Ideas Hub

Great ideas and inspiring stories about collaboration, co-production and communities.

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by Mel Parks

The Power of Human Connections – George Fielding’s Story

One of our new critical friends George Fielding BEM spoke to us about his compelling motivations for community work and life in general. George has raised more than £15 million for charities since becoming an advocate for young wheelchair users at age 12.

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by Mel Parks

Grenfell Memorial Community Mosaic: Collective Power Awards

Celebrating and learning more about CHWA Awards joint winner, The Grenfell Memorial Community Mosaic, which has brought almost 1,000 local people from North Kensington together to make large scale public artworks. Co-created with individuals and local community, resident, faith and school groups under the guidance of mosaic artists Emily Fuller and Tomomi Yoshida.

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by Mel Parks

Gloucestershire Creative Health Consortium: Collective Power Awards

Celebrating and learning more about one of the CHWA Awards joint winners: made up of Art Shape; Mindsong; The Music Works; Artlift and Artspace. They all work in partnership to provide high quality, personalised, inclusive and accessible creative health services for people experiencing psychological and/or physical challenges.

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by Mel Parks

2.8 Million Minds: Collective Power Awards

This blog features the 2.8 Million Minds project. Between November 2021 and May 2022, over 120 people contributed to A Manifesto for 2.8 Million Minds, a youth-led, artist-centred, and Disability Justice-informed approach to how young Londoners want to use art to begin to radically reimagine mental health support, justice and pride.

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by Mel Parks

Black Men and Digital Mental Health Support: Collective Power Award

This blog features Kooth, a digital mental health service providing online support from self-help to peer support and structured counselling. They worked with two grassroots organisations – BLKOUT and Cultures CIC to understand black men's relationship with their mental health and the challenges they face in accessing effective services.

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by Mel Parks

North West London Suicide Prevention Programme: Collective Power Award

This blog features the North West London Suicide Prevention Project, which connects organisations across North West London Integrated Care System, including the voluntary sector, local authorities and the NHS. Using the principles of generous leadership, this programme is based on alliance building and a social response to suicide prevention.

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by Mel Parks

Union Chapel: Collective Power Award

Union Chapel share their experiences of their community leaders project which was shortlisted for the Collective Power Award with the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance’s (CHWA) annual awards which focus on collective power (partnership and co-production), practitioner support and climate.

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by Mel Parks

Alliancing in Health and Social Care Symposium

Key takeaways from the first UK Alliancing in Health and Social Care Symposium we hosted in Birmingham earlier this month where we discussed how have conversations about how far alliancing has come in the past ten years, how to bring others to the table, and what we need to do next.

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by Mel Parks

Yemeni Elders’ Heritage: Collective Power Award

This blog features National Museums Liverpool’s Connecting with Yemeni Elders’ Heritage project, which was inspired by a young man Abdul, from Liverpool’s Yemeni community, who wanted to support elders living with dementia through the House of Memories programme. Abdul connected and encouraged more than 40 Yemeni young people to support the development of a dual language (Arabic and English) heritage package within the My House of Memories app, to assist elders to capture and digitize their heritage stories and traditions to share with younger people.

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by Sophie Ewan-Roberts

Not Another Co-Production Project Launched in the West Midlands

Year 2 of Not Another Co-Production Project has begun in the West Midlands. This is a three-year lottery funded project run by the Ideas Alliance in partnership with People's Voice Media. The 12 organisations we are partnering with to embed collaboration and co-production into their work, had an introductory meeting, where Sophie Ewan-Roberts took visual notes.

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by Patrick Tierney

Road of Restoration

Last year, we were privileged to work with the Elephants Trail in Manchester as part of our lottery-funded Not Another Co-Production Project. Patrick Tierney, Elephants Trail member, shares his brilliant blog post, Road of Restoration, which considers the role of hope in our lives and recovery journeys.

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by Mel Parks

Looking Back, Moving Forward: Stories From Covid Times

In autumn 2021, Dudley Council commissioned the Ideas Alliance to help them get a better understanding of how the pandemic had impacted on people’s lives, in order to inform priorities for the future. The brief included the use of storytelling and one requested outcome was a visual representation of the experiences of the people of Dudley. 

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“The Hub acts as a glue bringing together people and organisations who are doing so much to positively disrupt their local systems.”

Burcu Borysik, Mayday Trust