Totnes Wellbeing Fund Awardees

We’re proud to have supported the following projects with the Totnes Wellbeing Fund:

Pilot phase (2013-2014):

1. Dangerous Dads: Dangerous Dads groups run regular, fun activities for fathers and male carers with children of all ages, both daughters and sons. Click here to watch a video about the project.
2. Follaton Forest Garden: The Forest Garden aims to provide a living example of forest gardening, using the multiple layers of the Forest Garden to provide food, fuel, fibre and a place for fun, relaxation and learning, all freely available to the public, enhancing biodiversity and encouraging informal and formal learning. Click here to watch a video about the project.
3. Gardening for Health: The Gardening for Health project runs gardening sessions with the specific objective of improving the Health and Wellbeing of participants. The sessions can deliver physical, mental or social improvements. Click here to watch a video about the project.
4. Totnes Squash Co-operative: The Squash Co-op grows food co-operatively and communally, focousing on growing squashes and pumpkins as they provide a good winter survival food, and are easy to grow with very low maintenance and watering, while giving people the opportunity to meet, socialise and experience the joy of eating vegetables that they have grown themselves. Click here to watch a video about the project.
5. Dartington ReStore: The ReSTORE project combines the skills of volunteers and local upcycling artists to Rediscover, Recreate & Rejuvenate items of donated furniture and furnishings from its shop and workshop in Dartington. Click here to watch a video about the project.
6. Castle Meadow Bee Group: This project aims to keep bees in Castle Meadow; to educate the public of the importance of bees by mentoring and by running workshops and demonstrations for the general public; and to help the dwindling bee population in the UK and to pollinate nearby allotments, farms and gardens. Click here to watch a video about the project.
7. Proud 2 Be: It’s a social enterprise that supports LGBTQIA+ people and their families, in South Devon and beyond.
8. The Land Conference: A one-day conference to explore ‘How can we grow a proper relationship between people and place?’. Click here to watch a video about the event.

Summer 2015:

1. Wild & Curious: It encourages re-connection with the beauty of our natural world through working mindfully and sustainably with wild food.
2. Foxhole Community Garden: It aims to provide a safe space for vulnerable groups to enjoy gardening, and to create a thriving community garden offering space for local families and residents to learn about growing and cooking organic produce, and to enjoy being outside together. Click here to watch a video about the project.
3. Magic Dye House: Following the importance of the reconnection with Nature for both human and planet health, Magic Dye House was created to bring art, nature and her colours into hospitals and other places devoted to children and their health. Click here to watch a video about the project.

Winter 2016:

1. Zest Physiotherapy for Life: Zest Physiotherapy for Life specialises in physiotherapy for older people and the grant funding enabled them to hire venues, source equipment and promote the MOTs. Click here to watch a video about the project.
2. The Living Projects: Creating community space to facilitate young people’s initiative to create a viable and sustainable future for themselves and their communities. Click here to watch a video about the project.
3. Growing Good Lives: Growing Good Lives offers training, coaching and consultancy to help individuals discover what role their particular skills and gifts can play in creatively transforming their communities and workplaces so that all can live well. With the grant funding, Growing Good Lives held a one day Street Play Festival in Totnes Civic Square, in celebration of outdoor games traditions from around the world

Summer 2016:

1. Aller Park:  This project provides a centre of education, a resource for the local and wider community and a contribution towards planetary healing and reconciliation.
2. River Dart Wild Church: Wild Church, run by Rev Sam Wernham, is a monthly community event encouraging mindfulness, wellbeing and a deeper connection with the environment.
3. Open-no-mic night (Fireside): A series of events that provide a safe and welcoming space for people to share their music.

Winter 2017:

1. Different Strokes: 150,000 people suffer from a stroke annually in the UK. One quarter of these are aged 18-65. Loss of employment, reduced income and family stress are common. A national organisation, “Different Strokes” based in Milton Keynes provides advice and insurance cover, but not finance, to forty branches in England. Since there is no branch west of Bristol, a group of six people, including a nurse who has had a stroke, have set up a branch in Totnes.
2. Totnes Food Shed: Totnes Food Shed is a non-profit cooperative aiming to supply affordable good quality food to people living in and around Totnes.

Summer 2018:

1. Bodykind Festival: It’s a grassroots, non-profit, whole-community event, genuinely inclusive, encouraging everyone to look at ways of feeling more comfortable in their own skin.
2. Nourishing Families: The project offers programmes and workshops for families to engage more with healthy, sustainable and local food. Critically it also focuses on all the other aspects of what makes for a nourishing family meal: the rituals and daily practices around preparing and eating together

Winter 2018:

1. Creative Journeys: Creative Journeys aims to provide a safe, supported space for adults who are isolated and/or suffering from low mental and emotional health to experience deep connection with nature, as well as inspire creativity.
2. Honouring the Day: Honouring the Day is inspired by the non-violent communications movement, and aims to provide a space for people to share both sadness and celebration about what has happened to them that day. These monthly events will offer a touching practice of harvesting and honouring the day, which intend to bring people together and facilitate connections that can strengthen the community.
3. Youth Social Events: Youth Social Events is an initiative and working group that emerged through parents concerned about lack of social venues for young people to socialise, the lack of inclusion in the local area and the increasing social drug use amongst young people in Totnes. This initiative aims to provide a regular event and/or venue that identifies with youth culture and provides for a social space to hang out, to play music, to dance; to provide a platform for young DJs to play to live audiences; to offer young people an opportunity to create artwork to decorate the venue; to include young people where possible in the development of the venue and events and the creation of publicity via posters and social media; to make information about drug and alcohol use as well as youth support services available at all events.