2020/21 funded projects

Dementia, Community and Creativity is a Programme of work which seeks to build social connections and offer a range of creative opportunities for people living with Dementia and their families.   With our Academic Collaborator, we will investigate the impact of creativity as a collective endeavour, on the wellbeing of participants, who have been disproportionately impacted by the isolation during COVID lockdown restrictions. As well as using Social Media we will hold telephone and, when possible, face to face sessions, using both indoor and outdoor public spaces, to increase visibility and social opportunities.

Jill Rezzano – Head of Education, New Vic Theatre - Lead Applicant.

David Amigoni – Professor of Victorian Literature- Academic Collaborator.

Robert Stannard –  Programme Director BA/MA Liberal Arts, Faculty Lead for Interdisciplinary Education, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Academic Collaborator.

Tomorrow’s Garden

Interactive documentary film February and March 2021

As part of the High Street Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ) in Stoke town, B arts has been commissioned to deliver Tomorrow’s Garden introducing the idea of the HSHAZ to the general public, businesses and residents in Stoke Town.

Each installation will encourage people to think about, what we’ve learnt, started, or discovered in 2020; a love for open spaces, local shopping, a new hobby, the strength of our NHS workers, cooking tea together or our community spirit.

Shining a light on the seeds we want to grow and flourish in 2021.

Hilary Hughes, Lead Applicant

Pawas Bisht, Academic collaborator

Reaching Across Borders, in collaboration with Aneta Hayes, Senior Lecturer in Education at Keele University, was awarded a grant from the Keele Institute for Social Inclusion to conduct a research study to increase our understanding of how to best develop a Waldorf/Steiner inspired educational program for Syrian refugees (early years, primary and secondary pupils) living in the Bekaa Valley, in Lebanon. The goal of the study is to develop a blueprint for the development of a Waldorf/Steiner inspired educational program for Syrian refugee pupils that can be used to approach donors to fund such an educational program.

Syrian refugees in the Bekaa Valley suffer from financial, physical and social barriers to integrating into the formal public-school system. There are more than 660,000 school-age Syrian refugees in Lebanon. More than half of these children are out of school, and now with COVID-19 pandemic, this number is becoming increasingly higher. In addition, the Lebanese curriculum in public schools does not accommodate Syrian refugee children’s needs for psychosocial support, connected with trauma and displacement.

Raiza Kolia, Lead applicant

Aneta Hayes, Academic collaborator

Introducing a new research collaboration between Cheshire West and Chester Council and Keele University, laying the groundwork for the development of a ‘routes out of poverty’ community-based social learning programme for unlocking community wealth and community ownership amongst the communities that have borne the harshest economic injury through the crisis across our borough.

What the Poverty Emergency Declaration says about our commitment to working more closely with universities and providing support to the communities that have borne the harshest economic injury from the crisis with community education and support to explore collective ownership models:

Within the Poverty Emergency recently declared by Cheshire West and Chester Council, a commitment was made to ‘Take a collaborative and evidence-based approach, working more closely with health, universities, trade unions and poverty-related community groups to improve our research and intelligence’ (resolution 10). Our declaration states that we will build stronger communities through our recovery by ‘Providing a means for new groups to meet and build confidence, to collaborate, educate, experience a sense of ownership and influence and to build democratic participation, in order to root necessary responses within the heart of low-income communities’ and through ‘Developing further council strategies around Community Wealth Building, including supporting communities to consider routes to community ownership in order to create jobs and share local wealth. Fostering education, awareness, skills and culture-shift at all levels that provide the precursor to meaningfully explore and expand community ownership as a route out of poverty and forward through the crisis’. Resolution 6 in the plan states that we will ‘Work collaboratively with partners to provide space for community-led ‘hubs’ where solutions to low income and crisis impacts can be explored by local residents and support provided’.

Mandy Clare, Councillor - Lead

Phil Catney - Academic collaborator

Liz Carter - Academic collaborator