The Mayor has announced the first nine projects to benefit from his £1million fund to support community cultural projects across the capital.
The Culture Seeds funded projects include visual arts workshops in Kensington and Chelsea for volunteers who helped the local community in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower Fire; music and singing in residential care homes in Redbridge; and in Lambeth, a creative industries summer school for local children.
As part of the Mayor’s commitment to support culture in all corners of the capital, Culture Seeds will continue to award funding for community-led arts, culture and heritage activities on a rolling basis, with grants available from £1,000 – £5,000 until May 2020.
The first £40,000 of Culture Seeds funding has been awarded to:
- Learning Through the Arts (Brent) who will run ‘Cultural Connections’, arts workshops for users of Ashford Place community centre to inspire and promote friendships.
- Polkadots on Raindrops (Bromley) for their photography project, ‘Belonging’, which is aimed at young people facing exclusion from mainstream education.
- Sir Hubert von Herkomer Arts Foundation (Camden) whose Queens Crescent summer holiday project will provide healthy meals and training in music, visual arts and photography to young people from Queen’s Crescent Estate.
- Chantelle Clarke (Hackney) whose project ‘Echoes of Love’ will use monthly writing and storytelling workshops to help BAME women living in Hackney to share stories.
- Quernmore Road Summer Festival (Haringey) who will host a one-day festival featuring music and dance performances, workshops for children and a performance from the local community choir.
- Will Ashcroft (Islington) whose ‘Whitecross Street Mandala Project’ will unite residents of Whitecross Street Estate to create hand-painted wooden benches and planters.
- Congo Great Lakes Initiative (Kensington and Chelsea) whose project ‘Soul of Art for our Beloved Ones’ will offer visual arts workshops to volunteers who helped in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower Fire.
- Bisoye Babalola (Lambeth) who will run a summer school for local children aged 14-17 introducing them to the creative industries.
- Redbridge Music Lounge (Redbridge) for ‘Music of the Mind’ which will take music and singing activities to people in residential care around the borough.
