Thanks to funding from Rochdale Development Agency, Action Together offered the Rochdale Creates Community Fund investment to support VCFSE organisations who have not worked with arts and culture before to build relationships with local artists, and start using creativity as a tool for wellbeing and strengthening communities.
Whether it’s helping someone process their mental health, trauma, build their confidence or generally improve their wellbeing through creativity, we know that arts and culture can play a big role in health and wellbeing.
Art and culture can also connect people to the place they live, local stories and histories, and feel proud of the communities they’re part of.
Action Together and partners offered a match making service for groups interested in a certain artistic practice, and wanting to connect with a local artist – whether that was woodwork or textiles or pottery, mural painting or performance, or so much more.
Priorities for this fund were for community groups not already engaging in arts and culture to collaborate with local artists in order to:
- Build confidence and improve wellbeing of the people you support, or
- Build a stronger connection to the place they live
This project was funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
Projects funded via the Rochdale Creates Fund:
| Member Organisation | Amount Awarded | Investment Projects |
| £3,150 | Funding will be used to support research into the history of Ukrainians in Rochdale, exploring the archive at Touchstone Heritage Centre, interviews with members of Rochdale council who have been supportive of our community in Rochdale. It is planned that we will work with Touchstones Rochdale. The project will ensure that there is a permanent and accessible archive of the Ukrainian diaspora and the contribution that they have made to the wider community in Rochdale. This has the potential to become an important piece of work and archive as the Ukrainian community becomes fragmented. | |
£4,500 | This proposal is a crucial part of our long-time vision and goal to enhance the outside of our building, reclaim wasted space in our immediate surroundings, to set the precedent for our community that we should be proud of our area, people have the power to make impactful change, maintain high standards and that our community deserves a well-kept, vibrant and green place to live. We want to visually engage our neighbours, local residents, and the wider Langley community through visual art on our external building. We can people to be inquisitive about our building, the power of people led movements - we want to uplift, connect, empower and take people on a journey of ‘what might be!’ We aim to do this by commissioning Manchester based artist/s to create a large external mural on the frontage of our building…to be a visual beacon of welcome, change and expression. | |
| Echoes of Hope (EOH) | £4,497.35 | Community Drumming Choir is a hands-on activity which all community members including fathers, mothers, adults and children participate in together. Cohorts of 36+ identified fathers, mothers, adults and the children will meet at least twice a week for 16 weeks at Spotland Community Association, or through Zoom/Facebook/Teams to learn beating West African drums. The goal is to run eight sessions a month with 36 individuals of our community including children (aged 8 to 14) for 16 weeks @ 2.5 hours per session during summer holiday and 1.5 hours per session during school term times s for a total of 32 sessions. |
Get Up and Grow | £4,500 | We are seeking funding of £4,500 to support a community-driven garden art project that will be led by a local artist connecting local people together with nature. This project will focus on the creation of garden ceramics and sculptures through a series of indoor and outdoor workshops, ultimately resulting in an outdoor exhibition that will build stronger connections to place and enhance the local environment. |
Pakeeza Women's Group | £4,350.00 | The project will be delivered with two artists and 2 volunteers to two men’s groups and two women’s groups at Castlemere Community centre. The sessions will be on Mondays and Wednesdays. For visual art and creative writing, participants will be asked to bring any one treasured object from home, both artists will lead on visual art and creative writing exercises to help participants build a poem/short paragraph and painting, about themselves using these objects as a topic. |
Teen Lives Matter | £4,500 | Teen Lives Matter is a Community Interest Company based in Littleborough, who provide 1-2-1 therapy sessions to teenagers who are struggling with mental health issues including depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. 'Unleashing my internal Warrior' is an art project we aim to deliver to our teens to help them explore their emotions, and free the mental cage they have created within their mind through the power of art and imagination. The project aims to take them from an exploration of Who am I? on a pathway to Who I am capable of being? How do I get there? And what will that look and feel like? As part of this project, we will collaborate powerful free style art therapy sessions alongside a dungeons and dragon role play program. The teenagers will be invited to create their own inner warrior and fire breathing dragon, this will be created through many different material supplies and put together on large canvas’s, sketch books and plaster cast modelling using special art therapy techniques alongside, the idea of this is to help them identify their inner strength and also their struggle with their inner demons. |
The Lighthouse Project | £4,458 | We would like to deliver 12 artist-led sessions focusing on creativity as a way of improving health, mental health, social connectivity, and wellbeing. Taking a lead from the '5 Ways to Wellbeing' the activities will help attendees appreciate how they can use creativity to relax, improve their concentration, develop observational skills (taking notice), and make connections with other people and their local community; including participating in local culture activities, and socialising. The 2-hour sessions held weekly will allow people to use creativity to build their confidence, take ownership of their own creative process, as well as contributing to the sessions through co-design and participation. We group will work with 10 attendees per week (potentially up to 15) to explore different ways they can communicate in creative ways, e.g. acrylic still life, sculptural textures, vocalisation, collective creativity, contour drawing. Activities will be co-designed with group attendees each week. |