Factory International has joined the likes of Noel Gallagher and Morrissey in the drive to save under-threat Salford Lads Club.
The Manchester institution is among the beneficiaries of Factory’s latest round of Community Partnerships, a dedicated programme creating long-term collaborations with community groups in Greater Manchester.
Following a successful pilot last year, Factory International is working with the following organisations for 2024-25:
- Manchester Urban Diggers (MUD) CIC: a social enterprise working to create food system change and empower communities through grassroots, people-led farming and wellbeing projects across Greater Manchester.
- Salford Lads’ and Girls’ Club: The landmark Manchester community hub’s current full name, although it is probably destined to forever be Salford Lads Club thanks to a certain band of chart-bothering 80s miserabilists who were photographed in the doorway. The club has offered sports, creative and cultural pursuits for young people in the Ordsall area for over 120 years, and a host of celebrity supporters have chipped in since it was announced last month that the club faced closure due to a £250k funding shortfall.
- Rainbow Haven: a registered charity offering an unconditional welcome, advice, emotional and practical support, and community to asylum seekers and refugees in East Manchester.
The Community Partnerships programme provides vital support for partner organisations and also creates a valuable dialogue to ensure that a range of voices from across the region are represented across Factory International’s activities. Over the course of the first year at Aviva Studios, Community Partner organisations have inputted into everything from artistic programming choices to marketing campaigns, and menu choices to the design of the building’s public spaces.
Partners are offered £10,000 each, alongside bespoke organisational support which they can use to build infrastructure, add skills, resource current activity or to start a new project. Factory International work with the partner organisations to increase access to arts and culture by co-designing creative activities that meet local needs, and distributing free and discounted tickets. All of Factory International’s partners from the pilot year of the programme now have an independent, community-led arts offer.
Since working with Factory International as a partner organisation as part of the pilot last year, REEL MCR, which works on ‘living memory’ social history recording and archiving, community drama and participant led documentary in the North, has been commissioned to create customised videos for each of this year’s partners to enhance their platforms and reach; Thrive Manchester, which runs trauma-informed mental and physical health workshops in South Manchester, is sharing its expertise by leading trauma-informed training for Factory International staff, and Patricroft CIC, which oversees The Castle Youth and Community Centre Eccles, has secured funding for a park re-development project following pilot workshops help with Factory International.
In addition the partnership with Higher Blackley Community Centre has helped secure 12 months of council and housing association funding, leading to the revival of arts and culture activities in the now-thriving community centre; and CDM UK, who work with sustainable materials to support refugee, displaced and vulnerable people in Ardwick, have applied for Arts Council funding to deliver a Rickshaw Festival, an international celebration of South Asian and Bangladeshi heritage.
Abi Clarke, community partnerships manager at Factory International said: “The Community Partnership Programme is a new way of working more intensely to really see how we can best support these organisations. It’s all about capacity building support, how we can learn from them, spending time in their communities and sharing our resources and learning things from each other.”
The Community Partnerships are part of Factory International’s wider Creative Engagement Programme that aims to work with Manchester’s communities, including many who are typically unable to access artistic experiences. Another key project is the neighbourhood organiser scheme, which creates vital links between Factory International and the many communities of Greater Manchester through paid roles for residents who work within their own communities to connect and inspire and help them make the most out of Factory International.
To date Neighbourhood Organisers have helped to distribute over 3,500 free tickets to artistic programme and public events at Aviva Studios and Manchester International Festival.
James Blakey, head of engagement at Factory International said: “Key to both the Community Partnerships Programme and Neighbourhood Organisers is the idea that we work at our best when we learn from each other, as organisations and as individuals. It is our privilege to partner with, and learn from, visionary social change organisations who work alongside Greater Manchester communities. Through these relationships we continue to learn about how to make our work inclusive, accessible, and relevant.”
Image: Rept0n1x at Wikimedia Commons
