We deliver health and wellbeing programmes as part of our community development strategy. Our overall aim is to reduce health inequalities and improve community health and wellbeing. Our programmes encourage and support people to design and deliver creative outcomes which tell their stories and voice experiences of living in their particular communities.

Our vision for this strategy is:

to harness people’s unique strengths to create change in their community
to hear unheard voices and encourage people to tell their stories in creative ways utilising the arts, dance, music, poetry, performance and other forms
to help people broaden their understanding of the concept of creativity

Many people view being creative as something that they either are or aren’t. We want to encourage people to understand that there are many different ways to be creative, that creativity can be accessed by everyone and applied as a powerful tool for personal and social change.

We apply learning from established innovative wellbeing approaches including Positive Psychology, social and arts prescribing and asset based community development.

Our trained professionals use Positive Psychology to help people understand what makes them happy. We employ resources such as ‘the five ways to wellbeing’ where we encourage small simple actions to boost wellbeing and social interaction. We build resilience and unlock potential to work on common goals towards community change. We promote involvement in volunteering and in developing new skills which can improve employability.

A report by the World Health Organisation in 2019 considering 3000 studies showed the major role that arts projects have in preventing ill health, promoting wellbeing and the management and treatment of illness. Arts on prescription has attracted attention as a way to complement health and social care interventions.

Isolation and marginalisation is worsening the mental and physical health of thousands who previously were economically inactive. There are also many thousands more who have become economically inactive and isolated as a direct result of the COVID pandemic.

By working particularly with people who may feel excluded and marginalised we seek to build skills and confidence. We allow them to explore and realise new opportunities, create new social networks and friendships, build resident-led projects and create long lasting community change.

UNIVERSAL FOUNDATION