A huge THANK YOU – We WON!
We’ve been keeping it under our hats for months, but now we are excited to announce that we have reached the final of The People’s Projects on ITV’s Granada Reports!
We need your vote to win £70,000 National Lottery funding, and if we win our project ‘It’s in Our Nature’, will have a huge impact on the mental health challenges faced by children, young people and adults in our rural area.
Voting is easy, just click here to watch the film, and vote from 15th May until midday 26th May.
A record 4.3 million mental health referrals were made in 2021 in the UK. With NHS services already stretched beyond capacity, the role fulfilled by charities like us is becoming ever more crucial, offering much needed support. In rural areas such as the High Peak, services are more limited and difficult for people to reach, making this work vital to our communities. So please vote for ‘It’s in Our Nature’ to enable this much needed project to go ahead!
One of our participants has said “It’s better than any medication I have been given”; and another that being involved “gives me a tremendous feeling of self-worth and a much more positive outlook again.”
We are thrilled to be in the final and we need your vote, to help support the mental health of many people in the High Peak. We know from over 30 years’ experience that being involved in arts projects improves mental health. Last year alone, adult participants reported feeling better after arts workshops on 96% of occasions, and 79% reported improvements in their longer term wellbeing.
Projects also support young people who have long waits for mental health treatment – The NHS aims to provide treatment within 30 days, the Derbyshire average is 40 days, but we know people who have waited a year and a half. This project gives a chance to reach more people and work out how to meet this rising demand. One of their young participants said, “being a member of High Peak Community Arts has been a lifeline for me. I don’t think I’d still be here without it.”
In this new arts project, children and adults will work together to overcome their mental health challenges. Arts activities will celebrate the power of nature to impact mental health, and create a showcase at the end of the project, for the whole community to enjoy.
‘It’s In Our Nature’ is through to the last 5 finalists in the Granada region, and is up against projects from Cumbria all the way to Manchester and Liverpool. It is the only project in Derbyshire, and anyone can vote, whether living in that ITV region or not – so please lend us your support!