Create Gloucestershire Annual Report 2025-26
Read about a year of growing creative collective action across Gloucestershire, from neighbourhood alliances and community-owned funds to new ways of leading together.
Latest report on volunteering in Glos
Read the latest report on volunteering in Gloucestershire. It summarises a countywide engagement programme, led by voluntary, community, health and care organisations working together, which involved several thousand local people, groups and organisations in improving the volunteering experience.
National Volunteering Resources
Whether you’re managing volunteers, planning a volunteer programme or just want to understand the picture better, the right evidence and guidance can make a real difference. We’ve gathered reports, toolkits and good practice guides on volunteering, from the NCVO’s Time Well Spent research and a toolkit for small and medium-sized arts groups, to guidance on age-friendly and inclusive volunteering, and the latest report on volunteering in Gloucestershire.
“Who knew so much goodness was right here all along?”
What over 55 people told us about growing creativity in Gloucestershire. On 16 September, we convened more than 55 people for a day together at the Friendship Café in Gloucester around one question: how can we grow creativity in our communities better, together?
Future Talent: Creative Health practice in Gloucestershire
In 2022 and 2023, Create Glos teamed up with the NHS to run a series of micro experiments designed to test and build the infrastructure needed to support neighbourhood-led arts and health. Read about the process and findings.
Celebrating Creativity: The Legacy of the National Gallery’s NG200 Art Road Trip in Gloucestershire
In 2024, the National Gallery marked a historic milestone—200 years of bringing people and paintings together—with a year-long celebration known as NG200. This ambitious initiative looked both to the past and the future, launching a nationwide festival of art, creativity, and imagination to set the tone for the Gallery’s third century.
Voice of Nature
Jacqui Stearn’s workshop, on creative writing inspired by Data, produced a powerful collective sonnet, responding to the Biodiversity Stripes data visualisation.
Open Space Sessions
In the open space: we explored engaging young people in shaping data collection, co-analysis to understand data gaps, the importance of getting data sharing collaborations right, and the promise and pitfalls of presenting data through stories.
Keynote listening
Our keynote listener, Malaki Patterson, offered us a powerful set of reflections on the day.
Creative Health: UK State of the Sector Survey
The UK State of the Sector Survey was conducted between February and April 2023, to help understand more about the creative health sector in the UK. It was conducted as a collaboration between CHWA; the Wales Arts, Health & Wellbeing Network; Arts Health & Wellbeing Scotland; and Arts Care (Northern Ireland).
National Centre for Creative Health - Creative Health Review
The Review highlights the potential for creative health to help tackle pressing issues in health and social care and more widely, including health inequalities and the additional challenges we face as we recover from Covid-19. The Review has gathered evidence that shows the benefits of creative health in relation to major current challenges, and examples of where this is already working in practice.
What we learnt from our creative conversation about HOW we work together support health and wellbeing,
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
Providing Creative Health in Gloucestershire during Lockdown
Gloucestershire Creative Health Consortium’s pandemic paper ‘Providing Creative Health in Gloucestershire during Lockdown’ is available to download here.
Barnwood Trust’s Annual Public Meeting 2021 - what matters?
At Barnwood’s Annual Public Meetings in November 2021, over 50 participants came prepared to discuss the following in small groups:
What Small changes would they like to see happen in Gloucestershire, maybe in a specific area, or requiring a small amount of money?
Reimagining where we live: cultural placemaking and the levelling up agenda
Create Gloucestershire’s evidence to the DCMS inquiry into cultural placemaking and levelling up. We share what we’ve learned from resident led alliances such as Culture Matson and Cam and Dursley Creatives, from paying artists and community producers properly, and from bringing new funders to the table, and set out why trust, time and shared decision making matter most in places without an established arts infrastructure.