Inspiring you to build a brighter future
Everyone should have the chance to succeed in life, to develop skills and build a career. Positive People is a flexible community programme designed to help you take positive steps towards building your confidence, gaining new skills, and eventually move into work or training.
Help with everyday life:
- Personal development – help to build your confidence, health and well-being.
- Help to master digital technology – including computers, tablets, phones, software and the internet.
- Signpost you to benefits, advice and financial advice
Improve your qualifications and help you to find work:
- Help to access training – anything from basic skills to vocational and professional qualifications.
- Help to prepare for work – including clubs and work trials so you can try out jobs and gain experience.
- Job search – preparing CVs, applications and interview practice. We will also help you to approach employers.
- Access to computers, internet, printers and photocopiers.
- Advice on apprenticeships and self-employment.
Positive People (part of the Building Better Opportunities programme) is a project jointly funded by the Big Lottery Fund and the European Social Fund and is funded up until September 2022.
If you would like to join the programme or have any specific questions about the project, please contact Chris Maccullie on the office phone number 01752 395131, mobile 07951 313163 or email: chris.m@plymouthoctopus.org.
Thank you to everyone who has shown an interest in the Street-to-Scale fund; to those willing to try something new and to those who have collaborated to bring about change in their communities. You have helped to trial a radical way of enabling funding to reach citizens.
POP+, working with Ratio, a CIC based in London, set up Street-to-Scale to test a method of funding based on trust, believing that local people know best about how to tackle local issues.
Street-to-Scale funding opened in 2019 and within weeks, POP+ had received more than fifty expressions of interest. Twenty five projects were completed with a further seven, youth-led, projects made possible with funding via Ratio CIC from the Tudor Trust.
Learning Champions Kim & Charlotte would like to thank the projects involved for their time and conversation which has helped POP+ to start to understand how this funding can reach and support grassroots community action.
After feedback, a new welcome ‘envelope’ (replacing the box) has been designed, with six postcards offering step-by-step instructions. Street-to-Scale is designed to work with minimal contact and involvement by organisations, there are only a few rules and it operates on trust and relationships between group members.
Street-to-Scale Update May 2020
More details of how to get involved will be posted on the Facebook pages of community groups across Plymouth. There will be a pot of funding set aside each month to stimulate action among small groups of people who may never have thought of applying for funding.
What is Street-to-Scale?
Street-to-Scale funding is for up to £1000 to help people bring about postive change in their communities, for their communities.
The money must be spent within eight weeks; anything not spent will be recycled into other S2S projects.
There is no application form; there are no targets and no need for written outcomes.
Who is it for?
People keen to support change in their community:
Anyone can form a Street To Scale group, and connect with those in their community who share an interest in the same community mission.
Informal groups of people: it is not necessary to be a constituted group.
You may gather and work together for just the eight weeks of the project with no obligation to continue beyond this.
However, should you wish to continue beyond the eight weeks, support is on offer through the POP ideas Ideas into Action workshop.
Why Street-to-Scale?
We know that people have ideas about their communities; we know that people are ready to put them into action and that they may just need a little bit of money to get things started.
POP+ wants to enable funding to get into the heart of our communities. POP+ believes that people can be trusted to make the right decisions with, and for, the communities in which they live.
Street-to-Scale has been set up to pioneer ways of funding within (and for) communities and to test and learn from these new methods.
Getting Started
Here’s a taste of the fantastic community action made possible by Street-to-Scale across Plymouth so far:
- Rock the Block – A silent disco event for community residents to come together in Stoke
- Adelaide Angels – Litter picking, gardening group and events in Adelaide Street to increase community engagement. Click here for Plymouth Herald article
- Arabic School – A school led by volunteers teaching Arabic to Arabic and non-Arabic speakers improving social cohesion
- Collective Good – Creating personal welcome hygiene packs for homeless people in hostels
- Free Radical Creations – Art, photography and social opportunities using different spaces
- Madness with WonderZoo (Mental Health Arts Day) – A Mental Health awareness event for artists to share work and perform
- North Star Study Group – Looking at the impacts of colonialism through a Monuments Walk, a book club, film screenings and raising awareness of the group
- No Whey Plymouth – Vegan food and marketplace celebration in Stonehouse
- PAP Project (Blue Plaque Project) – 40 blue plaques designed to celebrate the positive history of Plymouth
- ReadEasy Plymouth – Training coaches to work 1-1 with adults to improve literacy
- Royal Cinema Trust – Saving the Reel Cinema through raising awareness
- St. Matthias Community Garden – To buy tools to improve the gardening group at St Matthias church
- Banking for Change – Creating art spaces for children and adults in Stonehouse and building a grotto for Santa when he came to Stonehouse last Christmas
- Fish is Fun – Teaching children about fish, their habitats and sustainability
- Street Meets – North Stonehouse – Bringing residents of North Stonehouse together through ‘street meets’, events, food and gatherings
- Medicine through Time (Medifest)– developing the idea of Science & Health Exploratory through display areas and an event in Plymouth Guildhall
- Greenbank – Onward House – Housing Estate Summer Activities
- Spaceforce – Workshops to build and then launch Space Balloons into near space
- THINQTANQ – Improving the environment of a community workspace in PL1
- Another World Farm – establishing a demonstrator indoor urban farm
Young people’s Street-to-Scale Projects
- PZL Small Press (YEA Plymouth) – workshops with young people, setting up a small zine printing press and producing zines
- Infinity Festival (Ernesettle Community Day) – Youth Music festival in Ernesettle
- Youth Community Garden – creating a green space and pizza oven at Redeemer Church
- Traversing Wall – Scouts and Leaders, planning, designing and building a climbing wall on the Scout Hut in Keyham 1st Keyham (St.Mark) Scout Group
- New4You (Youth Communal Area and Fire Pit) – Firepit and extension of communal area for Youth Group
- Big Wills Memorial Garden – Southway Youth Centre
- Diversity Project – Whitleigh Youth Group exploring different cultures and religions
- In other Words (Routeways) – Celebration Ball arranged by and for young people experiencing mental health challenges
- Growing Together – making and selling goods at a community market and a pop-up Christmas Shop along with a business run by young men with additional needs.
- OK Boomer – Literary Arts event planned and delivered by young people at Leadworks Factory – Rendle Street, Stonehouse
Coming Soon after Lockdown
- Stiltskin Creative Arts & Theatre Company – Community Event run by the youth people’s board at Soapbox Theatre Devonport Park
- Bee Project – Exploring ideas to tackle the decline of bees. Set up by students from Plymouth High School for Girls
Links
Do you have experience of starting and running a community group? Have you wanted to start a community group, but haven’t known how to do it?
Ideas Into Action is a series of webinars to support new community group ideas in Plymouth. It will help you to identify community needs, find funding, meet like-minded people and Q&A with professional community advisers.
The next webinar will be announced soon.
Our Plymouth is a digital platform that is used as a powerful tool to connect, communicate, collaborate, inspire and recognise citizen and community action.
Through Our Plymouth you can:
- Register as a volunteer
- As a citizen search for volunteering opportunities
- As a community organisation, post volunteering opportunities.