During 2024, Artsy Party Kidz CIC worked with the local communities in Birmingham, delivering therapeutic art workshops and youth wellbeing sessions. We worked mainly in collaboration with Mercurial Dance, Overbury and the West Midlands Combined Authority, working in schools and with local CIC’s and charities to organise and facilitate engaging activities that aim to improve mental health and wellbeing whilst nurturing skills within the visual arts space. From October 2023 - March 2024, our work with Mercurial Dance involved working with pupils at King Solomon School, both primary and secondary, to help support young people who struggle with emotional dysregulation. Most of the children were identified to have a form of SEN – diagnosed or suspected and presented behaviour challenges in a normal classroom environment. Through a series of therapeutic workshops, we worked with the children to help build their confidence, emotional resilience and encouraged them to express their feelings through art journalling or creative expression. The children worked with a variety of art resources to produce pencil art, large group graffiti paintings, 3D models and collages. The school staff found the sessions beneficial to the pupils and saw a noticeable difference in the emotional development of the children who participated, highlighting improvements in confidence, behaviour and independence. Following the success of the project, we were delighted to have been asked to continue working with the Mercurial Dance over the summer on their new pilot project, Embody XR - an immersive dance game helping young people manage anxiety through movement, mindfulness and storytelling and through interactive, choreographed challenges, immersive soundscapes, and evidence-based techniques like CBT and high-performance management. ‘This is coupled with a visual arts workshop that delves deeper into the characters coping mechanism of art journaling, whereby participants can express and explore their own feelings through images, writing, and playful mark making led by our experienced art wellbeing Artist.’ (taken from press release) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mmgndRyjxM7r520NnaPothQ6i0vn-K8d/view In 2024 it was recorded that 31% of 16–24 year olds report symptoms of anxiety or depression (Mind, 2024). Anxiety is the fastest-growing mental health concern for young people in the UK. With long NHS waitlists and pressure on schools, young people need earlier, easier access to support tools, especially ones that feel familiar, playful, and creative. EmbodyXR helps players understand and better navigate the Fight/Flight/Freeze response in real time. The Embody XR pilot met the children and young people where they are through movement, games, and tech they already use, taking the product into schools, universities, libraries and community centres around Birmingham and Coventry, giving them the opportunity to trial out the game and take part in the therapeutic art sessions in real time that they had experienced in the VR game. We are very happy that the project gained a lot of support and recognition and was able to evolve into a much bigger innovation that we will continue to work on with Mercurial Dance as they tour the developing product in 2025. Also collaborating with Overbury Plc, over the summer, we were fortunate to receive a generous donation that allowed us to work with Oscar Birmingham and Children of the Sun Saturday School CIC in facilitating free art and design workshops, teaching skills in branding, company identify and how to follow a design specification to create a bespoke piece. The children and young people created a branded gallery of beautiful art pieces for the new Lloyds banking offices on Colmore Row. The children who we worked with had the opportunity to tour the site and have their work professionally installed and displayed in a corporate space. During the same time, we also received funding from the West Midlands Combined Authority to deliver a program specific to the following brief: Overview We are Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), part of the West Midlands Combined Authority. (WMCA). We strive for a vibrant region fuelled by transport choices that are not just inclusive and fair, but appealing. Under our transport behaviour change programme, we are working on a project to get more people cycling and walking in the West Midlands. This programme is called ‘Cycling for Everyone' and includes interventions such as cycle security measures, child and adult cycle training and bike maintenance training. Whilst cycling participation continues to grow, evidence suggests that there are inequalities in who cycles. People from the most deprived communities, minority ethnic backgrounds, and vulnerable groups, including disabled citizens and those with long term health conditions, are less likely to cycle. We are looking for local creatives, producers, artists, and facilitators to deliver engaging activities designed to tackle those inequalities and encourage behaviour change. Proposed activities should be themed around cycling and walking and will be used as a tool to encourage behaviour change. They will also be used as a device to signpost people onto other Cycling for Everyone activity in the area. The activity can use a variety of mediums such as theatre, arts, and music to engage different members of the community. Creative Brief – Cycling for Everyone Activity aims The activity will need to: Raise the profile of the Cycling for Everyone programme in the area. Get people to start thinking about active travel (as the first step in the behaviour change process). Engage local people in fun and creative activities. Develop relationships and refer people onto further programme activity. Reduce inequalities in who cycles. The activity The activity must be delivered in the specified locations and engage local people. The activity should be themed around cycling and walking. The scope for the project includes, but is not limited to, workshops, theatre, photography, art, music. The activity can be a one-off session or a series of sessions depending on the activity. Providers are asked to justify the activity chosen, and length of time/ number of sessions against the project aims. Community engagement Engaging the local community to participate in this activity is of upmost priority. It is expected that the provider will: Research the area to find key people to engage with this activity. Tailor the activity to suit the participants/ chosen audience. Use a mix of online and in-person methods to recruit participants. Target Audience To address inequalities in who cycles, the programme focuses on the below target audiences and locations: People from minority ethnic backgrounds Disabled people Women School children Elderly / older aged people Unemployed People from lower income households Our proposed response to the creative brief was successful and we were awarded £5000 to deliver a series of focused community workshops. For the project, we collaborated with 3 additional organisations: Artsy Party Brum, Adolescents Wellbeing CIC and Neurosoundtherapy CIC to deliver activities that encourage both children and adults to participate in cycling activities whilst also gaining an insight into cycling behaviours and understanding our own. The creative activities were a means to generate these conversations within the community and the creative outcomes were an artistic expression of their views. The activities took place within two localities: Lozells and Birchfield spanning across 8 days with each activity being 90 minutes to 2.5 hours long. Those who took part found the project insightful and the links made through the collaborative work have been beneficial for future workshops and projects. Towards the end of the year, we focused on the purpose of the company and the direction we wanted to go with it, so we enrolled onto an Accelerator Program called DIATOMIC, funded by The Livingwell Consortium and Inclusive Health. The aim was to look into where Artsy Party Kidz is aligned and how we can fit into the health sector, filling gaps in provision at a community / grassroots level. The program was incredibly useful, and we aim to use what we learned to streamline our services towards the mental health and wellbeing sector as a community provider of therapeutic art services to supplement clinical therapies and interventions. To conclude, the work carried out this year has been focused on raising awareness of sports, gender and health inequalities, using art as a tool to engage communities and encourage inclusion, facilitating positive art experiences for those who would usually struggle to access art themselves - mainly being those with SEND, from disadvantaged backgrounds or additional barriers such as gender, mental health or long term / chronic illnesses.

No consultation with stakeholders

The total amount paid or receivable by directors in respect of qualifying services was £5906.65 (based on 1 director) The agent knows of no other transactions or arrangements in connection with the remuneration of other directors, or compensation for director’s loss of office, which require to be disclosed.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration