What is Percent for Art?

Our Percent for Art team comprises two officers who are based in our Community Engagement Team and work across all areas of Bolton.  Our arts officers work with residents, community groups, partners and other community stakeholders to develop socially engaged arts projects that help to improve our communities and benefit customers.

We commission appropriate artists or arts organisations, to work with the local community, and we manage the project from start to finish.

The Percent for Art service actively encourages individuals and community groups to get involved in schemes that can offer creative solutions to neighbourhood issues.

Ideas for arts projects can come from our neighbourhood teams and they will focus on specific neighbourhood priorities or be developed through conversations with community groups, partner organisations or other community stakeholders.  Sometimes local arts projects are developed through wider Greater Manchester, regional or national networks or funding.

Our service also offers advice and guidance to our partners with regard to developing arts projects involving other social housing customers across Bolton.  We have also been commissioned by partners to project manage a number of community arts and public / environmental art projects in Bolton.

Projects can be in any medium including visual arts, performance, music, crafts, digital art and film. They can take the form of arts based consultation, skills and confidence building projects, arts in health & wellbeing work, festivals and celebratory arts, as well as streetscaping and environmental arts projects designed to enhance the physical environment.

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2020 GM Creative Care Kit for Older People

2020 GM Creative Care Kit for Older People

Bolton at Home Percent for Art and Carole Ogden - a volunteer with both the Ambition for Ageing Culture Champions (Bolton) project and 'Talking About My Generation' (an online news platform created by and for over 50s in Greater Manchester) - have been involved in developing a Creative Care Kit for older people. 

This is a unique new initiative that will see creative kits full of things to do delivered to 16,000 older people across Greater Manchester. The Kit will benefit those older people that, due to the Covid-19 crisis, still face the prospect of being isolated at home for many weeks, particularly those who do not have access to the internet.

The Creative Care Kit contains a range of activities that can be completed at home using materials that are provided in a box, including an activity book, art supplies and a seed bomb.

There are more than 40 pages of activities including music, writing, craft, horticulture and drawing, and Kits will be distributed to older people across Bolton over the coming weeks. 

Click here for more information about the project.

A digital version of the Creative Care Kit activity book can be viewed and downloaded here https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/media/3105/creative-pack-older-people-download.pdf [5.8mb]