The Impact Team visit Community Anchor’s – Revival, Glusburn & Up For Yorkshire

Community Anchors are small, hyper-local organisations across North Yorkshire, deeply embedded in local communities. They offer support, a host of activities and information, and play a crucial role in connecting the dots between organisations, people, services, and the needs of the community.

Better Connect are supporting the Community Anchor organisations to develop area’s such as marketing and communications, policy and process, and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. The Anchors identified area’s that they wished to develop through a welcome questionnaire.

Impact Support

The Impact Team originally invited 11 of the Anchor organisations to individual 1-2-1 meetings to discuss the area’s that they wanted support with. Most of the organisations identified that they were so busy doing the essential work within their communities, that they didn’t have enough time to capture photographs, videos or case studies that showed the impact of the work they were doing.

This is where the impact team can help!

Revival North Yorkshire 

Back in November 24 the team made a long journey to Staithes near Whitby and visited Revival North Yorkshire. We were lucky to have just missed the snow which had fallen the previous day! Revival North Yorkshire are a fantastic organisation that aim to to revive community spirit and provide a range of support, services and activities to improve the well-being of the community, particularly the elderly, in the North York Moors.

We arrived and started by gathering the team together to look at the organisations marketing materials and offered some advice on how they could improve the look and feel for potential new visitors. We then met with two of Revival’s attendee’s Cynthia and Valerie and heard their stories of how attending Revival groups has impacted their lives. After a lemon bun from the famous Whitby bakery Bothams, we then joined in on an exercise class and met more of the attendee’s for a cup of tea and chat.

We captured the day on film, including interviews with Revival CEO Debbie, and the lovely Cynthia and Valeria. Check out the video we made below..

Glusburn Community Arts

In January we had the most fantastic day at Glusburn Community Arts! The sun was shining for us as we approached the beautiful grade II listed building which hosts a wide range of community events, concerts, theatre and classes and is at the heart of the local community.

We met the lovely Debby, the Centre Manager who gave us a grand tour of the impressive building. We took some photographs of the different spaces available ready to go on their website. As we entered the theatre we got to experience a relaxing tai chi class coming to a close and spoke to some of the participants about what it was like to come to the centre. We then got to take part in a cut and craft session and we met some incredibly talented (artists!!) ladies who attend the session. “Walking in here is like a big hug” one lady explained to us as she told us about how she moved to Glusburn after her husband died and didn’t know anyone. “This group has given me the opportunity to meet people and make friends”

In the afternoon we met the bowls team and the singing group and captured some footage of them having lots of fun.

We have created a video for Glusburn to use when they are telling others who they are and what they do..

Up For Yorkshire

Up for Yorkshire are a partner across our Better Connect programmes, they provide essential support within the heart of the Selby Community. We have a great relationship with this organisation so it was a pleasure to be able to support them through the Community Anchor programme.

We joined Up for Yorkshire for two half days, the first day we attended their Equity and Advice Network  a partnership that brings together statutory and VCSE organisations to share information and insights, and develop best practice across issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, and access to services. We captured footage from the network and spoke to individuals about why the network was important and useful to them. We then captured some photo’s of staff and the building so that they could be added to the website as they are hoping to refresh the images currently used.

For the second day we joined Chris and Jamie for ‘Fizzical Fridays‘ a free, weekly fitness class designed to get you moving and feeling great. It was so much fun to take part in the session as well as capturing some footage. We did some weights, some team games and even tug of war! What a great energy the session had. We then went over to Riccall Regen Centre, a charity and community centre that partners with Up For Yorkshire, and helped them to set up for an upcoming wedding! We also interviewed the Centre Manager Justine and Up For Yorkshire Head of Operations Emily to talk about the exciting projects they have coming up at the centre. It was incredibly busy back at Community House as the Community café opened for lunch with lots of people coming in to meet friends and neighbours, we got to chat to some of the people visiting and find out what Up For Yorkshire means to them.

We will be putting together a series of video’s for Up For Yorkshire to highlight some of the fantastic work they are doing across their community – keep your eyes peeled!