Our community competition, Grow Your Idea 2, ran throughout 2018. We offered start-up support to six new group leaders to run activities or groups here at The Mill, thanks to funding from St James Big Local and Cooperative Food.
Congratulations to Rasheeqa, Yanire, Margaret, Joanna, Alison, Laura, and Uzma, the Grow Your Idea 2 competition winners. We supported them to develop their exciting ideas.
Grow Your Idea 2 was an amazing opportunity to learn new skills, connect with other local people and build your confidence in your idea. The winners received a package of support:
- Free room hire
- A small bursary
- Mentoring support to get your idea up and running
- Training in sustainability to help your group continue after the funding finishes.
Our focus on potentially isolated or vulnerable people
Here at The Mill we want to develop opportunities for people in our community who are potentially isolated or vulnerable – this includes people with low English speaking skills, refugees, unemployed, older people, people with disabilities, new parents or new residents. Grow Your Idea 2 encouraged ideas that could benefit the needs of this these groups.
A huge thank you to St James Big Local and Cooperative Food for funding 2018’s community competition.
About Grow Your Idea
Since we opened our doors one of our missions has been to support local groups and individuals to grow. We’re proud to have worked with so many people who have incubated their ideas at The Mill with the help of our community competition prize – Grow Your Idea. They have brought amazing new activities and workshops to engage the whole community and thousands of new visitors through our doors.
We’ve learned so much about what works (and what doesn’t!) and have honed our approach.
The story of the first six years of this journey is told in our publication – Grow Your Idea.