Saturday 10 June 2017

Happy Talk...

'Discredited, humiliated, diminished. Where there was respect, there is ridicule; where there was strength, there is weakness; where there was self-assurance, there is doubt.' ...enough said.*


This week I was invited to a Creative Industries Federation round table meeting with NHS Chief Executive, Simon Stevens to discuss the increasing place of the arts and health agenda in national research, policy and practice. Great to hear interested and interesting people from the cultural sector, and only a little jarred with me. Although 'Chatham House' rules apply, this meeting does come in Arts for Health’s 30th year at MMU and the month before the public launch of a the national research inquiry into the field, undertaken by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Arts, Health and Wellbeing. I'm pleased that this will take place the Manchester School of Art in July - more details soon. While this event will be by invitation only, if you are interested in research and policy in arts and health and would like to attend, lease register your interest by emailing HERE.

I'll be sharing some Dementia & Imagination work at the National Art Gallery of Lithuania, alongside new work with Vic McEwan following his residency at Alder Hey, which all precedes his residency at TATE Liverpool at the end of the month. Free tickets for a TATE Exchange event on 29th June are available HERE. For those of you attending the Culture, Health and Wellbeing International Conference in Bristol, you'll be able to hear from Vic and I on the final day of the conference in the final keynote of the conference. Vic will be sharing work from The Harmonic Oscillator and I'll be framing in through an extract from a new work, Critical Care.


Calling all artists involved in healthcare - Expressions of Interest
The new children’s hospital to be built on the grounds of St James’s Hospital Dublin is the most ambitious healthcare development in the island of Ireland in terms of scale, design and clinical care.  Designed by BDP and O’Connell Mahon Architects, this iconic building will be a world class facility that will look after children and young people from all over Ireland who have complicated and serious illnesses and who are in need of specialist and complex care. In addition to the hospital, two Paediatric Outpatient and Urgent Care Centres will be built at Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown and Tallaght Hospital to open in 2018 and 2019 respectively. The project will bring together three existing children’s hospitals: Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital Crumlin, Temple Street Children’s University Hospital and the National Children’s Hospital at Tallaght Hospital.

The Children’s Hospital Group (CHG) invites Expressions of Interest from experienced artists to enter into a phase of Research and Development between August and October 2017 leading to proposals for a range of ambitious artworks that will be integrated into the new children’s hospital public realm spaces and its Paediatric Outpatient and Urgent Care Centres. This Research and Development Phase will be a stand-alone contract and the realisation of resulting proposals will be contracted separately.

The closing date for Expressions of Interest is Wednesday, 19th July at 2pm.
An information meeting for artists will take place in the F2 Centre, Dublin 8 on 3rd July. For full details and an application form, click HERE.


Creative Alternatives Online
Creative Alternatives is an award winning arts and health service that has
been funded by Public Health in Merseyside for more than ten years! Programme participants have explored ways of using creativity to reduce
symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression. There is plenty of research to show that the arts can help to improve wellbeing and over the past 10 years, the community based programme has helped hundreds of people to do so. With the new online programme, we are expanding the reach of Creative Alternatives and hope to help even more people to improve their wellbeing through the power of creativity! Creative Alternatives Online offers:
- A weekly series of recorded workshops led by an artist, for you to watch in your own time, at your own pace
- Opportunities to try new things like mindfulness, gentle body work and expressive arts activities such as sketching, writing and photography, all in your own time
- Forums, where you can connect and share your experience with likeminded people
- Optional live drop in sessions with the participants and artists, for you to share your creative work if you wish to
- Access to online resources to boost your creativity & wellbeing 
The programme is FREE and will run for 12 weeks, starting in early Sep 2017.
If you like the sound of what’s on offer, please email us at rachael@creativealternatives.org.uk to find out more! 


Masonic Charitable Foundation Community Support Grants 
Registered charities in England and Wales can apply for funding to the Masonic Charitable Foundation's Community Support Grants Scheme. Funding is available for projects to tackle financial hardship; improve the lives of those affected by poor physical and/or mental health and wellbeing; provide educational and employment opportunities for disadvantaged children and young people; and tackle social exclusion and disadvantage. Charities can apply for large grants of £5,000 and above or for small grants of between £500 and £5,000. The next closing date for applications to the small grants programme is the 16th June 2017. For large grants programme it is 3rd July 2017. If applying for a Large Grant, applicants must first submit a Grant Enquiry Form at least two weeks prior to the large grant application deadline. Read more by clicking on the gentleman in all his finery, above!


Near Neighbours Small Grants Fund 
Local groups and organisations, who are working to bring together neighbours and develop relationships across diverse faiths and ethnicities in order to improve their communities, have until 17th November 2017 to apply for grants of £250 to £5,000 from the Near Neighbours fund. The fund which operates in East & West London, Luton, East Midlands, Birmingham, the Black Country, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire has two key objectives:
Social interaction - to develop positive relationships in multi-faith and multi-ethnic areas
Social action - to encourage people of different faiths and of no faith and of different ethnicities to come together for initiatives that improve their local neighbourhood.
Grants awarded in the past have offered funding to a broad range of work; environmental, social, cultural, artistic, and sporting, that furthers the programme's aims of encouraging social interaction and social action. Read more by clicking on the Manchester back ally, above.

* Now here's a great cartogram that was in the news. Quite simply it shows the UK political landscape by per-head vote and political party.


BBC Children in Need Main Grant Programme 
The next closing date for applications to the BBC Children in Need Main Grants programme is the 1st September 2017. Grants of over £10,000 per project are available to not for profit organisations and schools that work with young people who are experiencing disadvantage through:
Illness, distress, abuse or neglect
Any kind of disability
Behavioural or psychological difficulties
And / or living in poverty or situations of deprivation.
Schools can also apply for funding but the project must be additional to their statutory duties. Read more HERE. 


Funding for young people to develop social enterprises 
UnLtd, in partnership with Sports Relief and the Spirit of 2012, has announced that young people who want to start, grow or build their social enterprise idea can apply for funding of up to £15,000.  Young people can apply for a Test it Award of up to £500 or a Build it Award of up to £15,000.  Awards can be applied for by an individual or small group of up to four people aged 11-30. Test it Awards provide young people with the chance to unlock their potential and make a positive difference in the community. The Test it Awards are available to 200 young people to run their own projects. There is a one stage application process for Test It Awards. All applicants need to do is fill out the application which can be found at here. UnLtd will also scale up successful projects by providing Awards of £15,000 to 10 young people who are ready to build their ideas into sustainable social. There is a two stage application process for the Build It Awards.  Applicants initially will need to submit an expression of interest and if they meet the criteria then UnLtd will send an application form. Read more by clicking on the street scene, above.          .   

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