Following on from the amazing success of the Joy at the Job Centre events that Ipswich Museums’ Eleanor Root created in partnership with Philip Carter-Goodyear and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Suffolk Family Focus team, the project has now gone countywide.
The Joy at the Job Centre project, through funding from Festival Bridge, the DWP and Colchester and Ipswich Museums Service, has been working with cultural and community providers to promote and produce events across Suffolk in Bury St Edmunds and Leiston.
Further events are set to take place in Haverhill, Newmarket, Lowestoft as well as moving into Norfolk in Thetford and Great Yarmouth with the support of Norfolk Museums Service and the DWP, with planning underway for an event and support in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
The idea is simply to bring together the cultural and community groups and the DWP within the local area to put on and host events that encourage positive engagement, Job Centres, and cultural organisations to work collaboratively and a real chance for all involved to engage with the DWP clients in a relaxed, informative, and friendly environment to promote wellbeing.
This has taken the shape of volunteer opportunities within the cultural sector, arts and crafts activities, handling collections and mobile displays taken into the DWP offices or to the local museums and libraries and promoted through the DWP family focus teams.
The evaluation report for the Ipswich Museum project is available here.
For further information and how you can get involved please contact: matthew.jones AT colchester.gov.uk