The SAND Action Group is delighted to tell the world about a few changes in personnel! First off, Claire Duffield-Townsend who has been delivering training and developing programmes of work as part of the Action Group for the past 2 years has now been appointed as a Director of the Safe Ageing No Discrimination Community Interest Company. Claire has been a huge asset since she stumbled across the SAND stall on International Mental Health Awareness Day at The Hive in 2018; she has seamlessly stepped into the training team, delivering to a variety of audiences from social work students to health care professionals and has recently been leading on a very exciting partnership project with AgeUK Shropshire Telford & Wrekin and AgeUK Herefordshire and Worcestershire – see here for more details of that: REACH.
At the risk of everybody breaking out into song, Claire is also leading on an emerging new initiative called STARS which is all about working with (different) partners to provide safe spaces for LGBT+ people to just ‘be’.
Talking of stalls, we hope to be seen out and about at many more of those when Government Guidance allows and we have a growing team to help. Alongside substantial volunteer hours, SAND commissions freelancers to help deliver our programmes of work and we now have Trudy Lutwyche progressing our Marketing and Design; Fran Jackson furthering all aspects of Community Engagement and Jade Smith running our events. All are primarily funded through our National Lottery Community Fund Project EMBRACE A Culture of Inclusion and we are looking forward to being much more visual, on and off screens.
Trudy and Jade have recently been flat out marketing and delivering events at the Shrewsbury LGBT+ History Festival which ran throughout February and into March. Trudy produced some eye-catching designs, smashing the social media following and Jade facilitated smooth high quality experiences for both contributors and audiences. They have done a great job in helping this to be the biggest festival ever, delivered by the team with 30 events, all online – and all free to attend!
Fran is settling in brilliantly and already taking on the challenge of helping us to articulate our stakeholders and how things at SAND fit together and relate to EMBRACE, which is already fantastically helpful.
We also welcome back James Turner who used to be on the Action Group and is now back volunteering specifically around helping us to sort and catalogue the ever growing resource collection relating to SAND’s work. James’s eye for detail, love of spreadsheets and techie know how is invaluable.
With 2020 now firmly behind us, and this great team on board, we are looking forward to increased engagement and activity as we move into Spring and then Summer!
