2025 was a significant year of growth for Seekers Create, particularly in how we combined art, community engagement, research, and Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) to support communities across Portsmouth, Hampshire, and beyond. Throughout the year, we worked with children and young people, families, SEND communities, older adults, schools, universities, charities, community groups, local authorities, public health teams, and cultural organisations. Our work ranged from murals, creative workshops, and community trails to consultation, research, and co-production projects. At the heart of our approach is the belief that people need different ways to share their experiences, ideas, and perspectives. During 2025, we further developed a range of creative engagement methods, including doodle boards, games, mapping activities, voting tools, conversation prompts, and large-scale collaborative artwork. These approaches created accessible and informal opportunities for participation, helping us engage people who may not feel comfortable contributing through traditional consultation methods. Key Projects: People of Paulsgrove One of our largest community art projects of the year, People of Paulsgrove brought together residents, schools, community organisations, and local partners to celebrate the neighbourhood and the people who live there. Through conversations, storytelling, drawing, and creative activities, community members contributed ideas that directly shaped the final mural. Rather than presenting a pre-designed piece of artwork, the project was co-created with local people, resulting in a lasting visual representation of community identity and pride. Breathe Working with Portsmouth City Council and local youth organisations, we developed a series of creative engagement activities exploring young people's experiences and perceptions of vaping and smoking. Through games, anonymous voting, discussion activities, and word clouds, young people were able to share their views on issues such as accessibility, peer influence, social media, misinformation, motivations for vaping, and potential solutions. The insights gathered contributed to a wider youth vaping and smoking needs assessment and demonstrated how creative methods can facilitate meaningful conversations about complex public health issues. Seekers Social Travel Club In partnership with SEND families, schools, and community organisations, we developed and delivered an independent travel programme designed to help young people build confidence and practical travel skills. Participants developed abilities such as route planning, personal and road safety awareness, time management, problem solving, and decision-making. Creative games, visual resources, and supported real-world travel experiences enabled us to tailor the programme to individual needs, while alternative activities ensured participation for those not yet ready to travel independently. Live Longer Better Working alongside partners across Hampshire, we developed creative approaches to explore themes of ageing, activity, wellbeing, and social connection. Using the COM-B behaviour change framework alongside bespoke games, conversation tools, and interactive activities, we examined the factors influencing people's ability to remain active and engaged in their communities. This work, delivered in areas including Gosport, Test Valley, and Basingstoke and Deane, generated valuable insights that informed local strategies and initiatives. University of Portsmouth and Gosport Partnership Our collaboration with the University of Portsmouth continued through community research and engagement activities in Gosport. Using mapping exercises, doodling, games, and facilitated conversations, we gathered local knowledge and explored opportunities to connect community engagement with digital trails and research activity. This partnership strengthened our role as a bridge between academic research and community participation. Pioneers Through our ongoing work with heritage partners, we continued to create opportunities for children, families, and community groups to engage with Portsmouth's maritime history. Rather than simply observing heritage, participants were encouraged to make, draw, discuss, explore, and respond creatively, allowing them to develop personal connections with local history and heritage. Find Your Thing and Seek Your Spark These projects focused on helping people identify their interests, talents, and aspirations while connecting them with local opportunities. Through creative exercises and reflective activities, participants considered what motivates them, what they would like to explore further, and how local people, places, and organisations could support their next steps. Creative Forces Our partnership work with universities continued through the Creative Forces programme, bringing together creative practitioners, students, researchers, and communities. The programme supported our wider aim of using creative participation to build confidence, strengthen relationships, and generate meaningful community insight. Schools and Young People Throughout the year, we worked extensively with schools and youth organisations on creative engagement projects, pupil voice initiatives, murals, and participatory activities. Increasingly, our role extended beyond delivering creative workshops to enabling children and young people to influence decisions, contribute ideas, and shape the work being developed with them. Community Health and Wellbeing Alongside projects such as Breathe and Live Longer Better, our involvement in community health and wellbeing continued to grow. Working with local authority and health partners, we created accessible and engaging opportunities for people to discuss their experiences, needs, and aspirations outside formal consultation environments. This approach proved particularly effective within communities such as Paulsgrove, where relationship-building and trust were essential. The Art of Conversation Across all our projects, we continued to develop what we call the Art of Conversation: using creative activity as a catalyst for dialogue, participation, and community insight. A doodle, game, map, mural, or creative activity can be valuable in its own right, but it can also provide a platform for conversations that may not otherwise happen. The stories, ideas, votes, drawings, and discussions generated through these activities become valuable evidence that communities and partner organisations can use to inform future decisions and actions. Asset-Based Community Development Asset-Based Community Development increasingly informed our work throughout 2025. Rather than focusing solely on challenges and needs, we actively sought to uncover the strengths already present within communities, including people's skills, local knowledge, relationships, organisations, places, stories, and informal networks. This approach shifted conversations from asking what was wrong to exploring what already existed and how those strengths could be built upon to create positive change. Accessibility and Inclusion Accessibility remained central to our practice. We used visual tools, simple language, movement, games, anonymous voting, and hands-on creative activities to provide multiple ways for people to participate and contribute. These approaches were particularly effective when working with children and young people, SEND communities, and individuals who may feel less comfortable participating in formal meetings or group discussions. Partnership Working Partnerships continued to expand throughout the year. We worked alongside local authorities, universities, schools, cultural organisations, public health teams, SEND services, charities, and grassroots community groups. Increasingly, organisations approached Seekers Create not simply to deliver activities, but to help them think differently about how they engage with, listen to, and work alongside communities. Looking Ahead The learning, partnerships, and relationships developed during 2025 provide a strong foundation for the next stage of Seekers Create's development. We will continue to refine and expand the Art of Conversation as a practical and inclusive approach to community engagement and research, combining creative participation with robust methods for capturing and understanding community insight. Building on our existing work in community health, youth voice, SEND inclusion, independent travel, neighbourhood engagement, and creative research, we will continue exploring innovative ways for communities to shape decisions that affect their lives. A major focus for 2026 will be Portsmouth 100 and our flagship 100 Sparks project, developed during 2025 in preparation for Portsmouth's centenary year. The initiative will celebrate the people, places, organisations, stories, and passions that make Portsmouth unique, while creating opportunities for residents to share their knowledge, experiences, and ideas. Through trails, events, creative activities, and community partnerships, 100 Sparks will connect people across the city and showcase Portsmouth's rich community assets. This project reflects a broader ambition for Seekers Create: ensuring that relationships, ideas, and opportunities continue beyond the lifespan of individual projects. We want the people, groups, and organisations we meet through one initiative to connect with others, creating lasting networks, collaborations, and opportunities across communities. Moving forward, we will continue working alongside partners to develop creative approaches that enable communities to influence the places, services, and opportunities around them, with particular attention given to voices that are often underrepresented in traditional engagement processes. Our goal remains simple: to listen, learn, create opportunities for participation, and use those conversations to inspire meaningful connection, collaboration, and positive action. Seekers Create CIC Portsmouth

Stakeholder consultation, co-production, and community conversation were at the heart of Seekers Create's work throughout 2025. Our stakeholders included residents, children and young people, SEND families, older adults, schools, colleges, universities, community organisations, charities, cultural organisations, local authorities, public health teams, and partners working across Portsmouth, Hampshire, and surrounding areas. A consistent theme emerged across our work: organisations wanted to hear from a broader and more diverse range of people, yet traditional consultation methods were not always effective in reaching them. Throughout the year, we demonstrated the value of creating multiple routes into a conversation. Participants could doodle, vote, play games, respond to prompts, move around a physical space, contribute to maps, create artwork, or simply talk while engaging in another activity. These approaches created more accessible and inclusive opportunities for participation and often enabled conversations that may not have taken place in more formal settings. Our Breathe project provided a strong example of this approach in action. Through anonymous and group-based activities, young people were able to explore topics such as vaping, peer pressure, accessibility, and social influences without feeling pressured to disclose their own behaviours or experiences. The creative methods encouraged open and honest discussion while generating valuable insights. SEND young people and their families played a key role in shaping the Social Travel Club programme. Their experiences highlighted that independent travel involves much more than learning a route. Confidence, anxiety, communication, safety awareness, time management, and previous experiences all influence a person's ability to travel independently. Their feedback helped us design a programme that recognises different starting points and adapts to individual needs. Similarly, participants and partners involved in Live Longer Better emphasised that staying active and connected is influenced by a wide range of factors beyond personal motivation. Transport, confidence, social connections, available opportunities, information, and the local environment all affect people's experiences. The COM-B framework provided a useful structure for exploring these influences, while our creative engagement methods made these conversations more accessible and enjoyable. Our neighbourhood-based work reinforced the importance of local knowledge. Residents often had valuable insights into community assets, informal networks, underused spaces, and local challenges that would be difficult for outsiders to identify. By creating opportunities for people to share this knowledge, we helped make these community strengths and experiences more visible. Schools and youth organisations increasingly sought our support in facilitating genuine participation rather than simply delivering activities. This strengthened our commitment to co-production, ensuring that children and young people could contribute to the questions being asked, the activities being designed, and the decisions being made within projects. Universities and research partners were particularly interested in how creative approaches could broaden participation in research. Our work demonstrated that meaningful and robust research does not always require formal settings. Games, mapping activities, artwork, and facilitated conversations can generate rich qualitative data when supported by clear processes for capturing and analysing information. Stakeholders also highlighted the importance of tangible outcomes. In some projects, this took the form of a mural, creative trail, artwork, or community resource. In others, it resulted in a research report, key findings, stronger partnerships, or a deeper understanding of a community and its needs. Across all of our work, stakeholders continued to shape and influence the development of Seekers Create. The most significant lesson from 2025 was that community voice cannot be captured through a single consultation exercise. Meaningful engagement comes from creating ongoing opportunities for participation, listening in a variety of ways, and building relationships that allow conversations to develop and continue over time. By embedding these principles into our work, we have strengthened our ability to support communities, partners, and organisations to engage people more effectively and ensure that local voices help shape future decisions, projects, and opportunities.

One director received a remuneration of £12,500.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration