In June 2023 Healthy Communities Together (HCT) Gloucestershire held a Structures of Togetherness Event in Stroud Sub Rooms, a creative conversation about whether HOW we work together in the county to support health and wellbeing, matters as much as WHAT we do (hint: HCT thinks it does).
Image credit @myron_rogers
Read MorePippa Jones, CG’s founder and director was speaking at the Culture, Health & Wellbeing (CHWP) Alliance Conference in Barnsley as part of a panel convened to discuss how arts organisations and the health sector can work better together.
Read MoreThis is the first in a 2 part series of blogs from a conversation where Pippa and Debbie look at the story of Culture Matson. In this blog they look back at how Culture Matson came about and how the group has developed.
Read MoreIn 2023 Culture Matson started a trial to develop a ‘Community Chest’. A community chest is a shared investment fund that supports health and wellbeing and joins up money from the NHS, local authorities, and other sources. Read how members of Culture Matson met the challenge of running a community chest to collectively decide how best to use the money for their neighbours.
Read MoreFind out more about the Off we Go project and the impact joining in with the activities had on those taking part.
Read MoreResearch shows that participation in creative activity and art can reduce stress, improve self-esteem, and promote recovery.
But the therapeutic value of participatory arts extends far beyond benefits to individual health: in facilitating and amplifying authentic creative and cultural expression by and for marginalised communities, it also has the potential to reduce health inequalities on a much broader scale.
Read MoreKICKSTART BLOG
Evie and Jimmy both got paid apprenticeships through the Kickstart Scheme. Jimmy was at Deepbed radio and Evie worked at SVA. Watch their video to find out what they got up to…
Read MoreDr Alex Waldrop was our “keynote listener” at glosdataday. She dedicated her time on the day to listening. She heard what was being talked about, she noticed who was there and who wasn’t and she took notice so that she could give all those voices the opportunity to be heard. After a day of dropping into workshops and joining open space sessions Alex presented back to the room. This is what she heard:
Read MoreBut we knew it was important and we had a strong desire to make it happen!
Create Gloucestershire were one of the four partners who came together to host the dataday. Back in the Autumn of last year we began conversations to imagine this event. It was going to be unashamedly about data and it was going to inspire, inform and empower everyone who came along. That was the plan.
Read MoreThis is the question that sits behind our Create Health strand - a series of test projects to develop and understand how to live well. Our experience in Gloucestershire and evidence drawn from practice across the UK and internationally, confirms that arts, creativity and culture are a fundamental part of living well.
Read MoreGloucestershire Your Futures is a new website designed to support young people with SEND toward achieving their career goals.
Read MoreCreative Climate Action Toolkit focuses on actionable, achievable and nuanced climate action to support smaller creative businesses, organisations, collectives and freelancers. This step by step approach also helps combat the overwhelm often felt at the scale of the crisis.
Read MoreGloucestershire Creative Health Consortium’s composed a paper documenting their responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, and subsequent lockdown periods from 23rd March 2020 to 19th July 2021. This paper includes observations and experiences from consortium partner organisations, delivering artist facilitators and individuals who accessed Creative Health over this time and is available to download now.
Read MoreWe’re excited to be part of the Badge Nation community which recognises individual achievements using digital badges.
Read MoreWe were delighted to be asked by the British Libraries as part of their Living Knowledge Network to talk about Art of Libraries and the impact it has had on two early adopter libraries in very different settings, and how they engage with local communities and tailor strategies to their individual areas.
Read MoreCG’s take away from the new national and local funding picture is that there are many brilliant arts and cultural organisations who secured funding and just as many that didn’t. There was simply not enough funding available to meet the incredible aspirations and potential of arts and cultural organisations in England.
Read MoreCreate Gloucestershire is continually looking at ways we can be a more inclusive employer. And over the past couple of years we have made lots of significant changes to our recruitment process to make it as flexible and accessible as possible.
We’ve put this blog together to share our learning about what we did. And at the bottom of the page you’ll find a checklist that we hope you’ll find useful.
Read MoreFor some arts and cultural organisations Oct 26th is an important day when decisions about 3 year strategic funding from Arts Council England are made. Successful organisations will make up the National Portfolio becoming National Portfolio Organisations (NPO's) or Investment Principles Support Organisations (IPSO's).
CG is one of this group waiting to hear if we are successful with our application to become an IPSO for Gloucestershire.
Read MoreWhen Cam and Dursley Creatives and GL11 Community Hub collaborated on the Platinum Jubilee Flag making project the community went silkscreen crazy, producing over 2,500 flags depicting images created by local children that celebrated our Queen.
Read MoreKICKSTART BLOG
Jordan Odame is working at The Roses Theatre in Tewkesbury and joined the team through the Kickstart Scheme. Read on to find out more about his unusual journey into work in the cultural sector.
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