What happened when Culture Matson began using a 'Community Chest' to distribute funding?

In 2023 Culture Matson started a trial to develop a ‘Community Chest’. A community chest is a shared investment fund that supports health and wellbeing and joins up money from the NHS, local authorities, and other sources. Read how members of Culture Matson met the challenge of running a community chest to collectively decide how best to use the money for their neighbours.

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Thinking differently about creative health

Research shows that participation in creative activity and art can reduce stress, improve self-esteem, and promote recovery.

But the therapeutic value of participatory arts extends far beyond benefits to individual health: in facilitating and amplifying authentic creative and cultural expression by and for marginalised communities, it also has the potential to reduce health inequalities on a much broader scale.

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I'm not saying data is love. But what if it was? 

Dr Alex Waldrop was our “keynote listener” at glosdataday. She dedicated her time on the day to listening. She heard what was being talked about, she noticed who was there and who wasn’t and she took notice so that she could give all those voices the opportunity to be heard. After a day of dropping into workshops and joining open space sessions Alex presented back to the room. This is what she heard:

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Asking people to attend a ‘data day’ is not an easy sell.

But we knew it was important and we had a strong desire to make it happen!

Create Gloucestershire were one of the four partners who came together to host the dataday. Back in the Autumn of last year we began conversations to imagine this event. It was going to be unashamedly about data and it was going to inspire, inform and empower everyone who came along. That was the plan.

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Providing Creative Health in Gloucestershire during Lockdown: read the paper here

Gloucestershire Creative Health Consortium’s composed a paper documenting their responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, and subsequent lockdown periods from 23rd March 2020 to 19th July 2021. This paper includes observations and experiences from consortium partner organisations, delivering artist facilitators and individuals who accessed Creative Health over this time and is available to download now.

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Statement re: Arts Council NPO Investment 2023-2026

CG’s take away from the new national and local funding picture is that there are many brilliant arts and cultural organisations who secured funding and just as many that didn’t. There was simply not enough funding available to meet the incredible aspirations and potential of arts and cultural organisations in England.

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