Cartwheel Arts secures funding for major heritage project

Cartwheel Arts has been awarded a £92,340 grant by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to deliver Crafting Heritage – a two-year project which will explore and celebrate the heritage crafts of refugee and asylum seeker communities within Rochdale.

In collaboration with Rochdale Borough Council and a network of local partner organisations, including Touchstones Art Gallery, Deeplish Community Centre, Kashmir Youth Project (KYP), the New Pioneers project, Community Arts North West and national partner Heritage Crafts, Crafting Heritage aims to reimagine and share the unique heritage of these vibrant communities.

Crafting Heritage builds on Cartwheel Arts' ongoing activities and research with these communities, delving into traditional heritage crafts such as Ukrainian folk art, Islamic geometric patterns, Arabic calligraphy, and textiles, including weaving, sewing, and embroidery.

Outcomes from the project will be documented and archived at Touchstones Rochdale, ensuring long-term visibility of the communities that Cartwheel connects. There will also be a final celebration event at Touchstones in 2025.

The Crafting Heritage project itself will see Cartwheel Arts offer a fully paid eight-week training placement for four emerging craftspeople in the area who have experience of forced migration. These placements are designed to support them into self-employment by facilitating a number of heritage craft workshops, gaining the support, connections and experience needed to develop a career within Rochdale’s burgeoning cultural ecosystem.

The trainees will deliver a programme of crafting sessions within a number of local primary schools. These will be used to inform a comprehensive school learning resource which will be shared with every primary school in Rochdale, ensuring a future for aspects of the borough’s cultural heritage which might otherwise risk becoming endangered.

 

 

Hebe Reilly, director at Cartwheel Arts, said: "We are delighted to have received funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for Crafting Heritage.

"We are passionate about preserving and disseminating the diverse heritage crafts of Rochdale’s migrant communities and are keen to provide an opportunity for the development and sharing of heritage crafts within local schools.

"Crafting Heritage not only represents a ground-breaking means of preserving and sharing these rich traditions within local schools but will also forge dynamic partnerships on both local and national fronts to bring this vision to life. We expect this project will leave an enduring and profound mark on all those who join us on this exciting journey."

Helen Featherstone, Director, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: “We’re very proud to support Cartwheel Arts and their partners with this project to preserve the cultural traditions of migrant communities in Rochdale.

“It’s great to think that thanks to National Lottery players, craftspeople will be supported through career development while sharing their knowledge with local young people to learn the important skills of heritage crafts.”