pART-Of Referral Session
We set up pART-of with funding generated through our Catalyst Arts programme supported by the Arts Council.
It was an incentive scheme to encourage new funders and donors to support our work with a match donation given for every £1 donated through new supporters.
We generated around £65,000 to be used towards initiating new arts projects and activities.
pART-of is one of these projects and provides a weekly arts and music session on a Wednesday at 50 New Walk and is open to referrals from agencies working with young adults between 17-25 who have been in the care-system or using child mental health services.
The sessions are designed to build creative skills and confidence and the project links to our Kickstart mentoring scheme as a way to support progression of the participants into further education, employment or volunteering. Each week our arts and music workers, Emily and Dimitri support the participants to work on individual or group creative tasks and the group will be contributing their work to the general exhibitions we will be holding at 50 New Walk in 2016.
The project has been running since October 2015 and we already have three young adults interested in taking up the Business Mentoring opportunity.
Project worker Emily Breden said “The group is working well and members are committed an engaged. We have new members joining who are finding suitable activities and regularly attending. Older group members now attend independently an are timely and enthusiastic.”
Project worker Dimitri said “pART-Of is now a session currently combining music, neat-making, art, creative writing and generally a creative approach to music. The participants are of a wide range of ages and interests, they are able to have access to the internet, studios, and computers as well as being a variety of arts an crafts materials. There is also a number of staff and workers as well as volunteers with a number of skills there, to help with any project.”
