Friends 2 Friends

Today I had an excellent meeting with Alison Wellon from Friends 2 Friends. This is a user-led group of adults with learning disabilities which has been up and running for just a year. It was formed to provide social opportunities for those people involved in COGS - Cherry Orchard Gardening Service and goes from strength to strength. Friends 2 Friends meet at the lovely Cruck House in Lichfield and the service operates as a free drop-in centre 6 days each week. It aims to give people the confidence to lead more independent and active lives and enables users to make real friends with which to share social activities.

 

Cruck House

Friends 2 Friends provides opportunities to improve life skills such as cooking and ironing, and through volunteer support enables users to organise themselves in a range of activities. Courses such as horse riding, computing, graffiti art and sugar craft have been held in the past twelve months as well as several fund raising activities, raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support, Children in Need and Comic Relief.

They are very keen to get involved in drama, dance and music activities so I am looking forward to meeting the group next month to have a chat about what they would like to do.

I really do love my job - what an inspiring group of people!

Meeting people - what a brilliant way to spend the day!

On Tuesday 26th March I visited my first contacts.
I started the day with a cold and snowy drive to the Old Mining College in Chasetown where I had a lovely chat with Samantha from the Changes organisation.

Old Mining College, Chasetown

Changes is a Staffordshire based registered charity, run mainly by service users and volunteers, providing a service that promotes mental wellbeing and recovery in a safe and friendly environment. Read more about it here http://www.changes.org.uk/
They are providing a fabulous service and are keen to have a go at an arts activity. The service users are going to discuss what they would like to do. We also talked about the possibility of linking the work with other Changes groups in Lichfield, Tamworth and Burton. I think this could become a really exciting project and it has lots of possibilities for extending the work beyond the initial project.

Later on I went to visit the Tamworth Arts Development Team, a very hard working trio of ladies who gave me some very useful suggestions and contacts.

Tamworth Assembly Rooms

There is a lot of good arts work going on in Tamworth - it is to my shame and embarrassment that I am not more aware of it - although I don't think that I am alone in this! It is amazing how parochial we can be; if Lichfield cannot supply what we want we tend to look to Birmingham, when there is lots of interesting stuff right on our doorstep. I think some county-wide coordination in the promotion of the arts would be helpful in all sorts of ways. More joined up thinking across Districts is required on this - we are really not making the most of what we already have. See here to find out how to keep up to date with the arts in Tamworth http://www.tamworthassemblyrooms.co.uk/arts-activities/artswitch

Many thanks to Elanor, Laura and Hannah in Tamworth and Samantha in Chasetown for giving up their precious time and making me feel so welcome.

One week on

I have had several positive responses and will be going to meet with both the Tamworth and Cannock Arts Development teams and the friends2friends group in Lichfield. I've also had a positive conversation with the Arts for Health team at South Staffordshire and Shropshire NHS Foundation Trust. I feel I am making some good contacts both for this project and the future of Lichfield Mysteries.
I have sent out information to several other community groups including Changes and Forward Action Burntwood so I'm hoping to hear back from them very soon.
I still need to investigate large companies. A workplace group would be an interesting development - watch out Gareth Malone!

The first contacts...

I have contacted the Arts Development Officers at Lichfield District, Cannock Chase District, Tamworth Borough and East Staffordshire District Councils. All lovely, enthusiastic people! Hopefully they will make some useful suggestions for potential participant groups. I have sent them more detailed information which you can read here:
Community Engagement Project Info

24 hours later I have the first positive responses - excellent!

Starting the research...

The first step of this project is to identify communities with which to work. I have spent quite a lot of time this week pouring over statistics and data relating to deprivation in Lichfield District, Cannock Chase, Tamworth and Burton upon Trent. Interesting reading. I really want to recruit some new Mysteries participants from areas of greatest need, as well as from areas where the Mysteries has had little or no previous input. Unfortunately and sadly,  there is no shortage of electoral wards to choose from. It's important to be realistic;  I'm aiming to recruit 5 new groups of participants as otherwise the practical constraints of time, our capacity to carry out projects and funding would make it difficult to succeed.

 I have started by compiling a 'hit- list' of potential wards based on information taken from the following websites: http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/ 

http://www.staffordshireobservatory.org.uk/IAS/dataviews/report/fullpage?viewId=306&reportId=239&geoId=20&geoReportId=2817

These resources contain a huge amount of information. I've use statistics on the percentage of people within an electoral ward with no economic inactivity, no qualifications and numbers of benefit claimants from the NOMIS website and referenced them with indicators for multiple deprivation from the Staffordshire Observatory website. These indicators include deprivation in respect of income, employment, health, education, housing, crime, environment, children and older people.  This information can be found here.

Information on the indices of Deprivation, taken from the Summary Cards for each district, found on the Stafforshire Observatory website, is contained in this document, National Indices of Deprivation.

I have already discovered alot about these districts. These maps give a clear overview of the statistical information:
 Lichfield District map
Cannock Chase District map
Tamworth map
East Staffordshire map


I have also improved my statistical analysis skills and my computer skills - I am already enjoying using this blog as a way of communicating and recording my progress. More to follow soon...

Welcome

Hello and welcome to this blog which will follow the progress of Lichfield Mysteries Community Engagement Project.  I am Jill Taylor and I will be carrying out this project which is being funded by the Arts Council and aims to:

•  Increase levels of public engagement by attracting a more diverse cross-section of the local community and introducing them to new experiences and skills

• Initiate a re framing of our organisation’s scope beyond its current core activity of producing a large-scale community production every three years. By carrying out research and development we aim to recruit at least five new participant groups by 2015 and develop a strategy which ensures continuing participatory arts engagement and organisational development. 

• Develop local partnership working. 

I hope you enjoy reading about the progress of this project.