A cultural empowerment programme for youth and community staff and volunteers in Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council Areas and Antrim & Newtownabbey Council Areas.
Get Involved
We are currently seeking expressions of interest from community, youth, and voluntary groups, so if you think ChangeMaker can help you and your community, please contact project coordinator Lesley Cherry on 028 9024 4063 or email lesley@wheelworksarts.com
WheelWorks Arts are proud to present the ChangeMaker Cultural Empowerment programme offering creative and interactive workshops, promoting cultural expression, peer networking, community capacity building, career development and cultural intelligence.
ChangeMaker is a fully funded course designed for positive influencers in the ANTRIM & NEWTOWNABBEY, and ARMAGH, BANBRIDGE & CRAIGAVON council areas, with an emphasis on youth and community staff, volunteers, and community activists.
Using blended creative and coaching practices, self-expression and dialogue, participants will create their own unique ChangeMaker creative resource, leading to enhanced community pride, career enhancement, partnership working and a revived knowledge of cultural intelligence and good relations.
Led by coach Paul Tracey and artist Sonali Mondol, the ChangeMaker programme is perfect for anyone who wants to develop shared outlooks and empowerment ideas to their own neighborhood.
WHY ARE WE OFFERING CHANGEMAKER?
- Youth and community workers are doing essential, frontline work. They dedicate their time to building development opportunities for others but often don’t get to participate fully in this important work themselves.
- Creativity and self-expression play an important role in wellbeing. This is a chance to think and make ‘outside the box’ of normal work and to build peer networks in the area.
- Participants will be fully supported by qualified professionals in exploring their own feelings, attitudes and beliefs towards Good Relations themes and will create resources to support their work
What are the Key Benefits of ChangeMaker?
- Promoting cultural intelligence & understanding
- Promoting and revisiting Good Relations practices
- Developing new creative resources
- Exploring community potential while addressing issues facing your area.
- Peer Networking & Partnership Working
- Coaching Support
- Career development
- 100% fully funded programme
What does it involve?
- You and your colleagues/team-members will discuss the good relations issues facing your community.
- With the help of a coach/mentor you will explore positive and practical ways to address them
- You will work alongside an artist to create a tangible resource from the process and key findings discovered along your journey.
- The programme is designed to be flexible and adaptable to your needs and capacity.
Why This Exists & Why You Should Join
ChangeMaker is a Cultural Empowerment programme. By combining creative and coaching blended practices we will empower participants’ self-expression, increase peer networks, and promote shared outlooks in their workplace and community. WheelWorks is committed to building capacity in the community. We have listened to our partners and designed this innovative ChangeMaker programme to offer solutions to identified needs. You and your colleagues/team-members will discuss the good relations issues facing your community.
The skills of your team are critical
Community/youth development work is difficult, ambitious, and demanding. The teams working on the front line are dedicated, passionate, innovative, and highly skilled individuals. To support them we are offering this interactive, creative, and coaching blended ChangeMaker programme which will help the teams to create a vision of an inclusive and welcoming community.
Individual Experience
Individuals’ experiences are at the heart of our efforts to promote inclusion. Using the creative and coaching blended models individual in the team will share their own perspective on the challenges and benefits of fostering a united and shared community.
Collective Benefit
The programme will focus on building mutual understanding. This will be built on support, expertise, and respect for all voices. By collectively engaging in discussion on cultural differences will enhance the team’s ability to relate, reflect and work effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds which in turn will offer fostering good relation in the community.
Connections have Power
Relationships are crucial, and any transformation cannot be undertaken in isolation. Teams are needed to progress collective vision. For this teams must think and know that things can be done differently and by increasing peer networks they can work collaboratively on shared problems in their community.
A Starting Point
The ChangeMaker programme will empower participants to dive into a creative journey to explore their thoughts and feelings (self-expression) and then come out with a group purpose to enhance peer networks and be positive influencers.
Teams will develop clear goals, targets and through participation the group will create and share their unique ChangeMaker resource for achieving their collective vision.
Professional support and expertise
The teams will engage in new learning process and share new ways to embrace difference and drive inclusivity. This coaching and creative blended ChangeMaker programme offers new ways to for teams to increase collaboration and to champion a shared outlook in their workplace and community.
Get Involved
We are currently seeking expressions of interest from community, youth, and voluntary groups, so if you think ChangeMaker can help you and your community, please contact project coordinator Lesley Cherry on 028 9024 4063 or email lesley@wheelworksarts.com
Sonali Mondol
Artist and Facilitator
Paul Tracey
Coach and Mentor
Lesley Cherry
Project Coordinator, Artist, Facilitator
Sonali has over 20 years’ experience as a graphic designer, illustrator, lifestyle arts and crafts producer as well as a workshop and training facilitator. She runs her own online arts and crafts business and designs for several Irish design companies. Sonali believes art is a tremendous creative and expressive tool to heal and nurture oneself through many of life’s issues, and one of the best ways to address personal growth, pride, self-expression, and wellbeing.
Paul is an experienced coach and mentor, primarily helping those with significant and life altering health conditions, anxiety, and depression. He also empowers groups and individuals to rediscover their potential and focus, leading training and coaching programmes to assist them how to create more resourceful ways of thinking, feeling and acting to positively address their own ambitions and personal development.
Lesley is an experienced socially engaged artist and project manager, creating public artworks and creative programmes which address issues of social need, politics and poverty. She has delivered programmes on a national and international level, creatively and subjectively addressing issues of our past, paramilitarism, racism, housing, and education, working with some of the most disadvantaged communities in our society.
MEET THE TEAM
The programme is supported by the Executive Office’s Central Good Relations Fund delivering under the ‘Together: Building a United Community’ Strategy, which is working to improve community relations across NI as we build on our commitment to move towards a more united and shared community.
