Leaders of voluntary sector organisations in Gorton and Levenshulme have shared their experiences and views of working at a neighbourhood level during the Covid-19 crisis in a new Macc publication, No Going Back - Gorton and Levenshulme:
A PDF copy of the publication is available by clicking on the image above.
Following on from the well-received No Going Back report published last September, No Going Back: Gorton and Levenshulme gives a platform to 16 local organisations to highlight some of the local voices in a city neighbourhood that don’t often get a hearing. The collection of inspirational stories and interviews focuses on Gorton and Levenshulme, a community area that has faced its fair share of challenges during Covid-19 and shows the critical role played by voluntary organisations in supporting communities during an unprecedented pandemic.
The 16 organisations that contributed to the report included two community associations, a bowling club, an organisation that teaches circus skills (yes, and you may be surprised why that matters!), a youth service, and an organisation that runs classes to reduce stress. The stories feature work with young people, South Asian women, refugees, migrants, people with dementia and older neighbours. The insight they share covers topics from how to make a new home to how to address health inequalities, how to set up a rapid volunteering scheme, how to organise food banks and why we shouldn’t need them.
“We wanted to explore the experience and views of community organisations working in neighbourhoods during the Covid crisis,” said Mike Wild, Macc chief executive. “The experiences of these local voluntary organisations featured in No Going Back offer a vision of how communities can come together to tackle the health and social care crisis in Manchester, a crisis that has been building over the last 20 years and worsened by many years of austerity. We believe it is time to take a truly radical approach, based in a practical and realistic idea of community, the kind of approach illustrated in every story that is highlighted in this publication”.
In preparing to launch this publication, we interviewed several of the contributors and produced a number of short videos with further thoughts. The video from Adam, Hideout Youth Zone is featured here:
For more videos, you can click on this link.