Nottingham Peace ProjectCommunity Interest Company

ANNUALREPORT

2017

Managing Director: Jamahl Peterkin

Company Number 10755603

Our Mission

Helping people improve their life style, mental health and well-being. Raising aspirations, creativity, opportunity and positivity in the community.

Teaching Positive Energy , Self-Awareness and Confidence NPP aim to Empower all.

Welcome and thank you for your time. Hope 2017 has been a memorable year for all, a great time to reflect on the year and plan for the following. Nottingham Peace Project CIC (NPP) has come to the end of its first annual year and after only 6 months being active there have been a many positive peace projects. A journey to remember accompanied with lessons learnt, many achievements accomplished, man souls inspired, new networks, partnershipsand positive outcomes.

The same as everything, Nottingham Peace Project was just an idea, an idea of teaching life coaching to all children and teenagers. The passion behind the idea was through my own life experiences which lead me to life coaching as a personal development tool and help me turn my life around and take control of my thoughts, emotions and life. The journey has been one of deep character building synchronized with deep foundations for NPP being established.

The idea progressed in a campaign for positivity, mindfulness and life coaching. Being the first time setting up a community interest company one instantly finds themselves in a web of requirements, procedures, policies, social and political networks which all seem very disconnected and confusing. The journey proves to unravel the confusion and connect the dots. With great determination, passion and positive action the campaign for positivity soon became a reality and Nottingham Peace Project was on the ground bringing the mission statement to reality.

From the long summer months to the short winter weeks, there has been a constant stream of positive engagement. Many thanks to all who have assisted and promoted this stream of opportunity, the months have been packed with productive, positive, creative projects for Nottingham City communities. The substantial qualitative impact on the great amount of children and teenagers involved is unmeasurable. This report will reflect on the achievements and highlights, provide figures and quantitative reporting, case studies, future plans and development.

I would like to thank our primary funders Nottingham City Council, Nottinghamshire Community Foundation and Near Neighbours for this support has been vital to our successes.

Community Impact

The monitoring from all of pre arranged workshops and youth clubs calculate the following totals.

1347 Participants (under 18s). 68 sessions. Average 20 per session.

Highlights

Summary of Projects

New Basford Community Keyboards

The idea of creating a community band begun and after receiving a generous donations of keyboards from Local business man Sean at Rogers Music Shop Nottingham http://www.rogers-music.com/. The Positivity campaign started with a voluntary project in New Basford when connecting with The Pythian Club, this partnership was vital and many thanks to Benjamin Rossa for this initial ground work and assistance getting connected with networks. The partnership with The Pythian Club provided a great introductory and platform for the positivity campaign. This project was successful, working with The Pythian Club we managed to introduce keyboards and positivity to over 10 new young participants in the community centre, this core group made the first group of many to be introduced to playing the keyboards and positivity ethos workshops. A great partnership indeed and the legacy of Positivity we embarked on in this centre has now been embodied by The Pythian Club who continue to do their outstanding work with an added ethos of positivity and mindfulness.

NCS Summer Workshops

Not long after being registered we had the opportunity to try out our positivity workshops on the NCS project, Nottingham County Football in the Community provided us with groups of 30 teenagers a time to deliver hour workshops, these workshops were back to back 3 in a row, and lasted for 5 weeks. This provided great experience and valuable positive feedback. The young people and their leaders provided excellent feedback on engagement, information provided, delivery and learning experience.

These young people who when entering the class were a lot of the time non compliant and non friendly with each other all left understanding the importance of positive mental health. Many sessions had people who were dominant, shy, uninterested, suffered with behaviour issues and mental health issues. We managed to engage them all thoroughly and overcome the barriers set different abilities, beliefs and values.

Nottingham Forest in the Community provided a slot which for an hour we worked with over 30 teenagers providing a holistic well-being program. In this workshop we delivered paired yoga, laughing yoga, positivity talks, and karaoke to boost confidence, and keyboard stations. These workshops lasted 5 weeks and feedback was excellent.

Family Fun Day’s – Keyboard Station Legacy

Transforming family fun days and bringing instruments to green spaces is another legacy established in summer 2017. These numbers are not recorded in the main figures as these numbers surpass the hundreds and at the time could not be monitored. Many people could not believe their eyes when arriving at family fun days in Nottingham and having keyboard station for children to learn to play the keyboard.

Stockhill Family Fun Day

The first keyboard station provided at Stockhill instantly proved to be a great success, for the entire duration the keyboards were full of children playing songs they know, some learning songs and some younger ones just having a bash with sound effects. At this point it was evident that Keyboard stations on Family Fun Day’s was a great positive way of teaching songs to hundreds of children at a time.

Vernon Park Family Fun Day

Here we provided a keyboard station which again was full the duration of the event. Hundreds of teenagers and children learning to play the keyboard. We provided stage performances which included poetry and singing from young children in the New Basford Community band project. The stage show included a talk about mindfulness and performances from a disabled artist and local reggae artist. The stage show proved to be fun, entertaining, diverse and great opportunity for people from the local community to be involved on the Family Fun Day.

All across Nottingham keyboards and drums have been showing up on green spaces bring parks to life. Further events included;

Forest Park Family Fun Day Basford Disability Direct Family Fun Day Djanogoly – This Girl Can Matlock Altitude Festival Nottingham City Homes – Bulwell Family Fun Day Nottingham City Homes – Love Lenton Family Fun Day

Youth Offending Team – Life skills and Music

Working with Nottingham Youth Offending Team we provided a pilot program for 8 teenagers as apart of their statutory requirement. The workshops were in two sections, 45 minutes life skills and 45 minutes music. The participants learnt a range of self-help tools and self- assessment skills to help break negative rumination and improve mental health and well-being. They learnt about positive thinking and worked through a workbook of cognitive behaviour therapy type activities. The participants between ages 12-16 also wrote poems about bullying and made an instrumental song. This pilot received great feedback and further programs have been agreed for 2018.

Community Band – Keyboard Kids

Bells Lane Community Centre

Establishing a network here over the summer providing 4 pilot sessions of keyboard and poetry was successful and the young people involved are still developing their music and life skills. A group of young children in some of the most deprived communities of Nottingham which is high in mental health issues, lack of activity and positive opportunity. The keyboard and poetry workshops opened the young teenagers to creativity and music which they all enthused about. Since then this core group of teenagers are still involved in our projects.

Heathfield and New Basford

Successfully establish a core group of under 16’s that learnt hope to play the keyboard. These children and teenagers come from disadvantaged backgrounds and majority had never before had the chance to learn to play a keyboard. Bythe end of the project the core group and others that came along learnt how to play a number of keyboard songs including ‘Mary had a little lamb’ ‘Old McDonald’ ‘Fur Elise’ ‘London Bridge’ and learnt how to operate a keyboard and show creative interest in the keyboard. The children and teenagers enjoyed and enthused at the opportunity to play an instrument, many now still show this creative enthusiasm independently.

Successfully establish a core group of under 16s that learn to write lyrics and poems. This included writing poems about how we feel, anti-bullying and positive poems. 2 girls who were both about to start at secondary school came together and started learning writing poetry and continue through to writing poetry on their school laptops and continuing to show positive interest in music and keyboards.

The project successfully engaged a variety of children from the community from different ethnicity and faiths that didnot engage in the community centre previously. This includes EU national children 1 who had a speech barrier, White British and Black and Minority Ethnic Origin. The project brought together a different children who would not normalsocialise together including different ages under 16, social circles and geographic areas around New Basford. The project was a good transition from many involved as many learnt new friends who then started a new school together and had a strong social circle going into the new year.

Stockhill

Throughout October we provided a series of 3 workshops during half term. Each day a core of families in the area consisting of over 25 children who enjoyed learning to play the keyboard and have put names down for more activities at the centre.

The children were from disadvantaged backgrounds and majority had never before had the chance to learn to play a keyboard or drums. By the end of the core group and others that came along learnt how to play a number of keyboard songs including ‘Mary had a little lamb’ ‘Old McDonald’ ‘London Bridge’ and learnt how to operate a keyboard and show creative interest in the keyboard. The project successfully engaged a variety of children from the community from different ethnicity and faiths. The project brought together groups of different children who would not normally socialise together including different ages under 16, social circles and geographic areas around New Basford. Successfully introduce over 10 children in playing Basketball and teach Basket ball skills. The children and teenagers are all keen to learn more.

Music in the Park

The legacy of Keyboards in the park continued when we networked with Nottingham Park Lives to put on ‘Music in the Park’ which had great success and provided opportunity to families and children to learn keyboards and drumming. Keyboarding and drumming are mindful activities and are great for mental health. These therapeutic activities have brought the parks to life. Each week people stayed on the park for longer as there is much more for them to do and the musical atmosphere brought so many different people together. We have had European children playing the keyboard next to Muslim children and African families.

Successfully teach a number of children and families how to play the keyboard and drums. A mixture of children fromdisadvantaged backgrounds and majority had never before had the chance to learn to play a keyboard or drums. By the end of the core group and others that came along learnt how to play a number of keyboard songs including ‘Mary had a little lamb’ ‘Old McDonald’ ‘London Bridge’ and learnt how to operate a keyboard and show creative interest in the keyboard.

The project successfully engaged a variety of children from the community from different ethnicity and faiths. The project brought together a different children who would not normal socialise together including different ages under 16, social circles and the local areas throughout Basford.

The Peaceful, Positive creativity of this project impacted on over 200 participants and was enjoyed by all.

NCS – Half Term

Working with Nottingham Forest in the Community we delivered an hour and half workshop to 45 teenagers which involved a carousel of workstations. Keyboard and drum station, positivity station, poetry station and paired yoga workstation. This workshop provided a great platform to try out recent training in sociometry and action methods in facilitation. The workshop was positive, fun, musical and creative and the young people at the end performed their poem or drum song, this had great impact on some individuals in the group who got the chance to stand out and excel in their creative side which know body knew about.

Music Production and Basketball

Thanks to Nottinghamshire Community Foundation we were able to develop from keyboard and poetry and start providing portable music production and recording. We started a weekly music production workshop on Thursdays and Fridays in Aspley. With a small grant received from Sports Nottingham we provided basketball sessions alongside the music production. This was very successful each week songs were being made by ages 11-16 who had never made music except the previous keyboard workshops we provided in the summer. The teenagers creative abilities where opened and every week new teenagers were making instrumental songs which they never thought they wouldbe able to do, or get the opportunity to do. A collection of songs were produced and a community mix CD was made.The basketball sessions got over 20 teenagers out being active through the autumn – winter period when most likely to be inactive. The teenagers enjoyed learning basketball skills and all worked together to develop, compete, train and learn.

The music production project continues into 2018. Songs produced by the teenagers involved can be found at; https://soundcloud.com/nottinghampeacepoject-npp

Helping Kids Achieve Community Interest Company

Nottingham Peace Project is about communities working together to provide positive social opportunity and experience, on this ethos we networked with Keiren Thompson the founder of Helping Kids Achieve to assist elevate his ideas, aspirations and plans of working with teenagers in the community. Noticing the keen positive social values they promote we wanted to help them develop and get a chance to make a difference in Nottingham communities. Helping Kids Achieve came on board and did an excellent job with the sports workshops we provided, many thanks for the support. They engaged with the teenagers well, consistently and professionally. May they continue to do great work in the community.

Wollaton Presents – Pythian Club, Raw Talent, Nottingham Peace Project

Sponsored by Castle Cavendish we have been putting on music production workshops alongside Pythian Club who have been providing boxercise workshops. This project has been successful and we have established a core group of 5 young teenagers who return every week to make music and express themselves through lyrics, the tracks can be found online at; https://soundcloud.com/nottinghampeacepoject-npp.

In the new year we will be delivering quasi knife crime awareness and life coaching workshops as apart of the music production sessions we deliver.

2018 Poetry Calender

The legacy of Poetry Calenders written by children and adults to support community workshops was great success.

Many thanks to all that purchased a 2018 Poetry Calender. This project was a creative idea we had mid November and at last minute decision managed to get enough poems provided by children from workshops and adults in the community to create a positive conscious 2018 poetry calendar. The aim was to raise money to put on more workshops in 2018. Special thanks to Angela Martin who provided the front picture for the calendar. The benefit of these calenders is that the poetry is very positive inspiring and conscious and they get people thinking on a deeper conscious level, the calenders suitable for adults and children were the perfect way to end 2018 with a touch of positive Nottingham Peace Project creativity to showcase our capabilities to make attractive products which assist to creating sustainability for workshops whilst promoting positivity across Nottingham. We printed 150 calendars and aimed to make enough profit to put on 3 months of workshops. Within 4 weeks we sold nearly 100 calendars and made enough money to put on over 10 hours of community workshops. We donated calendars along with some sports equipment to teenagers at the youth club as gifts to help them finish the year on a positive note and inspire them to continue with the positive work they have been doing with Nottingham Peace Project. The children who submitted poems were very proud and felt accomplished to have their poems printed in our calender.

The calendars were support by local businesses who agreed to stock them to sell including; Room Full of Butterflies, Five Leaves Book shop, Tiger Boe, University of Nottingham Roots Art Exhibition and were sold across a number of family fun day’s, stalls and events. Thank you to all who supported.

Poem on September 2018 Month

Case Study

Between August and October at one of the Community Band Projects 2 girls aged 11 attended weekly. The girls where not previously involved in the centre as their parents did not have relationship with the centre. Our engagement built up the relationship and both of the girls started bringing their brother and sister to other activities in the centre adding another 5 users in total. These 2 girls when started had never played the keyboard or drums, didnot enjoy writing or academic activities, and had never seen electronic DJ equipment and were not positive minded. The girls both from poverty and 1 suffered with learning difficulties and behaviour disorder.

Girl 1 will be named as Kate, Girl 2 will be named as Lorna.

Kate and Lorna joined the project at the start and were both sceptical about being able to play the keyboard. Kate was the leader between the 2, Kate struggled to play the keyboard and her attention and focus to the task was short lived so would decide to wonder away. Lorna enthused and picked it up very quickly but was often distracted by Kate.After the 2nd week they both started bringing their younger siblings, Kate by the 3rd week was focussing much better and starting to take responsibility for her siblings learning and engagement. Lorna by the 3rd week had always taken on the responsibility for teaching her siblings and was also excelling, Lorna had started being more confident and staying focussed instead of allowing distractions to take her away so often. At this stage Kate could play Mary Had a Little Lamb and a grime melody which was the main melody that kept her focussed and challenged. Lorna at this point could play Mary Had a Little Lamb, Londons Bridge, Silent night and was trying multiple different melodies at a time.

The project was a great transition for them during the school holidays. Both of them had started at a new school and were now very close to each other and hand strong relationship to enter into school. The girls continued coming after school without their younger siblings, they had learnt to play a variety of keyboard songs each and were now keen to explore other creative abilities.

Poetry writing to Kate and Lorna was a struggle at first as they both struggled to think of ideas or make rhymes. The first week of poetry writing they wrote about life in Basford for them reflecting on their life and experiences. The second week Kate’s older brother and his girl friend came along with their group of teenagers who previously did not engage in the community centre for the same reasons. Kate’s older brother a known gang member in the area started learning to play the keyboard, he became fixed with the challenge and soon turned around his initial negativeopinion of playing the keyboard around, with encouragement he engaged through the session and learnt how to playhis favourite grime song with help from session leader and his younger sibling Kate. Kate’s brother girlfriend attendedand for the duration wrote poems with the younger children. This girl who was 16 wrote very emotional poetry expressing her experience of previous life in care, violent relationships and drugs, she had never wrote before and said she found it very therapeutic.

Kate and Lorna continued returning every week. After a few weeks of poetry their focussed had been aligned to writeabout positive experienced. Kate at this point had to move away from home and wrote a positive poem for her Mum and Lorna grandparent had injured herself and Lorna was writing poems to make her feel good. They both were now able to express ideas independently and think of rhymes more confidently. Kate and Lorna both then decided to start to learn to play the drums and learn DJ skills for a session.

Kate and Lorna by the end of the project had gone from never playing keyboard or writing poems to being able to play a variety of keyboard songs, improve creative writing ability, writing standard and spelling, improved focus and attention span, improved positive mind-state as each week they were coaching on positivity and overthinking self-help. They were both enthusiastic about writing and had started bringing their school laptops which they were writing their poems on and learning at home. Kate and Lorna like many others involved have been awakened to their full creative potential and ability.

Nottingham Impact

Our Positivity campaign has been far reaching, individual and family level, community and social level and organisational level.

Individual and Family Level

The 1347 participants directly impacted have improved positivity, creativity, music or life skills which empowers themto achieve more and rise aspirations. This has an impact on not only them but also their family and friends, the skills they learn are transferable and may have been discussed with their family and friends. The workshops provide a forma therapy which allows them time to express and vent. The workshops improve their creativity and skill set which they naturally will use through their life. The workshops have provided safe spaces during evenings which promotes positive community social inclusion and diverts away from offending and anti-social behaviour.

Community and Social Level

The family fun days and music in the park keyboard stations in green spaces have brought communities together improving community cohesion and inclusion in the area. Families have been travelling to different areas and parks to take part and positive creative engagement provided for all. The rise of awareness of life coaching to improve mental health and well-being, increased amount of children teenagers and parents in deprived areas of Nottingham aware of concepts including positive thinking, rumination, self-help and are starting to become more self-aware and conscious.

We now have over 250 Facebook followers from a diverse range of families, teenagers and adults who are inspired byour social values community engagement, poetry and creativity and general fun positive inspiring Facebook page. Since joining Facebook in June I have noticed the influence Nottingham Peace Project had on many users. Gradual positive change in peoples aspirations on Facebook since our Facebook page went live.

Organisational Level

Our Positivity campaign has had a positive influence on many local community organisations and private organisations. The work in New Basford has a lasting legacy, the organisations in that community now use positivity and mindfulness as an ethos and a company value, this shows that the influence and leadership promoted in the community can have a lasting impact on local organisation values and culture.

There has been an increased usage of mindfulness and positivity being used in Nottingham schools this year, with more and more life coaching, mindfulness and social and emotional learning workshops being attended. Nottingham Peace project have assisted and inspired other social entrepreneurs reach their goals by helping them get registered, and start working in the community. Empowering others to reach their goals and make positive social change through creating their own organisation is helping build people, communities and organisation.

The rise of WHIS in Nottingham and the network growing with many branches of well-being organisations shows thatNottingham is fast becoming a place Positivity, Energy, Awareness Confidence and Empowerment which are at the heart of Nottingham Peace Project company values.

2018 Confirmed Projects

Nottingham Peace Project is about Positivity, Energy, Awareness, Confidence and Empowering all, this year we have aproject starting that is aimed specifically at women and women refugees.

Women only boxerciseBobbersmill, the Vine. Thursday 6.30pm – 7.30pm

Networking with Box Smart, Zahra Butt will running a program from January – April aimed at women only. The boxercise workshop will work on fitness, mental health and well-being and diet and eating good. The project aims to empower and bring together women from a different faiths and ethnicity. To assist with child support we will be providing keyboard and poetry workshops for children of the women who attend.

Mental health workshops for women refugeesJanuary – April 2017

This workshop is being delivered in women housing associations that house women refugees. This project aims to improve emotional resilience and intelligence and improve awareness of mental health issues and how to improve mental health.

Music Workshops – Aspley, Wollaton

Our music production workshops in Aspley and Wollaton will continue as normal. This year we will be delivering some additional workshops in these locations including knife crime awareness, life coaching and overthinking, life coaching and positive thinking.

Wednesday 5 – 7pm, Wollaton Vale Community CentreFriday 7 – 9pm, Bells Lane Community Centre

Expression through Art – Basford

Basford Ward Councillors have agreed to provide small grant to enable us to deliver an Art project to 10 individuals teaching how to express themselves through art. The participants will be involved in creating a piece of Art work for the community centre and a piece of Art work for themselves.

Dates yet to be confirmed.

Youth Offending Team

The pilot project we delivered in summer 2017 received great feedback which has led to a course of projects over 2018. The first project Life Skills, Art, Knife Crime puts music and poetry at the core of each topic that will be covered.Topics include the law and reality of knife crime, rumination, positive thinking and self help. This creative project is aimed at teaching these valuable life skills alongside music and knife awareness so to be a fun, creative learning experience for participants.

Learning with music and poetry workshops

We now have a solid range of creative life skill workshops that mix poetry and music with the valuable life coaching skills that are at the core of Nottingham Peace Project values. These workshops are ready to deliver in Alternative Provisions, Schools, Community Centres and include the following areas. (More are being created and bespoke workshops can be produced, workshops include self-help tool kit.)

Rumination.Positive thinking. Bullying.Knife Crime. Anger management.Music Production.

Future Plans

We are always working towards the initial vision of a Nottingham Peace Project Hub, our business model around this is nearly complete and would invite anybody who wants to be apart to make contact.

Since the success of our 2018 calenders we are creating ideas for a product range of items to support our communityprojects, designed and produced by the community, adults, children, teenagers families.

Currently we are training and providing work experience to a number of University students, going forward we aim toextend this ability to many more university and collage students.

Register Interest of involvement

We are keen to expand our management committee and general team. Feel free to contact us to get involved we need local people who share our vision and social values of positivity, opportunity and peace. Contact details at end of report.

Sponsor support or donate

If you would like to support your community please contact us to find out how much a 10 week program in your area would cost.

We are a not-for-profit organisation and at this stage heavily depend on public and private funding. We appreciate any for of support or donations be it financial, product, discount or services. Financial donations can be made through the following crowd funding page other methods are available is required. All donations come with the opportunity of having logo on flyers, work wear, resources or staying anonymous.

Crowd Funding

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/nottingham-peace-project

Summary

We hope you have enjoyed reflecting on our 2017 Positivity campaign. It has been a great positive journey and many great partnerships, friends and experiences on the way, we have enjoyed inspiring communities and promoting positive mental health and opportunity. The 1347 Participants (under 18s) that attended our workshops have all been talented children with lack of opportunity who have benefited greatly from the range of positive new skills, experiences and life coaching we have provided.

If you would like to hire our services, work in partnership or support us in any way please contact us on the email provided. Nottingham Peace Project is a company for the community, from the community and welcome all in getting involved.

To be added to our email list about events, workshops or opportunities please send email registering interest.

We look forward to a positive 2018 working in Nottingham communities thrive and aspire.

Wishing you the very best

Nottingham Peace Project CIC nottinghampeaceproject@gmail.com https://www.nottinghampeaceproject.co.uk https://www.facebook.com/NGPeaceproject