Thrive at Connect launch album

LAUNCH EVENT
TUESDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2016

Thrive is a new community space in Dewsbury,
ready to be brought to life by local people,
groups and organisations. That’s exactly what
everyone did on Tuesday 20 September 2016
when we opened the doors…

We were delighted to welcome
people to the Thrive launch – including
local people, partner organisations, tenants,
service users, shareholders, Board members,
staff, a local Councillor, Paula Sheriff MP,
the Commoners Choir and the Huddersfield
Crusaders Majorette Troupe.

Our creative space was the setting for
speakers to share their stories. A huge thank
you to Simon Burton from the Recovery
College Kirklees who spoke about working
together for health and wellbeing and
Chris Chinnock from Kirklees Council who
talked about community engagement.

Thank you to the Commoners Choir for singing
about the world around us and its inequalities.
We asked them to write a song for us about
social housing and the result was Shelter
- a fabulous folksy protest song about the
importance of having a roof over your head.
Watch the song here:
www.connecthousing.org.uk/Shelter

The Commoners Choir includes a local artist
called Una, who produced a beautiful limited
edition illustrated lyric card, based on the story
of the three little pigs. Guests at the event were
invited to make a donation in return for one of
these cards, and by the end of the afternoon
£200 had been raised for homelessness
charity Shelter.

We celebrated Connect Housing’s 10 year
anniversary and our Chief Executive, Helen
Lennon, talked about being true to our vision
and values.

The wonderful Huddersfield Crusaders
Majorette troupe gave a fantastic performance.
It was a perfect taste of what the space can be
used for in the future.

In our meeting space, we held arts and crafts
activities for people to try. The Gratitude Jars
were a big hit – the idea was to decorate a
jar, take it home and write down things you are
grateful for and store them in the jar. If you ever
need a little lift, open the jar and read all the
gratitude moments you have collected.

Another craft activity on offer was challenging
attendees to design what they would like to
see happen in our outdoor space. We hope
to build these ideas into our plans.

We have the kit and caboodle when it
comes to arts and crafts. We have sewing
machines, knitting needles and wool. All
you need to add is your imagination, which
is what happened in the Knit and Natter area
of the event.

It was fantastic to see our cafe space buzzing
with activity for the first time. Great food, drink
and conversations were flowing.

The event was catered by the Real Junk Food
Project Dewsbury. They have a simple but
powerful mission – to feed bellies not bins.
They do this by intercepting food from going
to landfill and then distributing it to the local
community. We have been working in
partnership with them and so far this year,
7,000 meals have been delivered to our
Huddersfield-based accommodation for young
homeless people and to our North Kirklees
Women’s Refuge.

We think that health and wellbeing is incredibly
important, so the event featured taster sessions
of the kind of wellbeing activities that we will
be running at Thrive in future. People enjoyed
gentle hand massages from Wendy and
relaxing meditation and breathing techniques
by Maria.

Connect Housing’s Money Matters Team
were on hand to show the great work they
do in helping people with their finances. They
also ran the interactive Downshift Challenge –
which was about saving money and shopping
differently. People tasted different products and
had to guess which was the more expensive
branded product.

The Richmond Fellowship came to Thrive to
educate people about the good work they do
in making recovery a reality. Their mission is to
help thousands of people with mental health
problems recover and get into employment.

Thrive has plenty of walls for exhibiting local
artists. The event showcased paintings by Steve
Short and a photography project ‘Roots and
Routes’ by young single homeless people that
Connect houses and supports.

Thank you to everyone who
came along and were part
of Thrive’s launch.
If you’re interested in working with us or
want to use the space, please get in touch.
www.thriveatconnect.org
hello@thriveatconnect.org
/thriveatconnect
@thriveatconnect