South West Community Benefit Fund: Rusty Road 2 Recovery
About
Rusty Road’s main aim is to reduce inequality for people with mental health issues, by reducing social exclusion and enhancing people’s physical and emotional wellbeing. The services that they currently offer involves providing recovery activities for people who suffer from mental health issues. People involved in this project have themselves personal experience of mental ill health and have a range of experience. Their skills include support services, various creative crafts and the motor trade.
Their vision is to prioritise easy access to ‘client paced recovery’ and to provide a solid foundation for individuals, so that they can build their skills and their sense of wellbeing to move on to other opportunities. In practice Rusty Road offer a wide range of activities from arts and crafts activities, IT and practical skills.
Request for funding
The request was for a grant of £1,000, to supply material and facilitators to support their metal sculpture and arts-based activities. The grant supported a wide range of materials for the metal sculpture project, alongside the cost of the facilitator. The grant enabled three metal-based sculpture projects to take place, with people recovering from mental health issues.
The funding also enabled the organisation to purchase brushes, paints and the cost of special airbrush paper. The air brush art therapy involves the use of relatively expensive materials, which are difficult to raise money for
Meeting the aims of the fund
Rusty Road aims to increase activities for people who have mental health issues and they are creating both community facilities and community benefits for people in need.
They are also aiming to help those people who want to improve their IT skills. They aim to transform the lives of people who suffer from any form of mental health issues and bring a real change for the better to their lives.
The purpose of the fund
Members of SWPA work with South West Community Matters to distribute grants of up to £1,000 to local projects and causes.
The overall aim of the programme is to increase community facilities and community benefits particularly for those most in need, in local communities. The focus will be on activities that enable people from diverse backgrounds to become engaged in their neighbourhoods and communities and to support those organisations that are bringing about real change to the lives of the people who live in those communities.
