Post Scrutiny - Executive Response

1. That the Local History Forum considers opportunities to have greater involvement from black minority ethnic communities by encouraging communities to open mosques and temples during Heritage Weekend.

Accepted

In September, Katherine Street Mosque opened its doors to the public for the first time ever as part of Heritage Open Day. They conducted two public tours of the Mosque, one for young people from local primary schools and one drop in session for people who live in the area. Plans to extend this to other mosques and other faith organisations in the future have been really well received by both Faiths United and Tameside Forum of Mosques. The Partnership hopes to work with the Local History Society to encourage more and more faith organisations to get involved in Heritage Open Days in the future

Sarah Booth

September 2011

2. That the Local History Forum seeks ways to engage young people in local heritage activity.

Accepted

The CCCP are committed to working with the Local History Society to explore ways of engaging young people in their work. The Local History Society have begun to extend their reach in local schools and have recently started to engage young people on some of their heritage walks e.g. The Gorse Hall Murder Walk.

Sarah Booth

September 2011

3. That the Arts and Events Team actively seek to include cultural activity from local BME communities as part of Splendid Weekend

Accepted

The 2010 Splendid Weekend event included more activity from local BME communities than ever before. Hyde Community Action were involved the event this year and delivered Islamic Arts sessions, henna hand painting and an arts exhibition. BME groups also performed in the Theatre Arts Marquee including a young Muslim dancer from Hyde. The Arts and Events team are committed to broadening the reach of the Sunday event to reflect the diverse communities that make up Hyde. The Partnership are actively supporting the Team to do this.

Louise Atkinson

July 2011

4. That the work of the Arts and Events Team in trying to make Diwali, Eid and Christmas celebrations and events that can be enjoyed by all communities be supported.

Accepted

The Arts and Events team have established community steering groups to plan and deliver a series of events to celebrate Eid and Diwali.

The focus of the Eid event this year has been changed, specifically to engage members of the wider community. The focus of the celebrations is now around a schools based digital media project that explores what ‘celebration’ means to different communities. This end product will be show at the Eid event, hopefully attracting all the young people that have been involved in creating it; irrespective of faith, culture or background.

Both these events have received funding from the Culture and Community Cohesion Partnership through the ‘Culture to Build Cohesion’ funding stream. A further 25 projects received funding, including a number of local community projects managed by local community groups. This greatly improves our capacity to deliver cultural events that bring people from different backgrounds together.

Louise Atkinson

October/November 2010 and October/November 2011

5. That opportunities for the marketing of activities and funding available to local clubs, be further explored.

In 2010, the Culture and Community Cohesion Partnership launched the ‘Culture to Build Cohesion funding’ stream. This means that we are able to fund local projects directly for the first time. In addition to this, the Partnership continues to work with T3SC to make sure local groups are aware of funding sources and have access to support during these financially difficult times. T3SC and the CCCP recently undertook a targeted piece of work in Hyde Newton to make local groups aware of the various different funding options available to them. This has resulted in 10 groups receiving funding from the Connecting Communities funding stream and a further £9,000 being awarded to the area from North West Together We Can

Sarah Booth

March 2011

6. The need for constructive positive intergenerational work is common to all areas and learning from most successful practice detailed within section 7.9, the most cost effective activities should be extended to other areas.

The Partnership now uses statistical information to plan and deliver work where it is needed most (irrespective of whether an area is a regeneration area or not). This information includes indicators like NI1 ‘The extent to which people from different backgrounds get on well together’, hate crime stats and indicators around how people mix and integrate in their local community. The Partnership responds to this information by delivering targeted intervention work in the communities which need it most. In 2010, we delivered a very successful intervention in Hyde Newton where we have facilitated inter-generational activity between the youth service and older people’s groups active in the area. We have also begun to deliver work in Hyde Town centre to break down barriers between different groups of people and improve the experience of people living in that area.