B Sharp is a group of about 25 young people who get together, write songs and learn how to improve their singing skills. This show was a great test event to see how the acoustics worked in the venue.

In rehearsal it was clear there needed to be some sound dampening, so sails were hung from the ceiling to stop the sound echoing around. They worked quite well but  more thought and experimentation needs to happen to make The Hub a really good performance venue.

Around 100 friends and family members of B Sharp and The Hub were invited to come and see the performance and check out the new venue. This made it a very cozy and supportive atmosphere.

In addition to young singers, Vikki Mills recorded the sound who is just about to finish a degree in Music Technology at Herts Uni, ‘I am very keen to break into the live music industry along with recording live events. I thought that helping document the first show at The Hub with B Sharp was a great idea as it provides a nice memory to look back on. It also provided me with a good experience in recording an event in which the acoustics would be challenging and the fact that there was no pressure, so it was a great way to start getting real life experience as well as helping others in the process.”

The Hub is looking forward to working closely with B Sharp, contributing to the exciting programme of activities being developed for young people at The Hub all made possible through The Jubilee People’s Millions funding.

For more information visit: http://www.william-parker.org/?p=290

By Kelsey Beninger, 24 and Craig Blake, 20

Being part of the Big Lottery Fund’s investment in young people team has brought a lot of opportunities and challenges since we began this journey in January. Recently half of our twenty-strong team had the opportunity to trek to Birmingham for a day of media training, hosted by the Media Trust.

The day brought with it so many opportunities to learn about speaking to the media. Like when some of us managed to do a mock radio interview without mentioning the actual name of the investment! We learned about the ‘curse of knowledge’ which basically means we are just too smart on the topics we have been living, sleeping and breathing for the better part of 2012 – we assume our listeners can translate our jargon and fill in the blanks of what we forget to include. Lesson learned, and practiced!

We picked up some practical tools like strategies on structuring our responses and how to ensure we always bring discussions with a journalist back to our key messages. These skills will help our team maximise the very short time frame we will have to capture our point when speaking to the media (from 10 seconds to 3 minutes!)

The real dreaded moment, for me at least, was practicing a TV interview and then watching it being played back and critiqued with the group. Why is it you are fine with being captured on a camera phone passionately singing an 80’s ballad with your mates but when you are filmed speaking about a serious topic your skin is too blotchy, your voice sounds too pitchy and you have the look of a deer in the headlights?

Needless to say, it was good practice, not only for potential TV interviews but also for challenging our own fears about being featured in the public domain and recognising that each of us brings unique and relatable characteristics to our interviews.

Craig, a member of the team, participated and reflects on the challenges he overcame during the day. He said, “Having a speech impediment, I have always been self conscious of my speaking and was dreading this part of the day before I even turned up.”

Once engaged in the sessions, he learned he had little to fear. “The Media Trust trainers were very good at providing constructive criticism, and my team were supportive in convincing me that the speech impediment was not as noticeable as I thought it would be! In a way, hearing and watching myself was very beneficial as it allowed me to experiment within a safe environment and try things l had not tested, like different facial expressions and hand movements. I now feel more confident in speaking to the media on behalf of BIG.”

In addition to challenging our fears about being seen in the public domain, and learning useable tools, the day brought with it a newfound confidence for our team. We have all been spokespeople for young people since before getting involved in the investment design, and are all passionate and dedicated to improving the lives of young people. Because of this, we’re in the right place to be spokespeople for BIG in the media, as BIG is about to launch a strategy that we hope will bring lasting and genuine support and opportunities to UK youth. The training made us all feel more confident about talking about our soon-to-be-announced investment to journalists on both regional and national stages.

We are now in a better position to engage with journalists, answer questions confidently and comprehensively, and maximise our ability to secure coverage to make the scheme a success.

Follow #BIGyp on Twitter or like our Facebook page to keep up to date with how we’re getting on.

Sharon Fitton from Food4families, tells us what happened when the residents celebrated the amazing transformation of an overgrown eyesore into the beginnings of a beautiful space that will produce healthy organic fruit and veg.

The Reading-based project, Food4Families, has worked with local residents to manage the development of the site after over 4000 people voted in June 2011 for them to win £52,000 in the BIG Lottery’s Jubilee People’s Millions competition.

The lottery funding has covered the costs of the set up of the allotment, and revenue costs for one year. Then the management of the allotment will be handed over to a consituted committee made up of local residents.

The sun shone brightly for the opening and we missed all the April showers, everyone was very impressed with the changes (and the home made cake!). Visitors were able to sow seeds in the poly tunnel, dig in the new raised beds and sign up as new members.

Annie Turnbull, local resident and mother of two said: “I live in a flat and the only outside space my two children have access to is a 2x3m balcony, being able to come down here and get their hands dirty planting vegetables, will make a positive change to our lives.”

Work only started on the site in January so lots of people have worked very hard to get it ready for this growing season including the Probation Service’s teams of supervised offenders, the Youth offending service, volunteers from the BG group, Reading Borough Council officers and Southcote residents.

Becca Aitken from Thames Valley Probation said “Projects like this really give our offenders the opportunity to learn new skills, work alongside positive role models and give something back to the community.”

There is still a lot to do but many hands will make light work!

The two groups cited in the article have received Lottery funding for local food projects through schemes run by The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT) and The Plunkett Foundation respectively – organisations that we work with as experts in their field to help deliver our funding and ensure it has maximum impact in a particular area.

The Real Bread Campaign received funding from RSWT’s Local Food grants scheme to promote local bread production by supporting small businesses and community enterprises, and carrying out activities linking local bakers with schools, community projects and local services such as care homes. As the Real Bread Campaign is a national project, communities across the country benefit from better access to good quality bread, new skills in bread-making, and strengthened local economies due to better supported local bakers. The project is being developed as a membership campaign, enabling individuals and organisations across the country to get involved in the project.

Organiclea Ltd has been supported by both RWST and The Plunkett Foundation’s Making Local Food Work programme for a fantastic project to develop 12 acres of disused local authority plant nursery and half an acre of glasshouses, as a community food growing enterprise. The project aims to grow food sustainably and recruit volunteers from agencies supporting disadvantaged people, including those with learning difficulties and long-term unemployed people, living in North and East London.

All BIG’s funding is controlled and can only be spent in accordance with a project’s initial funding agreement; grants are monitored to ensure this happens.  This same policy applies to Lottery funded programmes and funding schemes run by our partners.

While it is true that some BIG grantholders carry out campaigning activity as part of their funding from us, in line with Charity Commission guidance, BIG funding cannot be used to support any political campaigns or protests which are partisan or doctrinaire.  We carry out checks to ensure that any public statements and activities carried out by organisations funded by BIG, in policy announcements, publications or on websites, are consistent with maintaining broad public confidence in the good causes that benefit from the National Lottery.

A good example of a BIG funded campaign is Time To Change, which in its first four-year phase was supported by a £16m grant from BIG and is now supported in phase two by the Department of Health. To date the campaign has made enormous improvements to combat mental health discrimination and change public attitudes,  recording a 4% reduction in discrimination reported by people with mental health problems since it began.

We begin with an audio slideshow from Eddi Banks of Durants School in Enfield - a special school for children with Autism and other complex needs aged between 5 and 19. 

Here Eddi tells us how the sensory garden they created with the help of a dedicated team of volunteers has transformed the lives of pupils and their families.

Katie Taylor is a much-needed volunteer for the Spinal Injuries Association

“When I was nine months old, my parents were told I had a rare childhood cancer called neuroblastoma. It was in an advanced state with the primary tumour in my chest and secondary tumours in my head, bone marrow, spinal column and arms. With a prognosis of only 10 per cent my parents were given the option of whether to try and fight this abomination. I started chemotherapy immediately, learning to walk up and down the children’s wards, with my frantic, amazing mum running after me with a sick bowl.

“Everything went well. I finished my chemo and some additional radiotherapy and was sent home. Unfortunately within a few months my walking and balance started to deteriorate and it was confirmed the primary tumour had swollen and was applying pressure to my spinal cord. The damage was irreversible and my system and organs wouldn’t survive another round of treatment as I was so young.

“However, four months later, I started sleeping through the night and was happier in myself during the day. The consultants found that my cancer had gone; it was a medical riddle that no one had the answer to. My parents took this miracle and ran with it and we were sent home to enjoy life together.

Coming to terms

“Although I was lucky to be alive I was still spinal cord injured (SCI) and no one we had contact with medically could tell us how to live with this, other than pointing us towards the local special needs school. It was like trying to complete a million piece jigsaw and not even knowing what the picture is supposed to be at the end.

“After graduating from university I found a job as a teaching assistant and school secretary at a local primary school. However the same spinal cord injury-related problems continued and when these began to interfere with work I found it very frustrating. One day I finally reached the end of my tether and started typing my problems into Google.

Vital service

“I was eventually directed to the Spinal Injuries Association’s website. I sent a highly emotional and desperate email asking for help and within 48 hours, Pete Hutchings, one of SIA’s community peer support officers rang me back. In that 40-minute phone call I received more information than I’d ever had from any medical professional in all my 22 years.

“I immediately called to tell my mum all about this amazing person who had all the answers. I sat and cried with relief that I’d finally found someone out there who knew how difficult it could be, but had answers to the problems that for years we had been told were unsolvable and something we just had to live with.

“I don’t think the true value of the community peer support service could ever really be understood unless you actually need their help yourself. For me they turned 20 years around in one phone call.”

A grant of £347,912 from BIG allowed the Spinal Injuries Association to offer its peer support to people with spinal cord injuries and their families in district general hospitals and rehabilitation centres. This article originally featured in BIG Magazine England. Read issue 8 (PDF).

David shared a platform with BIG at the recent Wisdom of Prevention conference, hosted by the New Economics Foundation (nef) where BIG outlined its future funding ambitions in England and commitment to delivering People Powered Change.

David Robinson

“It isn’t every day of the week that more than 400 people attend the launch of a think tank report. That the LSE lecture theatre was packed out last week for the unveiling of “Wisdom of Prevention” is a tribute to the reputation of its authors at the New Economics Foundation and, especially, an indication of the timely significance of the publication.

In fact its first sentence says exactly that: “The case for prevention is increasingly urgent.” One week earlier the York Health Economics Consortium published research which showed that on current projections diabetes will “bankrupt the NHS within a generation” and yet, incredibly, 80% of the money currently spent on the condition treats complications that could have been prevented.

On the same day I spoke to a local authority CEO who told me that social care for older people will require more than his Council’s entire budget by 2017 if the service isn’t reconfigured to prioritise prevention and so reduce demand.

Wherever you look, the detail is different but the principle is the same: diabetes or care for older people; youth unemployment; debt; underachievement at school, particularly in the basic skills; family breakdown;  violence in the home or on the street,  eat up our national resources and cost more, unaffordably more, when tackled later.

This isn’t a new insight. In fact, as I told the conference, it’s common sense and politicians and policy makers have been talking about it for years. The tough bit is making it happen.

The Big Lottery Fund has been supporting the work of the Early Action Task Force who have been working on the practical challenges involved in turning common sense into common practice and, in particular, on the implementation of the recommendations made in our 2011 report “Triple Dividend”. We are now making plans to build on that work in a second phase and would be delighted to hear from kindred spirits who would like to know more or to work with us.

The Triple Dividend is the first report of the Early Action Taskforce

We think that there is both the need and the potential for an influential alliance banging the drum for early action, working on the nitty gritty of implementation and embedding the process of transition.

The Big Lottery Fund-supported nef event, by the size of the audience, by the breadth of interest represented on the panel (Adair Turner, Margaret Hodge, Jonathon Porrit and BIG’s Dharmendra Kanani) and, especially by the scope and depth of the analysis in the report, demonstrated the potential and the imperative for collaboration across agencies, interests and sectors.

More than ever now we need to think ahead, think differently, think the wisdom of prevention.”

david.robinson@community-links.org

Anne Frank Young Ambassadors taking part in letters project

Other activities from The Anne Frank Trust Schools and Young Ambassadors Programme, currently delivered in London boroughs with high levels of community tension, include diversity and human rights workshops and training schoolchildren to be ‘Young Ambassadors’ to lead areas of the programme to other schools.

This enables the young people to develop social, communication and leadership skills.

The Anne Frank Trust has received £756,478 from the Big Lottery Fund’s Realising Ambition programme to allow the programme to replicate in cities and towns in England and Scotland, such as Leeds and Glasgow.

Hear from some of the ‘Young Ambassadors’ and Mukith Khalisadar, Senior Project Officer for the Anne Frank Trust in this podcast.

The Trust has seen a 32% improvement in social, emotional and discipline indicators among Ambassadors and teachers surveyed at the beginning and completion of the training. Communication skills increased by 36%, self motivation by 50% and confidence by 34%. Knowledge and understanding on Anne Frank, the Holocaust and issues of stereotyping, prejudice and identity today increased over two-fold.

If I’d have asked a thousand people to paint me a picture of a Reaching Communities buildings project, I doubt anyone would have portrayed anything quite like the Going Underground project at Bardon Mill in Northumberland.

This earth-sheltered village hall is considered by the project to be the first of its kind in the UK. It is partially underground and will offer valuable community services on the site of a former Bardon Mill Colliery which closed in 1973. Those working on the project have worked wonders since forming in 2009 after the last community building closed, leaving young and old with nowhere to go.

For me, the Going Underground project shows just what can be acheived with a Reaching Communities grant through our strand specifically for buildings. It also clearly demonstrates the imagination, determination and drive that local people have and what they can achive if given a helping hand with funding. It’s such an inspiring story of a community creating such an environmentally-friendly meeting place for future generations that also pays tribute to its proud past.

The Going Underground project is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK

To see a rural community in Northumberland without a village hall get a £354,576 grant from BIG to build a new and quite literally ground-breaking meeting place – into the side of a hill – is something worth sharing.  It should act as inspiration for other communities to come together to make the most of the millions available for transforming buildings or sites based in strategically targeted and deprived areas in England. 

We want to see others to be inspired by both the design of the building and the drive of the community and to contact us to make sure other eligible projects do not miss out on the opportunity that is the buildings strand of our Reaching Communities programme.

For more information on the funding available please click here

To hear about the Reaching Communities awards that we are announcing today, visit our newsroom.

Julia Slay, New Economics Foundation

This week, nef held a conference that marked the start of an exciting new programme of work we’re running on The Wisdom of Prevention. The event, supported by the Big Lottery Fund, brought together an impressive range of speakers from a range of sectors: Lord Adair Turner, Margaret Hodge MP, Jonathon Porritt, David Robinson, and Dharmendra Kanani from the Big Lottery Fund.

So what is Prevention? To many it may be a new term, although it is used fairly widely in social policy circles. It’s about understanding why things go wrong, and tackling the underlying causes of harm. To quote from nef’s report on the subject:

• For society: tackling the underlying causes of poverty, unemployment, ill-health, illiteracy and homelessness, reducing crime and social conflict, insecurity and distrust, and cutting the need for hospitals, prisons and income support
• For the environment: cutting greenhouse gas emissions and the risks of climate change, safeguarding natural resources and stopping pollution of air, land and water
• For the economy: regulating financial institutions to prevent speculation, investing in good jobs and renewable energy, taxing polluters and discouraging carbon-intensive production.

This may sound like common sense – and indeed, that was a point made by Community Link’s David Robinson, who reminded us that what makes common sense does not always become common practice. In fact, there are precious few examples of this important strategic approach being applied in any systematic way.

Even in the health sector, where the idea is perhaps most developed, Margaret Hodge outlined that only 4 per cent of the total NHS spend is devoted to preventative measures, and yet many health conditions are preventable.

Photo credit: estherase via Flickr

nef’s take on prevention expands the concept beyond the social sphere, and also looks at how the underlying causes of harm in the environment and economy are often highly interlinked and can be ‘’mutually reinforcing’’.

Several examples in the paper showed what applying a preventative approach might look like in practice. One example was taken in insulating homes against the cold, which if done at a national scale, would boost employment and skills.

Over time it would reduce the amount spent on the winter fuel allowances.[i] It would also reduce the amount of carbon used in heating homes, and reduce heating bills – benefits across the environmental, social and economic spheres.

Delegates put forward some searching questions during the Panel Q&A. Some of the ones which have stayed in my mind asked;

• Have we have seen a failure of politics in the lack of leadership on this agenda?
• What trade-offs we might have to be prepared to make when considering the reality of what preventing significant and global challenges, such as climate change?
• Does the language of ‘prevention’ need to change to a more positive axis if we are to persuade people of its powerful and radical potential?
• How far can regulation and legislation get us?

If you didn’t make the conference, you can catch up on it with the full audio on our website, download the full report here, or wait until the short film of the event is produced, which will be up on the nef website by the end of May.

We’ll be continuing this work on prevention with an expert seminar in the autumn, and are looking at opportunities to develop a practical programme of work. Please get in touch with Julia.slay@neweconomics.org if you are interested in being part of this.