Over four months, from December 2024 to March 2025, Severn Arts supported Inspire CIC to design and deliver 'Winyates Community Stories', a project funded by Reimagine Redditch as part of their Community Makers scheme. This project aimed to bring together the diverse groups accessing Inspire’s support centre at Winyates Barn, help them to explore a range of creative activities, and give participants an opportunity to reflect on their personal stories.  

There were a range of workshops on offer including: 

• Wreath-Making, led by members of the Traveller community 
• Visual Mapping for Mental Health with Karen Martin 
• Mandala Painting with Hannah White 
• Upcycling and Fashion Design with Roz form Complex Simplicity 
• Songwriting with Community Musician Ann Jones 
• Co-creating a new mural for the centre with Artist, Mark Riley 

Around 300 people took part in the project, either by joining one of the creative courses or attending a community making day. There were also some unexpected outcomes, including one community member, Karen Smith who wrote a poem for Winyates, which now features on the mural. 

'Winyates Community Stories' closed with a celebration event which included live musical performances, a fashion show, and the unveiling of the new, co-created mural. The event enabled participants to share their work with family and friends and take pride in what they had achieved.  

Karen Martin from Inspire said:  "Watching the participants walking down the catwalk, enjoying it, seeing them literally letting their hair down and having a dance. And also watching  the pride from the families in the audience. You’re bringing families together, you’ve got the community cohesion, you’re facilitating a lot of relationships and that’s good."

Jen Loffman from Severn Arts said: “I think it’s quite easy to think 'Let’s make something that’s all sparkly and swish and put loads of money in and make sure it’s all planned and we know exactly what’s going to happen'. But I think the value of this project has been a learning curve for me, just to go with the flow a little bit. Go with the co-design element and know you’re investing in a community and it’s a really, really lovely community. It’s just valuable to do that and not really know what the outcome is going to be because it’s about the relationships that you build along the way and the process. ….it wasn’t just about the celebration at the end, it was the whole thing.’ 

Check out the Winyates Community Stories booklet: