Escape2Make
‘Sew Good’ sees 11-18s share the joy of upcycling charity shop finds that culminates in a sustainable fashion show and clothes swap.
Lancaster Art Fair
Lancaster Art Fair supports local artists and the community through art, offering free workshops, exciting exhibitions and creative opportunities!
Halton Village Volunteers & Sharing Network
Create a network of local organisations to encourage more volunteering and the sharing of resources, knowledge, ideas and facilities.
Leaps & Bounds Preschool Ellel CIC
To develop our allotment space into a ‘forest school’ type learning experience.
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Yealand Community Allotments
Make improvements to the allotment site, run community events and school visits to encourage greater community involvement.
Greener Gressingham
Establish a community orchard and floodplain meadow; run volunteer days, community picnics and village events.
Good Things Community Hub
Work collectively with those with neurodivergences, and children and families, to develop the hub space and strengthen community ownership.
Community Conversations and Wild Roots Nature Fest
Provide inclusive access to local nature and heritage through festival days, follow-up gatherings and a storytelling digital archive.
Lune Valley Beekeepers
Raising awareness of the threat posed by the Yellow Legged Asian Hornet and what can be done to minimise it.
Mirador Arts: Lancaster Swift City ‘Taking Flight’
Raising awareness of swifts by using festival based arts and upskilling local people to make swift boxes.
More Music Three Degrees Festival
A youth led, climate action, community music festival and workshops. Three Degrees will engage the West End community in climate action.
Lancaster and Morecambe Makers: Library of Things
To reduce waste, improve access to tools and build skills in the local community by establishing a library of things.
Community Led Circular Economy – Gregson Community Association
Run Lancaster Give and Take Days at the Gregson Community Centre, where community members can bring items they don’t want and exchange them with others free of charge, keeping items in circulation and reducing waste. The project will purchase equipment and signage, recruit volunteers, and provide marketing support.
Global Village Cafe @ The Cornerstone
The Global Village Cafe @ The Cornerstone – a weekly lunch club for asylum seekers and a community cafe welcoming everyone. Come for lunch on Wednesdays 12:30-2pm.
A Taste of Home – Global Link
Offer weekly food growing, preservation and cooking/recipe creation sessions for asylum seekers and refugees. Food growing will take place at Claver Hill, with the other sessions at the Global Link kitchen in Lancaster. At the end of the project, publish a recipe book showcasing the cuisine of their home countries created with locally sourced and grown ingredients.
Lancaster & Morecambe Repair Cafe
Encourage reuse and repair of everyday items, sharing, learning new skills and increasing knowledge of our social and environmental impact.
The Adullam Programme: Treasured
Pilot a social enterprise offering supported work experience and purpose for people facing complex barriers to employment and inclusion.
The Hygiene Bank Lancaster & the Bay
The Hygiene Bank provides free products to people in need, tackling hygiene poverty and promoting dignity, health and wellbeing.
The Tara Centre – Wellbeing Cafe for Asylum Seekers and Refugees
A weekly Wellbeing Cafe for Asylum Seekers and Refugees to foster friendship & connection, distribute surplus food & offer nourishing meals.
Global Link: Friday Global Cafe
Asylum seekers and refugees will use locally grown and/or surplus food to cook lunches Fridays at Stanley’s Community Centre.
Escape2Make Green Group
A program for 11-18 year olds working with professional artists to make a series of environmentally-friendly crafts out of sustainable resources.
Lancaster African Initiative Development (LAID)
The ‘Mobile Fixing Factory’ will run seven bilingual workshops in seven places across Lancaster where 8-10 bilingual volunteer fixers will give lessons in repairing smartphones, computers and laptops.
Queer By Gum: Sustainable Queer Craft
Deliver sustainable craft workshops and events, building community knowledge about reusing, repurposing and repairing materials, alongside empowering the LGBTQ+ community.
Lancaster Men’s Hub
A Quantum Leap in Expanding our Capacity for Recycling, Refurbishing & Repurposing. Creating, repairing/refurbishing wooden and crafted items and sharing our facilities, tools and expertise with other members of our local community.
Stanleys Community Centre: Stanleys Grass Roots Allotment
Stanley’s Grass Roots Allotment provides organic produce for the weekly meals while bringing support, friendship, sustainability & skills within the community.
Ambleside Road Allotment Association: ‘Food for Thought!’
Improve the allotment site to increase yields and provide more food to distribute to the local community.
Whinney Hill Farm: Growing the Community
Expand Whinney Hill Farm Garden for growing space, volunteer training, food production, and community sharing to support skills and wellbeing.
Growing Veg & People – West End Impact
Create a vegetable garden on derelict land in the West End of Morecambe. Build moveable raised planters, seats and benches. Provide planting and growing time every week, basic horticultural and nutrition education, and community events.
Morecambe Community Riso Press CIC: Cuisine Zines
Creating DIY Zines together, cooking up a rich cultural exchange of recipes and food stories to share across our communities.
Wiseup Workshops: Creative Saturdays
Creative Saturdays will invite young people to create, learn & grow together using recycled materials and imaginative storytelling.
The Bay: A Blueprint for Recovery
Foraging, Outdoor Cooking & Nature Connection.
Foraging workshops and outdoor cooking sessions using nature connection to build community resilience and inspire healthy and sustainable food choices.
Craft Club – Escape2Make
Provide fortnightly free of charge craft and textiles workshops for 11-18 year olds. The workshops will involve sourcing and working with reused and sustainable materials, upcycling and mending clothing, and kitting/crocheting clothing for newborns, fiddle muffs for dementia patients, and hats and scarves for homeless people.
The Gregson: Grassroots Sustainable Action!
Grassroots community events to stop things going to landfill and encourage all ages to think about the planet.
Citizens Advice North Lancashire: Strengthening the Lancaster Food Network through Data
Aims to strengthen and support Lancaster’s food network by providing food clubs with a data collection and sharing system.
The Marsh Community Centre Club
Bringing community members into the outdoors, promoting health and well-being through gardening. Encouraging community members to eat healthier.
Creative West End
Mentoring and learning support for creative network members, helping them close loops in their work. Networking sessions, workshops and 1-1 advice dedicated to circular production and regenerative economy.
Lancaster Music Festival CIC: Banner Recycling
Lancaster Music Festival will be exploring options around reuse and recycling publicity banners and sharing findings with other organisations.
Lancashire Youth Challenge: Time to Breathe – Planting & Growing Programme
Supporting a team of young people to create a community orchard, and fruit growing space for the community.
Four Seasons Allotment
Provide community access to space to grow and share fruit and vegetables, create raised beds, and run children’s activities.
Community Ground Up Project
Reinstate a vegetable patch, bringing community members into the outdoors, helping mental health, and building community knowledge about growing food.
Local Food for Local People
Research and trial supplying Eggcup and partner food clubs by purchasing local crops, gleaning, growing food, and creating pre-made meals.
Where the Wildings Are – LESS CIC
Create rewilding projects on school grounds. Introduce food-growing spaces for school and community use, using the produce for school and community meals, promoting schools as outdoor horticulture hubs.
Wildlife Wellbeing Walks CIC & Marsh Community Centre
Empowering young and old at the Marsh Community Centre to eat sustainably and connect with nature for health and wellbeing.
Ambleside Road Allotment Association: Can we fix it ? – Yes we can!
Can we fix it ? Yes, we can – with materials and tools to help our volunteers improve their community allotment.
Deliberate: Community Conversations
Deliberate designs and facilitates community discussions and participatory processes to equip citizens with the tools to make change.
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Skerton Grow to Share – Skerton Community Association
Deliver a twenty-week young people-led gardening and growing project, clearing a piece of land owned by the community centre. The project will include clearing the ground for planting, working with the community to determine and implement the planting scheme, and the eventual picking of fruit and vegetables for use in the centre’s food access programme.
Plastic Bottle Top Project – Relic Plastic
Personally involve community members in a new initiative to transform a waste stream into valuable resources. Hold sorting parties where people learn about plastic types, waste and recycling into new products, at the Relic Plastic workshops and in schools, libraries and businesses. Place collection points in community locations.
Reconnect, Reuse and Repurpose – EMUES UK CIC
Deliver practical community education sessions at Ridge Community Centre, teaching people how to repair, reuse and upcycle materials, particularly textiles, which would have otherwise gone to landfill. Through these workshops, encourage intergenerational working and improve community cohesion.
Re-create – Good Things Collective
Develop a means of monitoring creation of waste and evaluating circular use of resources in creative projects. Commission three creative projects which aim to close loops during their creation. Use the experience of these projects to share new creative assets and resources demonstrating how creative projects can contribute to a regenerative economy.
The Butterfly Effect
Activities in and around Cockerham including creating a vegetable and medicinal garden, educational workshops, opening a community fridge, and seasonal community gatherings.
Sustainable Award Trophies – The Bay Film Festival
Work with community groups to collect plastic bottle tops for recycling into trophies for the first Bay Film Festival awards.
Filbert’s Too
Provide free bread and baking to food clubs, offer cooking and baking classes, and use ingredients otherwise going to waste.
Costume Sequels – The Dukes Theatre
Sort, catalogue and store 300 items of costume belonging to the Dukes Theatre, making them available for free hire and use by community organisations and schools.
ABOUT CLOSING LOOPS
Closing Loops is a five-year £1.5 million project led by the FoodFutures partnership, and funded by The National Lottery Community Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, it will support community-led action and local initiatives to transform waste into a valuable resource, aiming to stimulate a zero-waste, circular and regenerative local economy. As part of this, £300,000 in small grants are being made available through the Pots of Possibility Fund.
