Scarborough's Brave Project "utterly thrilled and stunned" by National Lottery grant
Scarborough community group, The Brave Project, is celebrating after being awarded almost £20,000 in National Lottery funding
The funding has been award to support The Brave Project’s work developing male-identifying young people’s physical, expressive, and creative abilities to encourage positive mental health and emotional wellbeing.
The group, based at YMCA Scarborough will use the money to sustain weekly classes with professional sports, martial arts, dance and physical theatre practitioners in preparation for a ‘Be Brave’ tour next year.
The Brave Project has been running since January 2024 and was founded by Clare Maxwell after she realized the persistent impact of negative stereotypes and the heart-wrenching insecurity and anxiety that the boys she teaches experienced daily.
Importantly, there is nothing normal or acceptable about the current statistic that: “75% of all suicides are male”. (www.ons.gov.uk)
The group now runs one session a week, attended by between five and 12 boys, where they enjoy physically challenging workshops where fitness and creativity are key, allowing the boys to collaborate, express themselves, compete, learn new skills,
laugh a lot and form meaningful friendships.
Using movement and physicality to tap into mental health worries seems to really work for the boys and they are passionate about spreading the word.
The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will see the session expanded to three hours and, after targeted marketing and promotion, will hopefully run twice a week.
At the same time, the group will be able to prepare for the next step - to ‘get boys and young men talking’ with a ‘Be Brave’ tour - visiting secondary schools, colleges, sports clubs and youth clubs across Yorkshire.
The boys will learn facilitation skills so that they can run the workshops that will accompany the show, enabling them to be empowered to inspire other young men ‘Created by boys, for boys.’
Clare Maxwell, founder of The Brave Project, said: “We are utterly thrilled and stunned that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way.
“Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to market and promote so we can reach more young men, broaden our weekly offer of professional sports, martial arts and movement skills and empower our young men to create, express, move and inspire.
“This is important because it gives young men a safe space to be themselves without judgement or expectation, explore their physical and creative potential and enjoy a supportive environment with like-minded boys.”
Selwyn Peterken, original member of The Brave Project,said: “The Brave Project is important to me. It’s integral that I feel part of something, something that’s not just ethically good, it’s physically rewarding and you get something to show for it.
“That is important because it’s a good group of people doing a good thing.
“We’re trying to destroy the stigma of mental health in men to allow men and lads to express how they feel.
“Not just bottle it up inside and take it out on the nearest lamppost, but turn it into something creative.
“And whilst doing that, talk to people. That’s what makes us unique.”
The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.
As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.
National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK.
Thanks to them, last year (2023/24) The National Lottery Community Fund awarded over half a billion pounds (£686.3 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK, supporting over 13,700 projects to turn their great ideas into reality.
To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk.