Creative Credit

Project overview:

Creative Credit, OldhamCreative Credit is an approach that uses drama and the arts to bring to life a wide range of financial inclusion issues. Through engaging children and their parents in a creative way, they are supported in developing their own strategies to manage very personal and difficult financial issues. 

Talking with residents, local schools, the Council and our own internal teams’ three critical financial issues were identified;

  • Loan Sharks and door-step lending
  • Young Persons budgeting
  • Universal Credit

Having identified the issues we brought together local partners to agree an approach and secure the necessary funding.  We decided to bring Oldham Coliseum into the project, who worked with pupils to understand more about Loan Sharks and brought the issues to life via a play in front of parents. 

The project aims to help pupils and families to become more financially responsible – aware of the need to manage their money more effectively and aware of the risks and pitfalls of unsustainable borrowing.  The project employs a part time Creative Credit Officer, working in the schools and the partner agencies to maximise impact and synergy.  Engaging pupils in developing and starring in drama based productions is the key tool being facilitated by the Coliseum outreach workers. 

Creating and coordinating effective local partnerships is important as from that the funding resources required can be found.  Creative engagement is key and finding the right delivery partner to meet local needs is very important.  So too effective monitoring and evaluation - Regenda have developed a simple but effective monitoring and evaluation tool that can be adapted to suit each project. 

Timescale of project:

12 months.

Partners Involved

Oldham Credit Union, Oasis Hub, six local schools, Oldham Coliseum and Contour Homes.

Outcomes achieved:

  • 6 local schools engaged
  • 450 pupils and parents impacted / involved
  • 34 new Credit Union accounts opened
  • £25k additional external funding secured

 

What our users/customers say:

‘My daughter had a great time today! She’s learnt a lot and is even talking about saving some of her pocket money.’

 

Pupil feedback:

‘You never know when you’re going to go over your budget and get into debt, so this session is very important for young people’

 

What our clients say:

 

Teachers feedback:

'We would love another session with 'Play in a Day'. It was a huge success and the children loved it.'

‘Thank you for today. It was well organised and their understanding came across really clearly’

 

Contact:

Chris Standish, Regeneration and Place Manager.  0151 703 3512.  Christopher.standish@regenda.org.uk