Heywood youth project wins national award

Cartwheel Arts creative and media workshops

A youth project has won a national award from The Guinness Partnership – a grant funding a summer activity programme for young people on the Darnhill Estate, Heywood.

With the aim of tackling anti-social behaviour in young people, the project combines creative and media workshops, along with outward bound and sporting activities.

Cartwheel Arts and Rochdale Youth Service was provided with funding as part of Guinness’s Aspire Awards, which are awarded to Guinness customers who want to develop their careers, studies, talents or communities. The project won under the ‘Your Community’ category.

The Aspire Award funding allows the project to organise sessions for young people from the age of 11 up throughout the summer – a mix of sporting activities along with visual arts, performance and photography with a strong emphasis on producing a current affairs magazine show on video. For those in the right age group, activities will even count towards the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award.

The young people have already showcased some of their newly developed media and broadcast skills at the Darnhill Festival earlier this month.

On being recognised at the Aspire Awards national ceremony in London last week, Rick Walker, Cartwheel Arts said: “Anti-social behaviour is a real problem in this area and part of the problem is that there is little activity in the area to engage young people. The next generation is coming through and it is vital for residents on the Darnhill Estate that young people are engaged and stimulated in order to prevent a repetition of previous bad behaviour.

“I see this project as increasing confidence in young people, developing transferable skills, building links between the generations and ultimately presenting a more positive image of the estate.”

Sarah Thomas, Executive Director of Customer Services for The Guinness Partnership and award panel member, said: “Over the last five years we have given more than 270 Guinness customers Aspire Award grants – helping them to achieve their dreams or to help to build better and brighter communities for everyone. The application process is really simple and last year 85% of applications received funding. We wish Cartwheel Arts every success with this vital work.”