Connect and Create was Shallal's charity-wide response to the pandemic in 2020. We kept all of our regular groups and activities going throughout 2020 to offer continuity through the weeks and months of isolation. We ran our groups via Zoom online sessions, telephone calls, creative activities in the post, Facebook events, online activity videos and outdoor one-to-one and small group sessions where possible.
Additional funding from Reaching Communities, Cornwall Community Foundation, Cornwall Council and Arts Council England enabled us to run new groups and projects, supporting and reaching out to artists without internet access as well as those with. Our new activities included a weekly Shallal Sketchbooks Zoom, bimonthly filmmaking Zoom and our new Wonderful Words monthly workshop. Projects within Connect and Create include our Picture Post remote visual art project and a one-to-one outreach project offering much-needed outdoor real-time contact with some of our most isolated artists often without internet access.
Connect and Create allowed us not only to stay in weekly contact with the vast majority of our artists, but to outreach to new artists. Through our social prescribing partners, our Shallal Skethbooks project and through word-of-mouth, Shallal was able to offer a sense of creative community to people who were vulnerable and isolated and we were able to grow as a community.
