VIBE Aims

To utilize the creative arts as an effective tool for young people:

•             to improve coping mechanisms, self-regulation, self-understanding, and self-compassion, in times of stress

•             to promote healthy brain development and sense of well-being

•             to help young people to communicate their experiences, to grow, to heal and build resilience

 

Background and activities

VIBE is a charity that was formed in 2015 to provide a communal safe space for young people [members] to engage in the creative arts to help build resilience to the challenges they face and may face in the future. To have more opportunities for both being creative and experiencing high-quality culture. Allowing members to reflect and comment on society, to better understand their own lives and those of others, and to occupy a shared space in which they can debate, present alternative views, and discover new ways of expressing their anxieties and ambitions.

Although VIBE members include young people aged 11-24 who may have experienced traumatic episodes in their lives, young people who have or are at risk of developing mental health issues, young people such as: asylum seekers/refugees, looked-after, self-harming, self-medicating, autistic, with gender identity issues, bullied and abused, VIBE’s aim is to identify and enable the development, of individual assets rather than focusing on needs and problems. To value the creative potential in each member, provide them with more opportunities to enjoy culture, and celebrate greatness of every kind.

We believe that developing resilience through navigating, overcoming, and recovering from adversity as a key ingredient for happiness, success, and satisfaction in life.

The VIBE core team includes mentors with different creative skill sets who can support such as music, visual art, creative writing, and film making. Members also are encouraged and supported to work alongside expert creatives and technicians to develop their creativity in whatever areas they choose, across the whole spectrum of creativity.

VIBE has facilities and facilitators to encourage and enable members to share what they create in their own way, when and with whom they choose.

Members are given a voice and the wider community are encouraged to listen through local print media, social media, website, exhibition, and public performance.

Members are given the opportunity to develop skills and gain qualifications including Arts Awards, to access further and higher education and are encouraged and supported to seek employment and training including across the whole spectrum of the creative industries as creatives and technicians.

Members are drawn from the whole spectrum of Rochdale’s diverse community, and many come to us through our social media presence and at the recommendation of our members themselves.

We also work closely with our referring organisations including for example, Early Break, #Thrive, MIND, CAMHS, Healthy Young Minds local schools & colleges.

Members are given the opportunity to work alongside professional creatives and technicians to develop their resilience through creativity in area such as:

 

•             visual arts - animation, photography, drawing and painting,

•             music - song-writing, playing a musical instrument, rapping,

•             technical – guitar building, audio and video recording, computer maintenance and production,

•             writing - composing previews, reviews and interviews for broadcast, print and social media, creative-writing and poetry,

•             performance – recorded and live,

Members are given access to projects run by organisations such as Brighter Sounds, Rochdale Music Service, Touchstones Museum and Art Gallery, Rochdale Pioneers Museum, Oldham Coliseum, Bolton Octagon, HOME, Manchester, and Bolton Universities.

Volunteers are drawn from across the community and members are encouraged, when they are ready, to become volunteers in addition to continuing to build their resilience through creativity.