CreateMore

CreateMoreSpace built on learning from previous projects Still Lively and CreateSpace, focusing on providing cultural services to combat loneliness as a result of COVID 19.

The project aimed to enable participants to feel less isolated and gain a greater sense of belonging and increased wellbeing.

Participants in three different areas were invited to join a WhatsApp group facilitated by a Creative Producer and Artist for a weekly creative task. They were supported to share work on the WhatsApp group, meet weekly on Zoom and eventually access Gallery talks and Cuppa and Catch-ups.

Participants connected with people outside of the groups by sharing creative activities and work they’d produced in response.

A pack produced for an outreach element of the programme included an artwork to keep, creative tasks and materials to make your own card to send to a friend, family member or to return to the project via a library. Close to 1000 packs went out, via venues including a Community Pharmacy in Wolverhampton alongside people’s prescriptions; in libraries in Wolverhampton and Kinver Community Library slipped inside books. The offer was extended to a Bereavement Group, Gather CIC Dudley alongside a food distribution project, to Refugees and Migrants as part of a social prescribing project and a Women’s Group in Caldmore.

An intergenerational element to the project linked a primary school to each activity group. Each school hosted Zoom workshops led by the artist’s team. The pupils were joined by group members and together they made postcards which were shared via the libraries or by post to a relative or friend that the children hadn’t been able to see.