Collective Power Award 2022 Shortlist

In partnership with Ideas Alliance and The Lived Experience Network

A Manifesto for 2.8 Million Minds

*There are currently 2,879,900 children and young people aged 0-25 who live in London.*

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.

Responding to a crisis in young people's mental health in the capital, at the centre of the project was the question: "how can young people use art and culture to create change in their mental health, and how mental health services are funded and delivered?"

Launched at the Houses of Parliament in June, the Manifesto is the response. It brings together the feelings, artworks, and actionable ideas of young people across the city with artists Becky Warnock, Simon Tomlinson, Tyreis Holder, and Yomi Sode, challenging how and who makes the decisions in the lives of young people's mental health. More than a Manifesto, the document also shares visions for a future worth living, how-to guides, resources and critical reflections.

The Manifesto represents the first phase of 2.8 Million Minds and is a collaboration between artist and mental health activist 'the vacuum cleaner,' Chisenhale Gallery, Bernie Grant Arts Centre. The project is part of the Mayor of London's Culture and Creative Industries Unit, Funded by Baring Foundation and Thrive LDN as part of Thriving Through Culture.

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Connecting with Yemeni Elders' Heritage, National Museums Liverpool

National Museums Liverpool’s Connecting with Yemeni Elders’ Heritage project 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.

The intergenerational value of the program re-connected Yemeni culture and heritage across the UK, creating community pride in the co-curation of the first dementia friendly, digital Yemeni collection of its kind, and its promotion within and across the wider Yemeni community.

The app was launched on 7 June 2022 hosting more than 100 digital objects, music, and film sections and powerfully demonstrates the ethos of collective community partnership.

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Gloucestershire Creative Health Consortium - Coproduction, Covid and Beyond

Gloucestershire Creative Health Consortium, made up of Art Shape; Mindsong; The Music Works; Artlift and Artspace, exists to inspire, nourish and surprise people with creative ways to manage their health.

We work in partnership to provide high quality, personalised, inclusive and accessible creative health services for people experiencing psychological and/or physical challenges. Anyone in Gloucestershire can access ways to better manage their own health and wellbeing, through access to ongoing creative health options.

The collective power and ethos of the consortium partners, our many volunteers, staff, experienced practitioners, clinicians and artists, working together, ensures we are fluid enough to stay in contact with, and support, people during the pandemic and beyond. We are able to swiftly identify and step into areas of unmet need, collectively addressing them in innovative ways, and directly adapting our services using a coproduced approach to understand and improve the wellbeing of those we work with.

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ACAVA: Grenfell Memorial Community Mosaic

The Grenfell Memorial Community Mosaic has brought almost a thousand 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, the project enabled people to connect and to memorialise the Grenfell Tower tragedy through personal and collective creativity. Initiated in 2018 by ACAVA in partnership with Al Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, the programme had a significant positive impact on the wellbeing of the collaborators and participants and contribution to supporting community recovery.

"This wonderful depiction of the love, courage, and comradery of this community is heart-warming, whilst being tinged with a hollowing sadness. Thank you, the artists, photographers, contributors and community."

"Well done for creating this wonderful project! Involving so much of the community and creating beautiful pieces of art that last."

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North West London Suicide Prevention Programme

Collective power in this project appears in the form of alliances between the voluntary sector, local authorities, Public Health, and the ICS. The alliance is an intersectional, intuitive grouping of different voices, ideas, and disciplines. A place where resilient communities are preparing for the future through action to create what they need for themselves within the complex backdrop of stigma and taboo associated with suicide.

The central force is Experts by Experience who have co-produced suicide awareness training, sat on panels for co-produced grant allocations, decided on metrics for evaluation and built evaluation tools. Insight is fed to the budget holders and the Steering Group to shape future services. This is a collective approach where power is shifted, and hierarchies dismantled. Whilst navigating traumatic stories with limited resources, communities, the voluntary sector, and health professionals are treading new ground and attempting a co-creative, and meaningful path towards suicide prevention.

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Understanding what mental health means to men from ethnic minority backgrounds. Black men and digital mental health in dialogue - understanding identities, building relationships, and delivering change.

Kooth provides a welcoming, integrated, people-centric digital mental health service to Children, Young People and Adults through early help and prevention. It is available 24/7, 365 days a year, providing anonymous, accessible, safe and effective online support, from self-help to peer support and structured counselling. Our service places diversity and inclusion at its core, working hard to be accessible to all, regardless of race, age, gender, sexuality or socioeconomic situation. To truly deliver, it is essential we collaborate with current and future beneficiaries. This project exemplifies meaningful partnership and co-production with two grassroots organisations - BLKOUT UK & Cultures CIC. This was achieved by listening to the men’s relationship with their own mental health and understanding the challenges they face in accessing effective services. The positive impact extended to other teams in the organisation delivering creative workshops and activities - and, crucially, the participants shaped the priorities of Kooth’s Diversity Council.

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Union Chapel - Creative Community Leaders Programme

This project trains potential leaders from the community in facilitation skills via a creative and participatory policy-making approach called Legislative Theatre. Nine local people with various lived experiences – including as refugees/migrants and of homelessness, mental health and/or racism – were trained by an internationally renowned facilitator in Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.

They were also offered advice and crisis support and four accessed support around benefits, housing, food poverty and mental health. The Community Leaders all felt more confident as a result of the training and have since been employed in paid freelance roles by Union Chapel.

They have delivered two online workshops with 30 community members and a Legislative Theatre performance to Zoom audience of 75 people, which included representatives from Islington Council, Arts Council England and local charity partners as well as local community members. This was followed by a Legislative debate, facilitated by the Leaders, with the audience writing 40+ policy proposals, leading to Islington Council making firm commitments around housing and mental health, and ACE making commitments around gender representation in cultural workplaces.

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Ideas Hub: Collective Power Blog

The Ideas Alliance have collaborated as a partner on the Collective Power award since it's inception in 2019. Each year, they develop blogs with the shortlists exploring the theme of collective power which they share via their Ideas Hub alongside other thought pieces on the theme of collaboration, partnerships and collectives.

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