral history interviewees, who each knew him well in their own unique way, draw attention to who Kevin was, what he did and why it matters.

Jonny Boux, his protege (my words not his) who took over AAA when Kevin passed away.

Bob Goldsmith, his best mate and one of his longest standing youth workers.

Colin Grainger, who while still Editor at Newham Recorder, bonded with Kevin, starting a lifelong friendship, while they worked together on the brilliant Toy Appeal that runs to this day (now from AAA) in Kevin’s name.

Mark Gorman was in the original group of history and heritage lovers who lobbied the council to prioritise heritage and to get a Museum of Newham and then put on the first Newham Heritage Week before handing it over to the council.

I would like the words of those that knew Kevin to speak for themselves and so will leave you to peruse them unadulterated by my own here.

Of Kevin Jenkin’s link to the development of heritage work in Newham:

Rest In Power, Kevin Jenkins OBE (1958-2021)

And other stories: Community Links

The reach of Community Links was long and wide. Here are some excerpts from oral history interviews that add some more glimpses of what went on there.

Colin Grainger would often visit Community Links:

Meet Paulette Prince, who from 2006 worked for Community Links in the Early Years. She trained in childcare after being inspired by the Community Links workers when her daughter, Bianca, attended their after-school clubs. Bianca, by the way, is yet another fellow CTOL/CTPH project Community Researcher and, by another twist of fate, I first met Bianca at Community Links (at our ACT-AS-1 Community Link Up event) when she applied to, and won, funding from our grassroots grant pot for her brilliant creative enterprise. Here is her perspective on Community Links at 105 Barking Road.

Meet Richard Roach. When our ACT-AS-1 team put on the Community Link Ups at 105 Barking Road, it was Richard that chose the name and venue and negotiated the low hall rental fee. Also a legendary grime MC, Richard did not mention then that Links was one of the youth spaces where young MCs, including him would go perform and hone their skills. Richard’s words here from a recent interview (July 2025) are courtesy of  Soundwaves: Music in Newham oral history project.

Richard’s story hints at how many individual, significant experiences took place because of Community Links at the old Public Hall, Barking Road. If we could gather the stories of even a handful or two of the many many thousands who, from 1990-2016 and beyond, it would be something. What connects them is that Links provided Newham young people with more opportunities to experience, learn, aspire and achieve.

As Bob said, “they weren’t fodder for anyone”.

A name above the doors: Community Links now

The reputation that was built in this golden age of Links up to the mid 2010s is a wave that they have been able to ride for a decade since. Their name is still above the doors of the Canning Town Public Hall, but I wonder how much else remains of that organisation which first set up home at 105 Barking Road.

During this project, I asked fellow researchers for their stories, including Nancy, who grew up living literally opposite the Community Links building. I was intrigued when she responded:

I always thought it was the more serious and boring version of the [old] library so never went there myself  (Nancy, October 2025 )

In some of the oral history interviews I learned that around the mid2010s Kevin Jenkins stepped back from Community Links and started youth organisation Ambition, Aspire Achieve (AAA) at Hermit Road Park (which was possibly one of the original locations for the Public Hall that was in the ‘Battle of the Sites’ in the 1880s!).

It appears that some of the vision and leadership, the ethos and activity, of the old Community Links may have moved with Kevin Jenkins to AAA. It is there, and in all of the youth organisations that Kevin helped bring to life in Newham, where the legacy of Community Links and Kevin Jenkins lives on.

Colin said of Community Links, the building “leaves a lasting impression”, not so much the architecture but because of the people. It harks back to that original vision for the hall, that it was to be “built by the people for the people”.

The Public Hall has fulfilled this destiny from its inception to this day. Still offering some youth and community services such as Education Links music studio in the (according to Bob) “morgue”, undeniably Links is no longer the buzzing community hub it once was. But just like any life, going from birth and early years, through life’s ups and downs in all their tribulation and glory, to the change of pace in later years, maybe the old Public Hall has earned a rest. Maybe, for a bit, her sister, the Canning Town Old Library can take over.

Read the other pieces in this series:

A Homage to “The Building Next Door”: The Story of the Canning Town Public Hall

Who were the public of Canning Town’s Public Hall?