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The Prince's Charities in Burnley

HRH The Prince of Wales has pledged the support of eight national charities which he created to work in partnership with Burnley Borough Council, the RDA, local businesses and other government and voluntary organisations in taking forward the social, economic and environmental regeneration of Burnley.

The partnership in Burnley between The Prince’s Charities, Burnley Borough Council and other local organisations has now taken a significant step forward with The Prince’s Charities joining the Multi Agency Problem Solving Team (MAPS). The Prince’s Charities will share offices with MAPS, providing a base for the five staff who are now working in Burnley for The Prince’s Charities, and for other visiting members of The Prince’s Charities.

The MAPS Team includes Lancashire Constabulary, Burnley Borough Council, Fire & Rescue, Housing, the Young People’s service, Education, the Primary Care Trust and others, and oversees borough wide projects with the ultimate aim of improving the quality of life for local residents. The move to join The Prince’s Charities with the MAPS Team further cements the relationship between all the organisations in working towards combined goals in the social, economic and environmental regeneration of Burnley.

The Prince of Wales most recently visited Burnley in February 2008 to see at firsthand the work of The Prince’s Charities in the area. Since then a number of developments have progressed the partnership, including the recent addition of the The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts. The organisation have implemented a programme with Mid Pennine Arts that will help over 600 children in the area.

The Prince's Trust is currently running its core 12-week personal development programme, Team, in Burnley with young people who want to get into work, training or education. Alongside this The Trust is running local engagement activities, including key skills development through football-focused projects at Burnley Football Club.

Business in the Community (BITC) has continued to be very active in Burnley supporting a variety of issues from education to business masterclasses. BITC brought together businesses, including Greggs, Barnfield Construction, Aircelle Ltd and Booths supermarket, to work alongside Cherry Folds Primary School in delivering a careers week, which provided a whole range of activities for children to raise aspirations. The formula was so successful that BITC is planning to roll out this programme to other primary schools in Burnley.

Five workshops have been run as part of the Mosaic Business Bridge programme, aimed at supporting aspiring community leaders. These workshops provide training on topics such as Leadership, Sales & Marketing and Social Enterprises with a long term aim to nurture leaders who will provide sustainable activity in Burnley.

Business in the Community also have two new initiatives in the pipeline: The development of a Bank Consortium bringing together senior North West Managers and Directors from the banking sector. It is hoped that this group will help identify how the finance sector can assist Burnley’s economy in the current financial downturn. Finally Business in the Community is working in partnership with Pennine Lancashire Enterprise Trust and Burnley Borough Council to provide a series of masterclasses for local businesses.

The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts is working with Mid Pennine Arts in a three year partnership which will bring a high quality and sustained experience of the arts to over 600 primary school children in Burnley and the surrounding area. Children & the Arts works to ensure access to the arts for children who would otherwise not have this opportunity.

For the first year of the project the pupils involved will experience a theatre performance and one of two contemporary arts exhibitions .They will engage with professional artist educators to develop their interaction with the visits at the venue and supportive work back at school. Each school will have a named creative practitioner attached to them and teachers will be invited to attend half a day’s training to develop the sustainability of the programme in school.

The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts have implemented a Schools Programme for five schools supported by the Lancashire County Council and The Altajir Trust. The programme is built on a series of thematic hands-on workshops for Year 7 students to create objects to adorn the space of the Faith Centre in the Burnley & Pendle Faith Centre. Teachers were introduced to the integral teaching methodology of The Prince’s School and enlisted to support the Students workshops in an orientation session. In their first workshop students designed and produced a series of screens depicting the four seasons. At the most recent workshop in November, they designed and painted a wooden floor inspired by the Cosmati pavement in Westminster Abbey.

Each workshop has generated positive responses from students (“I learned that art can be geometry and that maths can be art.”), teachers (“The expectations have been high and as a result the final work is outstanding. Students have been pushed to extend boundaries and achieve beyond their own expectations.”) and parents (“Beautiful work. I am so impressed with all the techniques, for example marbling, geometry and how skillfully the young people embrace these. Thank you to everyone for giving my son this fantastic opportunity – he has loved it!”).

The programme addresses the need for social cohesion by bringing together students from five different schools who have never before worked together; skills development by encouraging them to work with their head, heart and hands; design and product development through the study of geometry, colour harmony, proportion and symmetry, and in a later phase, enterprise-building by translating designs to products with marketing potential in community workshops that will include parents and teachers.

The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment and The Prince’s Regeneration Trust are continuing to work closely with Burnley Borough Council in offering their expertise to help review the master plan for the town’s regeneration. In particular, they will be helping the council to explore ways in which the largely derelict areas of the Weavers’ Triangle (formerly the heart of the town’s industrial area alongside the Leeds to Liverpool canal), including its heritage buildings, can be restored and adapted to play a part in Burnley’s overall regeneration.

In Kind Direct redistributes donated products to a variety of charities working in Burnley. These range from organisations working with young people to those helping people with specific health conditions. Almost £35,000 worth of goods have been redistributed so far. In Kind aims to increase its work in the area so more charities and the people they serve benefit.

The British Asian Trust, which is the most recent organisation to join The Prince’s Charities, exists to build bridges between the British Asian community, charitable organisations in South Asia and community linked projects in the UK. The Trust will work with organisations involved in the initiative to help support South Asian community projects operating in Burnley.

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