Alongside our MAD 4 SCHOOLS program we offer a wide range of community initiatives.
Below are just a few of the more recent projects and collaborations we have been involved in.
Please contact us if you have an idea for a community project.
The ‘Never Give Up’ project
We worked with year 6 pupils to write, perform and record their own anthem, exploring issues of school life, community identity, and their hopes and dreams. Funded by the Communities First Trust Fund, the project included five primary schools and two secondary schools in Ely and Caerau, culminating with two stage performances at the Ely and Caerau festival. A very worthwhile experience.
Anthem470
Nearly 420 pupils from Cardiff, Brecon, Dolgellau and Conwy were enabled to take a creative look at the culture, opportunities and obstacles they all face, and express these in original lyrics. Each group created a unique anthem, which they performed, recorded, illustrated and dramatised, with fantastic results. Six young people were then chosen from each school to perform the anthems ‘on tour’ to large audiences of their peers.
Anthem Draig
We enabled around 200 members of the community in Splott and Tremorfa, from grandparents to teenagers to school children, to explore their personal and community identity through visual art, music and film. We filmed parents and senior citizens in the community sharing their stories of times when they ‘never gave up’. A local youth group, inspired by this film, worked with us to create a large mural on a container in Tremorfa park. You can see the results of this on www.splott.nevergiveup.org.uk 
Scratch the Sky:
This is an ongoing, multimedia, cross-art, international project which uses the symbol of a kite as a metaphor for hopes and dreams.
Making and illustrating kites to fly, dance workshops, art workshops, multimedia performance and community input on all levels.
Scratch the Sky Cardiff: This included several community workshops in the local community of Roath and in the ‘shopkeeper/storyteller’ project, in which we worked with local traders to create images and text of their hopes and dreams.
Scratch the Sky: Beit Sahour
In June 2007 a small team from People Around Here engaged in a cross-community collaboration, visiting the town of Beit Sahour and the Dehieshe refugee camp on the West Bank and running a series of workshops for children and young people enabling them to express through art, digital storytelling and the written word what it is like to live in their neighbourhoods. We worked with about 45 young people aged 7 to 17 who expressed their hopes and dreams through building and illustrating kites. The idea of the project is to enable their voices to be heard here, and to form a basis for future connections between schools and community groups in both locations.
Artist in Residence:
Marie Curie Hospice Penarth
Devised jointly with the Hospice in order to enable staff, patients and carers to be involved in the creation of new artwork for the Hospice. We will also be engaging volunteers as part of the ‘Can Do’ initiative to bring the ideas into reality.
Ty Coch Nursing Home
Working with the residents of the home, we explore the nature of a portait and enable them to produce a piece of art to celebrate who they are. 
Youth Group Art Collaborations
For example: Working with local young people aged 12-16 in transforming their youth hut. After taking photos of key local hang-out places we then converted these images and projected them onto walls as the basis for a large interior painting featuring the young people in their own environment. This work was commissioned by The Prince’s Trust.
Can Do: Large Scale Community Involvement Art Projects
This initiative engages local volunteers in making a contribution to the improvement of the physical fabric of a community facility. Volunteers with a wide variety of experience join in with the creation of murals for places in need of some ‘investment’ and rejuvenation.