Central England Law Centre is one of four charities in the city working with City of Culture to develop programmes: our focus is on Homelessness and Poverty. The other partners are:

• Newly Arrived Communities and Social Inclusion – Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre
• Mental Health, Wellbeing and Isolation – Grapevine
• Young People at Risk of Exploitation – Positive Youth Foundation

Lockdown brought to light for most people the inequalities that have existed within society for a long time: issues around benefit payments, isolation, food poverty, access to mental health support and other services, freedom of movement and much more.  This awareness, spurred on by the community willingness to act during this time – led our four organisations to come together to create a programme that looks at how we don’t just return to the way things were, but think about how we ‘reform the norm’ and make things more equal. 

Working together to amplify under-represented voices, this programme will have different opportunities and events throughout the year.  The first of these is in full swing at the moment and is called ‘The Story of Us’.

Over 10 weeks, clients from each of the organisations took part in weekly workshops with Jude Habib from Sound Delivery https://www.sounddelivery.org.uk/ .  Jude works alongside people who are under- or misrepresented in the media, to use their stories and experiences to create change. 

Our next group of people have just started their workshops and will present a performance as part of City of Culture this summer.