Crafting Connections CIC was established in October 2021, with the aim of improving people’s general health and wellbeing and reducing social isolation through a range of arts and crafts, alternative wellness therapies and other opportunities. In January 2024, we opened Lambton Community Hub, our Community Asset Transfer building from Sunderland City Council. During the period November 2024 to October 2025, the Hub has continued to go from strength to strength. We have a monthly footfall of around 350 individuals per month. We now deliver two weekly lunch clubs, four weekly arts and crafts-based sessions, four weekly exercise classes (including seated, cardio, yoga and Tai-Chi), and open the venue to other local businesses to hire for their activities several times per week. We work in partnership with Neighbourly and Fareshare NE to collect and redistribute surplus food to our community, a service that is growing in demand all of the time due to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Our demographic is mainly older people aged 65 and over, people with physical disabilities and people with low-level mental health concerns. Feedback is very positive and we continue to grow and change according to this feedback. We have continued to apply for community grants and funding to support the development, growth and improvement of our service offer for customers. We have a fully-stocked community fruit and veg garden and now support three regular volunteers, who help us with surplus food collection, delivering arts and crafts groups, and cooking for our lunch clubs.

Our stakeholders are all of the individuals that attend our range of classes and sessions, the voluntary sector community and the various organisations that have provided funding to support our service delivery. All of our arts and crafts classes involve consultation with the group to understand the types of activities that they enjoy or would like to try. This consultation is used to ensure that sessions are person-centred and tailored according to the individual’s interests and abilities. We have had our lunch club attendees complete feedback questionnaires to identify any issues or areas for improvements as well as seeing what works well. We use our social media platforms to consult with the local community about our services and to run ideas for new services past them to gauge interest. We attend regular voluntary sector meetings to talk to other organisations about partnership working and opportunities to refer to each other. We also discuss community needs and ways to improve our engagement with as many people as possible. This has resulted in partnership working with a number of VCS and other organisations, including regular venue hire with them to deliver their services from our community building.

All of the Directors were involved in the delivery of project-based services and as such, were remunerated for the time they spent delivering these services. All remuneration that was received was funded by the non-profit income achieved through successful bids to grant-providing organisations

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration