Inspired by Spotify and their annual tradition of compiling your listening activity all ‘wrapped’ into a lovely summary at the year’s end! It reminds you of your favourite and most listened-to songs, artists and albums. We thought we’d reflect on some of our highlights of the year! So please enjoy our annual report, our top 10 projects of the year, released on the 10th anniversary of our company’s creation!
1. Getting Active and Online:
Our weekly live-streamed exercise classes have now been running for 2 years! With some gaps in between to gain funding, we’re incredibly proud of this initiative!
This year we received funding for Leeds City Council’s Community Committee, Housing Advisory Panel and Active Leeds to run our 5 classes a week streamed online using Zoom. This year we taught a variety of exercises including Yoga for Flexibility, Pilates, Zumba, Seated and Standing Yoga, Cardio, Tai Chi!
Alongside this, we also ran Zoom Cafes with our lovely volunteers Sydney and Jo and placement student Kyra providing some extra time at the end of classes for participants to socialise over a cup of tea!
Overall our classes were most popular in January of 2022 reaching over 80 attendees every week!
2. Digital Cafes
Our Digital Inclusion work started in lockdown as many older adults couldn’t access our online projects. This year we continued that work, running 5 Digital Cafes at Bramley Elderly Action, Bramley Lawn Club, Daisyfiueld Grange, OWLS and Holt Park Active.
These weekly sessions ran for 10 weeks each and included group style and 1-2-1 support for older adults getting online. We helped them learn everything from setting up an email, online shopping, and downloading apps, to streaming film and TV, and using airdrop & QR codes!
This simply would not have been possible without the help of our incredible volunteers Lizzie, Oliwia, Ummu, Vivien, Talia and Laurenne! And of course, Kyra our lovely placement student, who put so much work into developing this project into what it is today!
Over 2022, for our digital inclusion work, we received £10,000 from the National Lottery Awards For All to hire our Digital Inclusion Officer Victoria to continue delivering our Digital Cafes. We were also gifted iPhone and data packages from 100% Digital Leeds. We then we received an additional £10,000 from Leeds Community Foundation to go towards buying more tablets and data and, crucially appointing an outreach worker for 2 days a week! We were also funded by Places For People to deliver our sessions at Daisyfield Grange Retirement Home.
Going into 2023 we are continuing to develop Digital Cafes at OWLS in Headingley and starting our 6th Digital Cafe at MHA in Beeston in February! We have also just got the news of our successful application for a Digital Inclusion Capability Grant from Good Things Foundation – £4,00 to go towards our outreach worker and a new role, volunteers manager!
3. Inner Northwest Activity programme (LS6 Activities)
In February we were funded by the Inner North West Community Committee to deliver a programme of sports and healthy living activities for residents (particularly council residents) living in Headingley, Hyde Park, Woodhouse, Little London, and Weetwood! This included a walking group in Headingley, walking football sessions in Burley, Yoga and Boxercise classes at Woodhouse Community Centre, Bowls sessions in Burley Park and offering 1-2-1 fitness assessments.
After successfully delivering this project, having completed it in July of 2022. We then sought funding again in August 2022 from the same funders to continue the Yoga and Boxercise classes, and 1-2-1 fitness assessments of the project. This application also included funding to start our Women’s Walking Football Team as well as funding our Getting Active and Online Classes!
We are still delivering this project, check out our social media for updates!
4. Seaton Valley Village Plan
We worked with Seaton Valley Council to develop a village plan covering the five villages of Seghill, Seaton Delaval, Holywell, New Hartley and Seaton Sluice. The aim of the plan is to make the area an even better place to live; e.g. more places to go, more things to do, better facilities, better public transport, making it cleaner etc. One of the priority groups for this plan is young people, so we need to know what you think would make your village, and the Valley as a whole, an even better place to live.
The plan is underpinned by an extensive program of consultation carried out to find out what they thought about the village, what the issues and opportunities were and how it could be improved.
We delivered:
- Semi-structured interviews with over 30 community organisations (see appendix)
- An online survey filled in by nearly 200 local adults (see appendix)
- Consultation sessions with students at Whytrig and Seaton Valley middle schools, and survey with over 250 responses from pupils at these schools (see appendix)
- A mini road show where the emerging ideas were displayed at each of the 5 villages
- Drop-in sessions in all villages over July and August
The plan has now been completed and was presented to the Seaton Valley Council in November.
5. Stoke North Big Local Plan
In May of 2022, we were commissioned by Stoke North Big Local to help develop their 2022-2025 plan, providing the framework for spending the remaining funds of their 1.2m to the area by the Big lottery to make Stoke an even better place to live! About 350k of the original budget remained, and we developed their next and last, 3-year plan which will us through to the end of the programme in 2025. This included extensive consultations with the public and local communities and organisations. We have spoken to community groups, partnership members and partner organisations, about ideas to invest the remainder of the money to improve the area.
Within our plan we:
- researched a socio-economic profile of Stoke North, summarising recent statistics covering topics such as deprivation, young people, cost of living, fuel poverty, COVID and social isolation, Crime, Education and employment, Transport and the Environment
- summarised our survey data from surveying local people and local schools which had a combined over 30 respondents
- we find it particularly important to involve the local youth as they often have a wealth of opinions and big ideas!
- A summary of our 20 Semi-structured interviews with partnership members, stakeholders and partner organisations.
Looking at all this, we then curate a plan with ideas, within budget with potential stakeholders on how to improve the area. We are so proud of this community planning work we do and we can’t wait to see the improvements in the Stoke North Area!
6. Bramley Community Healthy Living Cafe
In May fo 2022, whilst brainstorming a couple of new ideas and projects that would spread our healthier and happier living agenda across Leeds. We thought to set up our very own community café that aims to reduce health inequalities (ideally in Bramley or elsewhere in West Leeds). The aim of the café is to provide a healthy food option for shoppers. We’re also hoping that shoppers and passersby who might pop in for a coffee will, once inside, see and hear about the amazing healthy living activities we and other organisations in the area offer. We want to target and reach those people who we believe would benefit from the work we do but who haven’t otherwise heard of it or need a little convincing to attend. It’s going to be a bit like a healthy hub….disguised as a café!
We then found an incredible venue in Bramley Shopping Centre, big enough for a cafe and a space to host affordable Yoga, Tai Chi or Meditation taster sessions at the cafe to get inactive people moving. In August the Reach Fund awarded us £6250 to prepare a very detailed business plan for the cafe. The first draft of this has now been completed by our community cafe consultant.
We are still developing this idea but are closer than ever to making it a reality and have made huge progress on this project this year!
7. ‘Young at Heart’ Podcast
2022 was also made an especially exciting year with starting of our health and wellbeing Podcast, Young At Heart! Since starting in April, we’re now 8 episodes in now, with our 9th and 10th on the way! We’ve looked at a whole host of topics such as the benefits of exercise, women’s participation in sports, wellbeing, nutrition, health inequalities, religion and health and more!
According to Spotify Wrapped, our top episode (most popular and most listened to) was our OWmen’s Participation in Sports episode featuring Girls HWo Can Leeds Project Director and our very own Joy from Our Bramley Walking Wanders Football Team!
Be sure to check out our latest episodes here
And follow us on Twitter @ YoungAtHeartYBY and Instagram @youngatheart_yourbackyard
Also be sure to check out all the healthy yummy recipes shared by our guests on the healthy recipie book section of our website1
8. Men’s Film and TV Club
Having started in Lockdown our Men’s film and TV club rann every Thursday at 3:30. The project is now running sustainably and independently. The club has now expanded to invite others to join – now called the Film and TV Club! Mike, the incredible club leader does an incredible job of keeping members engaged in discussing a new film or TV show Every Week over Zoom!
9. Windmill Hill Big local evaluation
In 2014, Windmill Hill Big Local was given £1.2 million by the lottery to be spent over 10 years, with the overall aim of making the area an even better place to live. Since then the Windmill Hill partnership has supported the opening of the Chi Community Cafe and the community room, funded the BMX track on Phoenix Park, provided advice and support around debt and supported numerous groups and organisations through the small grants scheme. Around half of the funding is yet to be invested, a large chunk of which has been allocated to a major refurbishment of the church to allow for more community use.
We were commissioned by Windmill Hill Big Local Partnership to conduct research into what impact of the funding invested so far has had, on residents, groups and organisations. The findings will also be used to identify what other improvements could be made in the area.
The plan is underpinned by an extensive program of consultation carried out to find out what they thought about the village, what the issues and opportunities were and how it could be improved.
This included an online survey filled in by over 140 local adults. We surveyed at Big Local and Church and organised community events, in the local park and outside local shops like the Co-Op and Pharmacy.
We are evaluating the work done in the Windmill Hill Big Local area so far, speaking to the community, and those involved/ impacted by the work.
10. Heights and Bawns
This year, we were funded by the Council to get the tenants of Heights and Bawns more active!
We ran 2 family fun days, a free yoga class at Lower Wortley Community Centre, and 8 weeks of afterschool club sessions at Greenhill Primary school who we LOVED working with! We delivered Yoga, Walking Football, Netball and Boxercise sessions for years 5&6!
We’ve had an incredible 2022 – thank you all for your support! Bring on 2023!
