London news

Regional Voices, which works to champion the role of voluntary and community organisations to improve health, wellbeing and care across England, has produced a Who’s Who guide to the key people working in health, wellbeing and care in each region.  The guides include relevant people from clinical commissioning groups, health and wellbeing boards, Care Quality Commission, NHS England area teams, commissioning support units and local Healthwatch. 

London Councils has compiled a database of resources to demonstrate the impact that culture and leisure services can have on economic and social objectives across a range of council services. The database includes toolkits, research and statistics from a range of sources linked to particular focus areas including health, crime, the environment and young people.

w: http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/policylobbying/culturetourismand2012/culturalservices/database.htm

The first meeting of the new London Health Board took place on Monday 20 May at City Hall.

The London Health Board is a partnership between local government, the NHS and the Mayor of London. Chaired by the Mayor, the Board comprises 15 members including leaders appointed from London Councils, four mayoral appointments and five health service leaders. 

The deadline for events to be included in this summer’s London Creativity and Wellbeing Week is Friday 17 May 2013.

The ‘Growing Together gardening group’ was the winner in the ‘Nature-themed arts and crafts’ category of the awards, which offer funding for London-based projects that improve local communities and, in particular, the lives of vulnerable people.

The gardening project was run at Cecil Court care home in Kew. During the project, a group of residents worked together on a number of different gardening activities, including making Christmas wreaths and decorations, flower arranging, garden related story telling and poems, and making homes for insects and birds.

A number of large scale installations by cartoonist and artist Steven Appleby have been unveiled at the new Royal Brompton Centre for Sleep. The installations include a 3.5m-high glass screen in the building’s main reception, wall-drawings, a 30-piece corridor series, and new work for the bedrooms and clinic rooms. The images refer to the medicine, myths and mysteries of sleep, and reflect both the day and night time activities of the centre.

Westminster City Council has confirmed that it will cut all arts funding in the London borough by 2014/15.

It has been reported that Soho Theatre’s young people’s programmes, English National Ballet’s older people’s schemes and community and youth arts services from Paddington Arts, Dream Arts, Westminster Mind and Streetwise Opera will all be affected, along with around ten other arts initiatives.

The cuts were confirmed at a council meeting on 6 March.

Two new spaces that bring together creativity, play and healing have been created at the Royal London Hospital. This million pound project is the result of a RIBA competition to design an indoor play space and an outdoor garden for the new Royal London’s Children’s Hospital that harness the healing power of art and play. Formally known as The Ann Riches Healing Space, the activity space has been designed by architects Cottrell and Vermeulen and designer Morag Myerscough, who worked together to create a vibrant, oversized living room, filled with Alice in Wonderland-scale objects.

Organisations which support homeless people, the unemployed, victims of violence and the voluntary sector across the capital are being given funding by the London Councils’ grants programme. The money is being used to commission specific services rather than to fund organisations. These services are London-wide initiatives which would be difficult for individual boroughs or small groups of councils to provide on their own.

Following the successful pilot in November 2012, Social Enterprise ‘Tea Dance for Little People’ is working with St John’s Medical Centre in Lewisham to further develop its ‘Play While You Wait’ project. Funded by the Lewisham Central Ward Community First panel, it ran across the February half term and will continue to take place every Tuesday in February and March.