The Bleddfa Centre is one of nine organisations in Powys awarded funding to boost community wellbeing through the Social Value Forum Development Fund.
The Sidney Nolan Trust is delighted to announce that it has been awarded £19,309 to deliver creative sessions for health and wellbeing at the Bleddfa Centre.
The funding will support new regular sociable art, craft, cooking and food-sharing activities led by artists with experience in delivering arts-for-health projects. The activity responds to priorities identified by the community, including social isolation, community health, carer support, and dementia/memory loss, and will be flexible to include and support a wide range of health and social issues in this rural community, facing issues with access to services.
Activities will commence in the Autumn and are supported by this award until March 2027. They include piloting a monthly creative session and a monthly pop-up Community Café that invites people to socialise and gain skills and confidence in affordable and healthy food preparation. The programmes will also invite and support volunteer involvement and make connections with other charities and organisations in Powys supporting people’s wellbeing in the surrounding region.
Director of the Sidney Nolan Trust Sophie Heath said:
“We are overjoyed and excited to have secured this Social Value Fund investment for the Bleddfa Centre and its communities to help us address some of the health and wellbeing challenges that local residents have highlighted with us. We are looking forward to working together with participants and partners to build positive impacts and increased connections within and around Bleddfa through these new arts-for-health programmes.
This latest funding builds on recent investment in the Bleddfa Centre through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which enabled urgent capital repairs and improvements to the buildings, as well as support from Community Foundation Wales for a community-focused artist residency. Artist Simone Gilliatt is working at the Centre until the end of the year to re-establish creative activity in partnership with the Bleddfa community.
In 2023, the Bleddfa Trust merged with the Sidney Nolan Trust as a local charity also dedicated to enabling creativity and the arts in the rural setting of the Wales Herefordshire border. The Sidney Nolan Trust has been working with the local community and stakeholders to understand the priorities for community use and arts spaces and restart activities and programmes at the Bleddfa Centre.
Clair Swales, PAVO CEO said
“The Social Value Forum Development Fund was extremely competitive this year, with almost £1.8 million requested and just £290,000 available.
“Each successful project stood out for its alignment with the Powys Health and Care Strategy and its potential to address clear service gaps.”
Project updates will be shared on the Sidney Nolan Trust website and social channels.
ENDS
Contact: For all press enquiries, contact Sophie Heath 01544 260 149/ 07940 538 154 sophie@sidneynolantrust.org
Notes to Editors:
- The Social Value Coordination group, facilitated by PAVO, identified the priorities for the funding. The group includes representatives from all 13 Powys Locality Network areas, Powys County Council, Powys Teaching Health Board, and citizen, carer, mental health, and young people’s representatives
- The Sidney Nolan Trust was founded in 1985 by the famous Australian artist Sir Sidney Nolan (1917 – 1992). He was part of a close circle of artists, writers and thinkers who were pivotal in the advance of Modernism in Australia and he is best known for his iconic paintings of the bushranger-outlaw Ned Kelly. Nolan moved permanently to the UK in 1953 and became an important and successful figure in the British art world from the mid-1950s onwards. For the last 10 years of his life, he came to live and work at The Rodd in rural Herefordshire, close to the England/Wales border.
Today, The Rodd is a vibrant centre for the arts where the Trust, an independent charity, cares for the biggest collection of his art anywhere in the world, along with the artist’s archive, large and important book collection and former studio. Further, the Trust looks after Nolan's former home Rodd Court, a Grade II* listed Jacobean Manor House and around 200 acres of farmland and woodland. Nolan’s legacy acts as the foundation for an annual programme of contemporary exhibitions, events and residencies and creative learning programmes.
In 2023 the Bleddfa Trust merged with the Sidney Nolan Trust on the basis of their shared values of creativity, ideas and arts access. So the Trust now looks after and manages two buildings in the village of Bleddfa in Powys, working with the community to build and define a sustainable future for the Centre where the benefits of social connection and arts provision can be accessed in this rural area.
For more information visit www.sidneynolantrust.org
- Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations
Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations (PAVO) provides essential services to support third sector organisations and to improve people's lives. PAVO is part of the Third Sector Support Wales, a network of support organisations for the whole of the third sector in Wales. It consists of the 19 local and regional County Voluntary Councils (PAVO is a County Voluntary Council) and the national support body, Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA).
As Third Sector Support Wales, we work with people, volunteers and third sector groups to identify and address what matters to them. To achieve our shared goals, we collaborate with other key partners across the third sector, the public sector, business, research and funders.
In 1974 Powys Rural Council was created from the three independent Rural Community Councils of Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Brecknockshire. Powys Rural Council became PAVO in 1994, changing its name to Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations.