September 2011

Using the arts as a tool to engage people has proven successful. A report by Gerard Lemos ‘The Arts Case: Why the Arts Make a Difference’, suggests that participating in the arts has a positive impact on vulnerable groups of people and that levels of engagement are very high (Lemos and Crane, July 2011). The films below show examples of art being used to stimulate real change at an individual level.

Streetwise Opera

Streetwise Opera’s mission is to ‘give homeless and formally homeless people opportunities to further their personal development through participation in music making of the highest professional quality and to promote more positive attitudes towards homeless people’.

The Foundation has awarded three grants to Streetwise Opera over the last five years totalling £228,000. The most recent grant of £90,000 was awarded in 2010 towards a music programme involving homeless people in Newcastle and Middlesbrough. This clip, a trailer for the Fables project  shows ‘The Hartlepool Monkey’ filmed at the Hartlepool Maritime Experience with the soundtrack recorded at the Sage Gateshead;  32 homeless people from the North East took part.

Haltwhistle Film Project – Film Able

The Foundation awarded Haltwhistle Film Project £60,550 in 2009 towards the costs of the Film Able Project which provides film making opportunities for people with learning disabilities in the North East and Cumbria.  Animation emerged as a clear choice for one of Film Able’s areas of work and became the focus of one of a series of workshops in the training and technical skills strand of the Project. This clip was sent to the Foundation with Haltwhistle Film Project’s first year progress report and shows Film Able’s story from 2009-2010.