Creative Organisation Adapts Unique Services

Artworks Creative Communities works across the Bradford District and beyond, delivering participatory arts projects with disadvantaged people and communities.

GiveBradford funding enabled them to work with children’s residential care home staff to encourage and support them to integrate creative projects into their work with the young people.

How have you been supported by GiveBradford and what has this funding enabled you to do? 

My first experience with GiveBradford was #Iwill funding for a delightful short project with young, unaccompanied asylum seekers called Trading Places. Working with a vastly experienced sculptor, the young men created public art to brighten up empty shop in Shipley Market.

Our most recent project is Creative Routes. We worked with children’s residential care home staff to encourage and support them to integrate creative projects into their work with the young people.

The project was severely impeded by Covid and Bradford’s residential homes were particularly hard hit. There were insufficient resources or capacity to work online, so we resorted to delivering parcels of materials and suggestions for use.

Can you give us an example of an individual and or group and how they have responded to this work?

Despite the challenges faced due to Covid-19, we are exploring potential further projects with the service. We were fortunate that we could defer our Literacy project. This partnership endeavour between Artworks, Bradford Libraries and Horton Housing Association will introduce newly arrived families on gateway schemes, to a range of experiences to build up their literacy confidence.

We plan to start as soon as Libraries open again as a key component is bespoke visits and introductions to local libraries. Fingers crossed we can start soon and feature the Summer Reading Challenge as planned.

What challenges and opportunities do you face as an organisation in the current climate?

A great deal of our work is with the digitally excluded and poor, so we have not been able to simply transfer our activities online. In addition, much of the benefit from our projects is the relationships and trust that build over time. So, we have adapted our methodology in several ways such as producing Bundles of Creativity since last May.

We created A4 booklets packed with creative ideas, interesting and helpful information and distributed them through food banks, community centres, support groups – any channel that was still open to direct contact with the poorest and most isolated people. We knew that vast numbers of families did not have the resources to support home-schooling and needed support. We have produced 7 editions and our print run is now 10,000.

How is your organisation preparing for the future, and what kind of funding is needed?

All our Leeds Community Foundation/GiveBradford grants have been short term and have enabled us to try out and establish new relationships that often develop subsequently (for example, after Trading Places, we went on to secure a 3 year Children in Need grant working with UASC). We do need funding over a longer period.