Empowering Women and Youth through creativity with Beth Powell

Meet the Mancunian -9.7- Beth Powell-transcript

Intro

Hello, listeners, and welcome to Season 9 of the Meet the Mancunian podcast: social impact stories from Manchester. I'm your host, Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, offering you a warm Mancunian welcome. This season is extra special as I'm collaborating with the Spirit of Manchester Awards, celebrating the city's voluntary and community sector. Throughout the season, I'll be featuring interviews with award winners and nominees, shining a light on the incredible work happening across our city.

Every Tuesday, I bring you the stories of Manchester's community champions, individuals working for a range of causes and making life better for the people of Manchester. My hope is to inspire you to discover your own purpose, whether through volunteering or by getting involved in the social impact sector, while also celebrating good causes and spreading positivity.

You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or my website at meetthemancunian.co.uk. Stay tuned for a season full of inspiring social impact stories.

Introduction to Beth Powell

Passionate about supporting women and the youth? In the seventh episode of Season 9, we hear from Beth Powell, Managing Director, Creative City, and Spirit of Manchester Award Nominee for Social Economy Champion.

[00:01:24] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much, Beth, for joining me today.

[00:01:27] Beth Powell: Thank you so much for having me, it's really great to be here.

Finding Passion for Supporting Women and Youth

[00:01:30] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Tell us first about how you found your passion for supporting women and the youth. Where and when did that start?

[00:01:35] Beth Powell: Oh, it's a great question. So, I've been doing this kind of work for a long time now Alongside, other things. And I suppose really what drove me to start to do this work, two different things. So one is, I think probably similar to a lot of people is trying to be the kind of person that maybe I needed when I was a young person and when I've been in tough spots.

I suppose that's been one driver is to... When you imagine the times when you might have needed somebody- a youth worker or a professional who was kind and caring and knew how to offer support, but also just create some fun for you. I tried to be that person. And I tried to run an organisation that helps train and build those skills and networks for as many people as we can reach.

Beth's Journey into Social Work

[00:02:20] Beth Powell: And my story of how I got into this line of work. A long while ago, when I was studying, I had some mental health challenges, and I took a year out of university. And during that year, I started working on a project at the university. And during that project, I was fortunate enough to work with loads of really brilliant volunteers and voluntary organisations. And when you're younger, being a student, I didn't really know what all the different options for work were out there.

And I think I had a really unusual and special opportunity to get to know through that project that I was working on, to get to know how organisations are run, what project management looks like in the voluntary sector, what people are after and what they need and how different kind of social economy organisations are meeting that need and managing to run an organisation as well.

So I had a great insight. I had my own challenges. I wanted to find a way to be that person that I needed. And that's all come together in over time to be kind of passion that I have and a professional practice that I have.

[00:03:24] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That is really amazing. And I love that about the thing that you needed somebody when you were younger. And you want to be that person for other people, so really paying it forward on such an amazing scale.

Founding Creative City

[00:03:35] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Tell us now about how you got involved with Creative City and what does it do?

[00:03:40] Beth Powell: Creative City, it's an organisation that I founded along with a colleague of mine and about seven years old now, I think. Gosh, time flies. It's an organisation, we do arts for empowerment.

Empowerment Through Arts and Community

[00:03:52] Beth Powell: So, we're using creative methods and we deliver youth work and community work, in particular youth projects and women's projects.

And that empowerment, what it looks like is, it's about really regular activities in the heart of the community, walking distance from home. Places where people do experience a lot of challenges. And it's hard after a knock back, you can find yourself quite isolated.

You can find yourself with a range of sort of health challenges and things like that. So, we try to make sure that we're running sessions that are really joyous. And help break down some of those barriers that you might be feeling to joining in.

We tend to work with people for a very long time, so from there, people tend to start to realise their power, the power in their experience, feel good about themselves, feel connected into a community, have friendship networks. It's like things that make them feel, people always say it's brought me back to me. That's what I hear really often.

And it's such a special thing to hear because, actually. there was never anything wrong with any of those people. Just life does give you those knocks. And actually, there's a lot of unfair things in the world that are causing more knocks to some people than others.

And so, when people start to feel back to themselves, there's that bit that we do as well, which is about trying to plug into change making. So, trying to support people to be part of their communities, be involved in decision making, try to shape change where things are unfair. So, we do a really wide range of things and that sometimes lends itself into supporting people to run their own community projects, supporting people to run their own startup organisations.

So it's like whatever that empowerment means to each individual, we'll try to help them get there to an extent or signpost up to somebody else that can. I always call myself a cheerleader because I can't do everything, but I will absolutely cheer everyone on their way as they find their next steps.

[00:05:44] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I love this about people finding themselves you know going back to what they are before life perhaps knocked them down. And also empowering them to create change and take that to supporting the community in one more dimension. So really interesting projects. And I look forward to hearing a bit more.

Challenges in Social Work

[00:06:04] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So what are the challenges you've had to overcome as you've delivered these projects with women and the youth?

[00:06:10] Beth Powell: Gosh. There's a lot of challenges out there, aren't there?

[00:06:13] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Anything that you overcome that you want to talk about as a little bit of a lesson?

[00:06:17] Beth Powell: In terms of challenges, there's probably different ways of looking at it. So one thing that is a constant challenge is of funding, the consistency. Maintaining enough of a long-term business model that we can fund what we're doing and deliver what we're doing in the way that we know works best, which is really long term relationships where we can commit to people, commit to communities and commit to the relationships with the other services in those communities. That is incredibly tough. Because we're saying, we're not going anywhere and then we're having to find the money to make that true. And that's hard.

Other challenges are, there's many. We have endless challenges around unfairness, the injustices that people face. In particular, we work with women's groups. There's just huge injustices that women face all the time. The intersectionality of that women are facing multiple challenges depending on their context and their backgrounds. And when we say that we're trying our best to make our projects as inclusive as we can, that's about trying to understand what people are facing and what's getting in the way and trying to find solutions.

But we can't find solutions to all those things. They're massive. So then the next challenge is trying to plug into people that are, but navigating the reality of that and supporting people to navigate the reality of that is a constant challenge.

It's really hard. So we are constantly learning, constantly trying, constantly listening. We aren't the solvers of the problems per se. We're just there to try to facilitate for people to lift themselves and to try and take away the barriers that are stopping them. But only some of those are within our control. So really challenging to navigate that and deliver a great service.

The other challenge, which is always a wonderful thing actually, is we've got phenomenal volunteers, we've got phenomenal communities. We're so lucky to be surrounded by brilliant people. We're trying to always find ways to build the skills and capacity of the people around us. Because ultimately, the way that the community is going to be best served is more talented people doing great things and being there in the community. So yes, something around training and recruiting staff, it's probably a challenge, but quite a nice one, really.

[00:08:21] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I can see that, especially the one around helping with inclusion. And helping people navigate, how they can tackle that inclusion through your collaboration. And the positive challenge of bringing talented people to volunteer and work with you and to encourage communities to get involved.

What would you say have been the biggest impact that you've made so far?

[00:08:42] Beth Powell:

Impact and Community Building

[00:08:42] Beth Powell: We're really fortunate to have been a space that we know people love to be in. People love to be in our space. People really celebrate what we're doing. I think of us as a massive community of participants and people, like our participants are us, if that makes sense. Like we are just one big community of people making an impact together for ourselves.

There's, like I said, about that sort of being the person that I needed or wanted to be around. That never really stops. I'm still also trying to be that person for myself and trying to look after myself, et cetera. It's not an us and them situation. We're all just one big community of people trying to thrive and sometimes in quite difficult circumstances.

So the impact I'd say is creating that community, I think creating spaces that feel like really in all your senses, feel like community is a really phenomenal impact to have. And it has impact beyond what you could measure or think about. It's such a big deal to be in a room that's full of joy and laughter and community and things spring from it.

People support each other in, there's offshoots in all directions. People come up with ideas, people get inspired, people help manage problems together. There's all sorts of things that come from it. It is like magic and it feels phenomenal to be in those spaces of just joy and kindness and respect and care and non judgment. Our biggest impact is creating community and seeing what the power of that is.

We do really long-term grassroots work and then try to find ways to build, because that has to be necessarily quite small numbers of people that we work with. Cause it's really long term, it's really caring, it's really intensive. But we want to make an impact bigger than that.

So really the sort of other thing that is possible is for us to use the knowledge and experience and lived experience of the community to make an impact beyond our immediate. So we try to plug into different campaigns and things that are going on and different community events and different opportunities in that way.

[00:10:42] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Just this concept of a room full of joy and laughter and community. It just sounds so evocative. I'm imagining what a centre looks like and what those people and your team and volunteers look like. I can only visualise it. It just sounds wonderful. And also, like you said, plugging into other communities and trying to extend the impact of what you make, either through creating changemakers or other ways to partner.

Spirit of Manchester Awards Nomination

[00:11:09] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: When you think about Spirit of Manchester Awards, what does being nominated for the Spirit of Manchester Awards mean to you?

[00:11:16] Beth Powell: It's wonderful to be nominated. I was really touched by the nomination that went in. I did ask to see it. It came from one of our volunteers and she said very kind things. And it's always really heartwarming. And actually, being nominated for Social Economy Champion is really special as well because we do some really great kind of long-term work with people.

But this side of what we do, which is about sort of inspiring changemakers, supporting changemakers and having an impact beyond our immediate groups. It's harder for us to tell the story of and it's really been eye opening to be celebrated for that. So it's really nice to be in this category. Really proud of that.

[00:11:57] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Absolutely.

Advice for Aspiring Changemakers

[00:11:58] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What advice would you have for people looking to start a similar movement in their local community? How can they get started?

[00:12:05] Beth Powell: I do support a lot of people that want to be involved in the community and doing the things and people are like. So people are brilliant. People come up with just the most incredible ideas, the most phenomenal concepts, everybody's got their own unique talents to bring to the community.

And then people have the most exciting ideas. And what I always find myself saying is have absolutely have that ambition, have the big picture ambition. But just start small, start manageable, start with something that you can bite off and finish and do and celebrate and learn from.

So if you're thinking, I want to create a massive charity that teaches painting to music, and I'm going to employ 10 people, I'm going to do all this thing, then to just start with a project, start with a workshop, start with something, get loads of great photos, get loads of great quotes, get loads of great learning from it, great feedback. Just start with something really small and achievable and it will snowball from there.

[00:13:09] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That is such an amazing insight. I just love it. It's like you have the ambition, but you start with that small pilot, and you test and learn and celebrate that. And like you said, then it snowballs.

[00:13:19] Beth Powell: And there's a lot of support out there I would say as well, like that's the other side of it is that there's a lot of champions, there's a lot of cheerleaders. There's me and there's loads of others. We're not one offs. For example, there's the Manchester Social Economy Alliance. If you're in Manchester and you want to start something, there's a great network of support.

So whatever stage you're at, there's probably some support out there for you. And people will absolutely cheerlead for you. So you don't have to be on your own, you don't have to face this huge mountain on your own. Those are my two big snippets. Start small and build yourself a support network.

[00:13:50] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I think that support network is also really important.

 I now move to the signature questions I ask all my guests. And the first one for you is, if you could choose a famous landmark in Manchester to represent you, which one would it be and why?

[00:14:04] Beth Powell: There's two things, I want to choose two, I'm going to cheat. Two of my favourite places are both in Highfield Country Park in Levenshulme, so it's on Google Maps. I don't know who put it on there, but whoever they are, genius, complete genius. It's on Google Maps. I think it's called the Levenshulme Waterfall or something. And it is a tiny little, if you went to see it, you'd absolutely laugh. Like somebody was telling me about it and I was like, Oh yeah, I know where that is. And they were like, is it great? And I was like, it's a tiny little trickle.

It's celebrated all over the internet as being a waterfall and you get there and it's really like a gap in a wall with a little trickle and this pool, which has got loads of nature in it. And it's really nice. And if you get there. And you zone in to it. It is cool and magical.

Whoever did that is such a creative genius to notice this beautiful little tiny stream that looks a little bit like a waterfall when you focus on it. And it actually does, it supplies this brilliant ecosystem. It is really calming. It's tiny and surprising, but it is doing something magical and supporting a whole community of nature out there and it is like a little zen garden. So I think that Creative City would be this little, the Levenslhulme Waterfall, I think it's called, and small but mighty. Surprising, doing something incredible, but just on quite a small scale at the moment. But, we punch above our weight.

And the other landmark is also in Highfield Country Park. And it's this really great spot. It's one of my favourite spots in the world. If you imagine like a sort of wood chip bit of ground. So you've got, let's say like the size of a big living room. wood chip pile. So it's soft and springy. And then on it is where they put all of the chopped up logs.

Whenever they're doing tree maintenance or whatever in the park they chop up these logs and put them into this spot. And I think it's supposed to be for wildlife, but you end up with this like playground, completely natural playground, where all of these logs get moved around daily. I go for walks through there all the time.

And they're always in different arrangements, like sometimes in circles so that people can sit on them together. Sometimes like kids have made them into seesaws or just really interesting, playful arrangements of these logs. And it's like community in action. It's very creative. It's low budget, but obviously bringing a lot of joy to a lot of people.

And actually one time, so during lockdown, I got a bit sad during lockdown and one time I was sat out there on one of these logs. It wasn't the height of lockdown. A little girl came and was playing in that space/ and I was like, hello, and she's, you're sat in my kitchen, but it's okay. You can stay for dinner. And so she started baking a cake and she was like, it's a birthday cake, so we ended up playing in this bit of ground.

Her dad was fine with it. It was just a place of pure imagination, pure community, like absolute freedom. And just a really nice public space that is for everyone. It's completely democratic. There's not really anyone governing it or telling people what to do. And yet it works and it's this magical spot. So I think that's the other sort of side of my answer is that Creative City is the pile of logs in Highfield Country Park, a place of imagination and joy.

[00:17:22] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It sounds wonderful. I'm going to have to Google it and try and maybe take a trip, both the Zen Garden and your logs. And I love the idea that every day or ever so often it's slightly different. So, you don't know what to expect, which is always nice and surprising.

Personal Reflections and Life Lessons

[00:17:37] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: What's the most important life lesson you have learned?

[00:17:41] Beth Powell: I learn life lessons all the time. Every day, I'm like mind blown by everything. One I would say is trust people. Like we do not do like things for people or to people or anything. Like it's absolutely fundamental. Fundamental principle of youth and community work is about empowerment and empowering voice, and it's baked into everything that we do at Creative City.

But it's just a really important thing to really believe, like fully believe, is that people who experience life, like wherever the issues are that people are facing, the communities that they live in, the relationships that they have, like the streets that they know and literally anything, people are the experts.

Like somebody in the town hall, people in government, like they do not know. People are powerful. People know. People can be trusted. There is no lack of understanding. There is no issue too great or too complex for people to find the solutions to. Like trust people to grapple with the problems and find the solutions and to do it better than is done by others to them.

I learned that like day in, day out by hearing people solve things, talk about things about like people moan about the things that have been affected, affecting their lives when they were supposed to help them, just like it, I hear it all the time every day. And it is something I've learned deep to my core.

I believe with all my whole heart is that people know people are trustworthy. People can do the things that they need to do for their own communities. You just need to get out of the way and break down the barriers that are stopping them. And give them the cash that they need to do it. So trust people and trust myself.

Maybe that's the second thing that I've learned is that when you start out doing a project or creating an organisation or something. It's really exciting, but it seems unachievable. But when I look back at all the things that I have done, and all the journeys that I've been part of, it's the tiny things that make up this massive achievement. I think of a massive achievement. I'm sure some people don't. So it's all the tiny things that make up a big picture of achieving what it is that you want to drive towards.

You can't always know what's going to come ahead of you when you set out. When I set out, I wouldn't have known that, like, all of those little tiny pieces of magic would fit together and be an organisation that I'm really proud of. But looking back, I am. So it's my lesson is to trust myself looking forwards if there's a thing to work towards to believe that it'll happen and try to create the little tiny pieces of magic that might get us there.

[00:20:13] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: It's a great life lesson, especially like the one about trusting people to get on with it. And, like you said, remove the barriers, give them resources and let them go forth and make their own unique magic. And then also this bit about trusting yourself and knowing that there's a long game, but the here and now working with each and every project and creating those moments of magic.

 How can people get in touch with you?

[00:20:39] Beth Powell: Always really happy to hear from anyone. So we're really easy to get in touch with as well. If you go to our website, that's creativecity.org.uk, we've got a contact page. It's got all our contact information on there. So you can just reach out.

Or if you find us on social media, we love people. We just love it when people interact with us on social media. So if you head to especially Instagram, so we're at creativecitygm. That's GM like Greater Manchester and we're on everything with the handle at Creative City GM and we'd love to hear from you.

On Instagram, you will find it when we have upcoming projects or things that we want to try to encourage people to come to, we'll always post it on Instagram. So please keep an eye out for us there.

[00:21:20] Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I'll make sure to include them in the show notes so people can find you easily.

Thanks so much, Beth. It's been a pleasure to talk to you today.

[00:21:29] Beth Powell: Thank you so much for having me.

Outro

Thank you for listening to the Meet the Mancunian podcast, social impact stories from Manchester. I hope today's episode has inspired you to reflect on your own purpose and how you can contribute to making positive change. Next week on Tuesday, 10th December, we hear from Judy Vickers talking about tackling homelessness.

I'm truly grateful for this amazing community of listeners. Your stories inspire this podcast and I look forward to hearing more of them. If you'd like to share your story or connect, visit my website at meetthemancunian.co.uk, or find me on social media @MeettheMancunian on Instagram and Facebook, @MancunianPod on X and @MeettheMancunianPodcast on YouTube.

Thank you again to my wonderful listeners. You inspire me. Together, we are a community dedicated to uplifting Manchester and supporting Mancunians. Remember, we can make an impact together.

Thank you for tuning in and being a part of this incredible community. Your involvement helps amplify the voices of those making a difference.

Together, we can inspire even more positive change in Manchester and beyond. Remember, no act of kindness is too small, and by working together, we can truly make a meaningful impact.

Thank you for listening.