You may already be engaged in community activities and know what is already taking place in your neighbourhood. However, you may be new to this and want a starting point for your journey.

Speak to community activists/groups/stakeholders:

It is important to build connections with local people. A good starting point is accessing your local community hub. A venue where people regularly meet or where activities take place often have amazing insight into what is taking place locally. These could be community centres, places of worship, medical centres, police stations, local authority offices/town halls.

Work with/support others:

There may already be networks that exist that you can link in with. You can either ask for information to be shared or ask to join in the network to help develop ideas and a local community approach.

There may also be likeminded people in your community that can provide support – taking things forward with others can improve enthusiasm and commitment. It will also develop a shared purpose and a common goal fo everyone to work towards.

Agreeing who will do what is very important – people want to know what they can and how they can do it. People also want to use their personal skills and experience to help and want to feel their contributions are helping. Always make it fun though – you do not want to feel like this is too much like hard work and people want to feel valued.

it is also important to see how paid officers can help. If activities already exist to support individuals through social prescription type activities, then paid officers should want to do as much as they can to promote this and engage with local communities further.

Remember your quest is to find out about cultural activities that improve well-being through local engagement and enable more people to access this – this doesn’t mean that you must do everything!