The art sessions you delivered have been incredibly successful and have had a lasting and meaningful impact on both our residents and staff.
Last year we were fortunate to receive a RISE grant from Canterbury City Council, which allowed us to deliver creative workshops to almost all of our community partners, engaging 167 individuals throughout the year. We worked alongside St John’s Primary School, Newingate School, KRAN, Catching Lives, and Saxon Lodge Care Home, designing sessions to suit the specific needs of each group. The project also provided students from the EKC Art Department with invaluable hands-on experience in facilitating community workshops. In December, we held a three-day Christmas market to exhibit the work produced and sell items created by participants, generating funds for each of the partner organisations.
Throughout the workshops, we encountered many deeply moving moments that powerfully reaffirmed the importance of this work. Witnessing the limited resources at St John’s Primary, and the significant pressures faced by staff, strengthened our commitment to building meaningful relationships within some of the most deprived and harder-to-reach areas of our community.
KRAN and EKC students
Seeing EKC Art Department students connect and collaborate with young people from KRAN was incredibly inspiring, and the feedback from KRAN was overwhelmingly positive:
“The highlight for me as a teacher was the session in which students from Canterbury College worked alongside us. In my four years of working at KRAN, this is the first time that I have known our students to interact with local students. It was a joy to watch them sit together, help each other, and strike up conversations.”
Kathy, Teacher at KRAN
Saxon Lodge Care Home
We received equally encouraging feedback from Saxon Lodge Care Home, where students supported delivery:
“The art sessions you delivered have been incredibly successful and have had a lasting and meaningful impact on both our residents and staff. The support provided by the students throughout the programme was outstanding. One particularly moving moment occurred following the passing of one of our residents who had taken part in the sessions. We were able to present her daughter with her mother’s artwork. The daughter was deeply touched and expressed how grateful she was to receive such personal and meaningful items.”
Anne, Leisure Therapist, Saxon Lodge
Catching Lives
It was a pleasure to collaborate once again with Catching Lives. Everyone put in a lot of effort to create many of the items we sold at the Christmas Market, with all proceeds shared between all the organisations who took part in the RISE programme.
We were especially delighted to hear that some of the individuals we have worked with have since gone on to volunteer at the Chatterbox Café and Necessary Furniture, both valued community partners of ours.
“Our continued collaboration with Streets Ahead continues to demonstrate what a positive and effective pathway this is for our clients once they are housed. Not only do they thoroughly enjoy the creative sessions, but several have also gone on to access volunteering opportunities and employment through Streets Ahead’s community partners. These outcomes represent some of the most meaningful and encouraging steps forward I have witnessed in my nine years at Catching Lives.”
Miriam, Activities Coordinator, Catching Lives
It’s been a pleasure working with everyone. We hope to continue strengthening our community connections, delivering workshops to those we’ve partnered with over the past twelve months, and expanding our reach to new community partners.