This funding came from GMCA's Live Well Community Fund. Live Well is a community-led, system-enabled health and wellbeing movement in Greater Manchester. The priorities of this grant have been co-designed by Rochdale's Anti-Poverty Foundation Group, through root cause analysis, research, and consultation with the cross-sector Anti-Poverty Network.
The Foundation Group set 'Helping children and young people to thrive and reach their potential' as one of their five key priorities for the borough. The funding priorities are areas that the group identified as needing investment. The fund aims to support young people and young adults with life skills development, setting them up for the future.
The funded projects fell within one or more of the following priorities:
- Activities that build essential life skills, such as budgeting, cooking, and : financial literacy.
- Activities that provide young people with educational skills, such as critical thinking skills and creativity.
- Activities providing mental and emotional literacy for young people.
Projects funded via the Live Well Community Fund:
| Member Organisation | Amount Awarded | Investment Projects |
| The Outdoor Collaborative | £4,000 | This project aims to provide young people aged 14-20 in Rochdale with educational skills that have both long-term positive impact and practical value, particularly in the areas of critical thinking and creativity. Delivered by The Outdoor Collaborative (TOC), the programme combines exploration of local green spaces with creative arts practice (such as photography, writing, and collaborative design) to stimulate curiosity, problem-solving, and confidence, while also equipping participants with practical skills in photography, design, and artistic creation. The project further seeks to enhance aesthetic awareness and a deeper connection to nature. |
| Building Bridges | £4,500 | Our idea is the Life skills Roadshow, a programme designed to equip teenage girls with essential life skills that are often missing from traditional school education. We will work with groups of 10–15 girls in three schools over a five-week period, delivering sessions that cover practical and personal development topics. |
| Watering Your Soul | £4,950 | Our idea for this project is to support young, female care leavers to develop the emotional resilience required to transition into adulthood where they can thrive and achieve their potential. This project will support young women to achieve the following: Improved essential life skills: including self-care and healthy eating on a budget. Improved educational skills: including critical thinking skills and creativity to own and reframe their stories. Improved mental and emotional literacy: through developing positive coping strategies and through challenging the stigma associated with care. |
| Al-Abbas Institute | £4,283.18 | Our idea is to deliver 6 interactive and differentiated essential life skills workshops over 6 months. We will deliver one 3-hour workshop per month beginning in November 2025 and finishing in April 2026. Additional to and underpinning each of the 6 workshops will be an outdoor activity each month for 6 months. So, in total we will deliver 12 activities over 6 months, 2 activities per month – 1 workshop and 1 outdoor activity per month for 6 months. |
| Intergenerational Music Making | £5,000 | This project will bring 30 young people in Rochdale together with 30 older adults and a further 10 volunteers through a series of creative, music-based intergenerational workshops designed to build confidence, emotional literacy, communication skills, and a stronger sense of community belonging and active citizenship. The programme will run in two cycles of eight weeks, reaching different cohorts of young people across the borough. Each weekly session will last 1.5 hours and will blend skills development with intergenerational exchange |
| North West Community Connection | £1,100 | Our project, Young Entrepreneurs: The Saving Pot Project, will help young people aged 14–25 in Rochdale build practical life skills, confidence, and better money habits. We noticed that many young people want to learn how to manage money but find it boring or confusing when taught in a traditional way. This project makes it simple and fun. Through a series of creative workshops, participants will design and make their own “Saving Pots” while learning about budgeting, saving, and spending wisely. During the sessions, we will talk about how to plan for goals, understand needs versus wants, and make better financial choices. |
| Connections Trust | £2,389.57 | Supporting those aged 17-25 having identified the need among our service users, especially for those about to “age out” at 18 with much support ending at this point. This can be a huge void in their lives after often many years of support, and we’ve seen the need for a transition phase for those at that point. The idea of this course is to teach life skills, such as financial capability, careers advice, cooking skills, mental health/healthy relationships etc. These are all skills that may not have been passed down from parents/guardians due to their circumstances. Providing 6 weeks working over these areas also offers a buffer phase to prepare for leaving youth services and complements youth services already provided. |
| M6 Theatre | £4,680 | Act to Shine is M6 Theatre’s designated Youth Theatre group for young people with SEND or a disability, ran in partnership with Barnardo’s. The group meets weekly to take part in drama and creative activities, which culminates in an annual performance of a new piece of theatre, created entirely from their ideas, and performed to friends, family and a community audience. Participants work with two skilled M6 theatre makers, two creative access support workers who provide additional support for participants that need it, Barnardo’s staff, who provide access and pastoral support, and M6’s technical theatre team, who ensure the quality of the final production. |
| Culture Co-op | £5,000 | In collaboration with the recently formed Youth Engagement Partnership in Langley, and as part of wider Art House Midd programming, Middleton Co-operating and Culture Co-op will run a series of introductory Street Art workshops with local artists Liz Chandler and Evan Barlow. These workshops will be delivered in an outdoor setting around Bowlee Pavilion, in Langley. The cohort of young people develop their street art skills before making a decision with the Artist Leads whether they would like to produce a Mural (single large-scale outdoor artwork) or an Outdoor Gallery (series of small pieces) somewhere in Middleton. The workshops will offer opportunities for young people to develop skills in creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and self-expression. |
| Canopy & Campfires | £4,974 | Blending outdoor learning, forest skills and bushcraft, with mentoring, reflective conversational work, counselling, and creative expression we aim to help young people develop the confidence and wellbeing they need to thrive in their local communities. |
| Skylight Circus | £3,586 | The Spark Within empowers young people aged 14–25 to build confidence, resilience, and wellbeing through the creative art of fire spinning. Fire spinning is a type of performance art that involves manipulating objects that are on fire, creating mesmerizing patterns of light and movement. It’s often performed at night for maximum visual impact (though can be just as fun in the day light too) and combines elements of circus and rhythmic movement. The Spark Within will offer each group of young people two guided workshop sessions where participants learn practical flow skills in a safe and supportive environment often inside first, how to safely work with fire before going outside to explore first spinning and movement as a group. Fire spinning as creative movement can be a tool for focus, stress management, and personal growth |
| Bowlee Community Organisation | £4,875 | In collaboration with the recently formed Youth Engagement Partnership in Langley, and Bowlee Community Organisation, we aim to provide cooking courses for disengaged, home-schooled and hard-to-reach young people who are not engaged in any form of activity within the community. |