Stoke-on-Trent Microgrants
THE PROJECTS Wonder Women [1] Grow, cook, eat, celebrate Plot 33 Richmond Allotments Westport Lake Community [2] Rock Painting and Hiding Westport Lake Estate Collective Skills Project [3 - 4] Potbank in the Park Hartshill Nature Reserve Fegg Hayes Futures [5] Washing Line Art Installation The Hub, Fegg Hayes Village Let’s Make Jam WI [6] Make Tea Lights in the Park Central Forest Park Stoke Amateur Theatre Society [7] Samba Drumming Workshop Burslem Park Friends of Spode Rose Garden [8] How To… Spode Rose Garden, Stoke It’s What You Say [9] Our World - Your Planet Fenton Town Hall and the surrounding area Meir Matters [10] Crafting Outdoors Sandon Primary School Portland Inn Project [10 - 11] Youth Tee shirt printing using natural dyes The PIPPIN, Portland Street Hanley
Year 2 Introduction In 2021 Creative Lives embarked on their second consecutive annual microgrant scheme in partnership with Stoke-on-Trent City Council. In 2020 the scheme was launched as part of Get Creative At Home, and proved to be incredibly successful in supporting amateur and voluntary groups to offer creative experiences to those particularly affected by lockdown. In 2021, with restrictions easing, our partners at Stoke-on-Trent Council were keen to repeat the microgrant scheme as part of Get Creative Outdoors, to encourage groups to return, in a safe way, to working with communities in outdoor public spaces. With a total of £2000 pledged to the scheme by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, we were able to grant 10 groups between £100-200 each to fund hyper-local creative community events outdoors during the summer months of 2021.
Wonder Women Grow, cook, eat, celebrate Plot 33 Richmond Allotments
Wonder Women is a women’s social and creative group led by community art organisations Letting in the Light and Festival Stoke’s Greening Project. Having acquired an allotment space, during the pandemic, ‘Grow, Cook, Eat, Celebrate’ was an opportunity to bring the women’s group back together, in a safe way, to be introduced to this new creative and productive space, and to harvest, cook and eat some of the first crop of produce from the allotment.
All the food, made from produce from the plot, was eaten and enjoyed. People took recipes to try at home.
Photo credit: Anne Kinnaird 1
Westport Lake Community Rock Painting and Hiding Westport Lake Estate
Westport Lake Community (WLC) is a community group that organises social and community events and projects. Though not a dedicated creative group, WLC facilitated a rock painting community workshop on the estate and encouraged people to hide them around the adjacent Westport Lake so that visitors could find and rehide them. Being held during the school holidays. WLC aimed this workshop at families who lived on and around the estate.
Kids and parents on the estate were able to meet each other for the first time, boosting connection.
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Collective Skills Project Potbank in the Park Hartshill Nature Reserve
Collective Skills project is a voluntary organisation that aims to improve connectivity and embed skills in their local community of Hartshill. They often use creative methods to achieve this. For their microgrant project, the group aimed to create a giant, temporary image of a potbank (a pottery kiln that the area is famous for) using natural materials found in Hartshill Nature Reserve. They planned to do this with the community on a greenspace at the park in a single day, and take an aerial photograph of the resulting image. Bad weather made this plan impossible, so the Collective Skills Project encouraged families to go into the park over a number of weeks themselves to create their individual sections. The kiln image was eventually constructed as a photo collage, using photos of the sections sent to them by the community.
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Collective Skills Project Potbank in the Park Hartshill Nature Reserve
Spending quality time with the family that didn't involve spending money! I think there should be more projects like this! The kids really enjoyed being out with nature (as well as the grown ups!) It was lovely to see how creative they got and learning about all the different leaves and flowers we collected. Thank you for organising this event. Please let me know if you organise another one.
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Fegg Hayes Futures Washing Line Art Installation The Hub, Fegg Hayes Village
Fegg Hayes futures is a charity that runs The Hub in Fegg Hayes in the north of Stoke-on-Trent. The hub is a community space that, at the time of the microgrants, was in a tentative transitional phase of beginning to open back up to the community. Their project, Washing Line Art Installation was a hyper local creative project designed to encourage former space users, and other residents, back into The Hub in a safe way. Using a piece of waste ground near The Hub, a washing line was installed so that existing user groups, passers by and local residents could view and contribute to the pop up exhibition displayed on the washing line.
Due to the amount of positive feedback we received we will be looking to hold a similar community art installation event again next year”
Photo credit: Andrea Millington
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Let’s Make Jam WI Make Tea Lights in the Park Central Forest Park
Let’s Make Jam is a Women’s Institute group who had been meeting up remotely during the pandemic, and were anxious to get back together in larger numbers again safely. Their project was a simple and enjoyable craft project of making tea light holders, which they would usually take part in behind closed doors. However, they ran the workshop in the middle of Central Forest Park in Hanley, and welcomed several non-members and newcomers to join them.
Everyone enjoyed meeting up in person for the first time in a long time… It was a good job we were outside as the ice from the tin cans went everywhere and would have been too messy for an indoors task.
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Stoke Amateur Theatre Society Samba Drumming Workshop Burslem Park
Stoke Amateur Theatre Society (SATS) livened up their local park with a drop in Samba drumming workshop. Targeting park users and passers by, as well as promoting the opportunity across the city, SATS volunteers were keen to demonstrate how their local park could be utilised and animated in different, positive ways, especially in the context of a spate of anti-social behaviour that had been reported in the park around that time.
Lots of passing footfall meant that over 50 people had the opportunity to learn some samba rhythms and get to touch and play with unusual instruments.
Photo credit: Robert Sims 7
Friends of Spode Rose Garden How To… Spode Rose Garden, Stoke
Friends of Spode Rose Garden (FoSRG) is a group of volunteer creative amateur gardeners that tend and run events from a formerly abandoned garden in the grounds of the Spode Pottery Factory in Stoke. Their event ‘How To…’ was a multi activity public event focused on sharing a wide range of creative and horticultural skills including propagating perennials, shaping a topiary box and mixing a simple balm. The event was very well attended, most notably by people who were not formerly known to the group, and some who had never visited the garden before. FoSRG’s event helped to broaden these residents’ knowledge of creative and outdoor opportunities in their area.
I didn’t know this was here, it's lovely
Photo credit: Anna Francis
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It’s What You Say Our World - Your Planet Fenton Town Hall and the surrounding area. It’s What You Say (IWYS) is a creative education CIC that is based in Fenton Stoke on Trent. For their microgrant project they worked with young people on the theme of Climate Change, and spent time as a group responding creatively through drawing, photography and podcasting to this theme and the area surrounding Fenton Town Hall. The project concluded with an art exhibition using found materials, recycling, and collective mixed media art pieces, created by the young people, and attended by friends and family.
Highlighting the effects of climate change and how it affects everyone globally, brought a sense of awareness to the young people which was unfamiliar to them.
Photo credit: Chermaine Baines
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Meir Matters Crafting Outdoors Sandon Primary School
Meir Matters Community group is a well established voluntary group in Meir, Stoke-on-Trent, that works to improve the area and strengthen the community with community projects and initiatives. The micro-grant project was to introduce some creative opportunities to parents/caregivers waiting for children as they took part in pre-arranged sporting workshops at Sandon Primary School, during the summer holidays. Meir Matters facilitated 8 weekly creative workshops at Sandon Primary over two months.
Portland Inn Project Youth Tee shirt printing using natural dyes The PIPPIN, Portland Street Hanley Portland Inn Project (PIP) is a community arts project based in the famous £1 house scheme area surrounding Portland Street in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. The Portland Inn Project was instigated by artists who had moved into the area and begun working with the community to open up a disused pub as a creative community skills hub. The project uses a formerly underused (and misused) greenspace in the street to host community workshops. The project is now using a modified shipping container as it’s base until the Portland Inn is ready to inhabit. For their microgrant project, the PIP Youth Club worked with artist Katrina Wilde to print t-shirts using natural dyes, sourcing some of their materials from the local greenspace. 10
Portland Inn Project Youth Tee shirt printing using natural dyes The PIPPIN, Portland Street Hanley
Three children that day said it was their favourite day of the summer (probably also helped by making their own pizza that day too)
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Cllr Lorraine Beardmore Cabinet member for Culture, Leisure & Public Health Stoke-on-Trent City Council Supporting the creative sector, and in particular grass roots organisations, is always incredibly important, but last year was even more so, as this was offering support to creative groups who wanted to offer hope and a connection to residents during such a difficult and unsettling time. As restrictions eased in 2021, we supported creative groups to breathe new life into the outdoor spaces we’ve longed to socialise in during the lockdowns, and bring communities back together in safe and inspiring ways.
Nicola Winstanley West Midlands Development Officer, Creative Lives
By its very nature, hyper local community creativity can be easily overlooked by local authorities when allocating annual budgets for arts and culture. Microgrants like these recognise the importance of voluntary creative community groups, whose dedication to creating playful and productive social environments, help to knit communities together.
Published by Creative Lives, January 2022 Creative Lives Charity Limited is registered in Scotland as Company No. 139147 and Charity No. SC 020345.
Registered office: The Melting Pot, 15 Calton Road, Edinburgh EH8 8DL. Creative Lives acknowledges funding from Arts Council England, the
Arts Council of Ireland, Creative Scotland and the Arts Council of Wales.
Get Creative is a campaign supported by:
