CEO News

We’re heading to the peak of the summer season – and it’s raining as we send you this!

Over the last month we’ve seen our coordinator team supporting A Different View – our journalling and photography group sessions at Littlehampton. These are fully booked and have been successful.

We’ll be offering more sessions in Crawley, with Recovery Partners later in the year. There will be an exhibition of participants work early next year.

For more information about this free course contact Ant:

a.stevens@recovery-partners.org.uk Mobile: 07826094533

Our members day at the end of June helped with planning for the future. We’re really pleased to share with this newsletter our refreshed and reviewed Group Agreements – this came from the workshop on the day. Thank you for all those who helped us produce this – a great CAPITAL effort!

We’ve yet to work on the strategy planning that came out from the day but hope to bring you more on this in the next couple of months.

With our membership strategy taking shape, the top priority that members are keen for us to work on concerns communications – from and to CAPITAL. There’s lots more behind this but a big step for us is changing our phone systems so that we can improve our connections with you. We’ve now done this and we hope you’ll notice the difference when you call the office number.

We’ve been successful in obtaining a grant that will help us grow and work on key areas to build our interim strategy together, with the staff team, members and trustees. This funding will support some of the costs of shaping our strategy by paying for meetings, events and staff time.

If you’d like to chat through anything we’re doing at CAPITAL, we’re always very keen to hear from you – duncan.marshall@capitalproject.org

Reviewing our newsletter and communications

With our relatively new website, we’re also now very active on social media. We also gain a fair number of new members because of being out there on social media and through our website.

We are keen to work with members to review our communications such as this newsletter, and we are aiming to set up a working group to look at this. If you are interested in helping with this, please contact Kirsty: kirsty.potter@capitalproject.org

Coproduction

SCALE, (Sussex Coproduction And Lived Experience) members meet monthly. This is all about transforming local services and coproducing solutions! In the last few weeks we’ve welcomed Sara Shepherd into covering the Coproduction Lead role, alongside her other role at CAPITAL as one of the Coordinators.

We are currently working with commissioners to develop plans for the next few months and we’ll be holding a workshop in October. If you’d like to join SCALE, or would like more information about coproduction, please email: coproduction@capitalproject.org Please get in touch if you’d like to come along to the meetings or get involved.

Goodbye Helen!

This month we’ll say goodbye to our amazing Helen Hayward, who has worked in a variety of roles in her 12 years here. Helen has been recently leading the membership engagement and review work and will be sorely missed by everyone. Helen doesn’t want any fanfares about leaving so we just wanted to say a huge, massive, tremendous THANK YOU for all your very hard work over the years!

Helen says: Thank you all for making me feel so welcome and part of the CAPITAL family for so many years, I wish you all the very best for the future, much love

Helen

Annual General Meeting 2023

Our AGM will be held on Thursday 12 October in Bognor Regis – at Salvation Army Centre. Please save the date – more to come soon.

CAPITAL Awards are back!

We welcome back our long-standing Member Awards and introduce the Jacqui

Cavalier Award - which aims to capture our former Chair's essence, remembering her creativity, passion, dedication and resilience.

At our AGM on 12 October 2023, we'll celebrate the achievements of our Members through these Awards. This is your opportunity to nominate!

There are three categories: • The Andrea Linell Award is for a member (or members) who have created or been involved with a piece of work that does something to enhance the

name of CAPITAL and its reputation • The Peter Brooks Award is made to members who deliver great informal peer support to others • The Jacqui Cavalier Award celebrates CAPITAL members who have, through resilience, been positive in overcoming challenges

Please go to https://forms.office.com/e/20X41fLCaq to nominate. You can nominate also by emailing: enquiries@capitalproject.org or by calling us on: 01243 869662

CLOSING DATE is 4 September 2023

Coordinator News

I have just started in my new role as Interim Coproduction Lead along side my Interim Coordinator role. I am really pleased to now be working with Capital full time. My first full week was a lovely mix of meeting with colleagues from other organisations having discussions on how we all effectively work together and calls and meetings supporting our members. I went along to meet up with our members who are now half way through A Different View project and they are creating some lovely art pieces. It was really enjoyable and I was very grateful to receive a lovely art set myself. This is helping to get me motivated to draw again and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.

Dave Lucy Carol and Kev our lovely peers who work at Langley Green hospital with be starting our Capital Community Hub drop ins in Crawley and East Grinstead in August.

Please check the website for dates.

If you’d like any more information please contact: Sara Shepherd

sara.shepherd@capitalproject.org

Funding award

We are delighted to have been awarded £1000 from Morrisons Foundation for our weekly art sessions held in Bognor. We plan to use the funding to purchase more supplies - things like paint, paper, desk easels and a whole raft of craft materials - as well as start a crochet group, Yarn and Yabber. More details of the new group to follow once our plans are in place. We'd also love to know if you work for, or have connections to, a local branch of Wilko, M&S, or The Works. Each of these businesses supports a local charity of the year, and we need to be nominated for the opportunity by their staff members.

If you or a friend or family member can help, please email Ali our Business Development Manager: ali.golds@capitalproject.org

Join Capital’s Board of Trustees!

Capital’s Board of Trustees is an essential part of Capital as a charity, we are

required by law to have a group of people overseeing how the organisation is running and to support its development… but Captial is a unique organisation run by members for members, so our Board is made up of members like you. We need your help, skills and ideas now!

There are up to 5 vacancies on the Board, we’re looking for members who are

passionate about Capital and want to support its development to join the Board as a Trustee.

You’ll need to be able to attend Board meetings, take part in discussions and be able to make decisions in the best interests of Capital. If you have any specialist skills or experience e.g., finance, human resources, governance, fundraising, co-production let us know, we’re trying to build a skilled Board and would really value your expertise.

Being a Trustee is a fun and rewarding experience, if you would like to apply, know more or have questions, please contact Steven Sartor at

steven.sartor@capitalproject.org

Deadline for applications is 14th August – It’s a simple process to apply and Steve can tell you more. We look forward to hearing from you

Roy Davis – Chair of Board

Suki Westmore – Vice Chair of Board

Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter

Your CAPITAL Team