Wellingborough's Hemmingwell, Kingsway and Queensway residents asked to send greetings and win a prize

Residents of three Wellingborough estates are being asked to put pen to postcard to send a message about where they live - and they could win a prize.

Volunteers for community-led arts programme, Made With Many, are delivering 1,000 activity packs containing art materials to residents to enable people to send a postcard championing their communities of Hemmingwell, Kingsway and Queensway.

The ‘Greetings From…’ packs have been assembled by Teamwork Trust and include creative materials such as colouring pens, pencils, and papers as well as the competition entry postcards.

Project producer Sarah Brown from Made With Many said: "As well as providing creative lockdown activities, this project aims to encourage residents to feed in their thoughts and feelings about what already makes them feel safe and happy about their area, to empower the community to take the lead on planning future work in the area.”

Volunteers and staff from Northamptonshire Emergency Services Cadets, Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service, Places for People, Greatwell Homes, St Mark's Church and Wellingborough Methodist Church helped distribute packs along with the Made With Many team and Community Watch.

As well as the free creative activities to do at home, the packs contain information from community organisations to help keep people safe and well during lockdown.

Anyone of any age, living in Hemmingwell, Kingsway or Queensway, can create a postcard for a chance to win one of fifteen £25 shopping vouchers.

Entries can be anything creative including drawing, colouring, collage, writing, mind maps, poems or rap to describe a neighbourhood or favourite place, showing what keeps residents safe, or what is important to the community.

All competition entries must be submitted before 10am on Monday, October 19, either by post to Made With Many or to local drop off points at Queensway Co-op, Kingsway Morrisons Daily, Service Six or Hemmingwell Community and Skills Centre, who are all supporting the collection of competition entries.

After the fifteen winning entries have been selected by a panel made up of local community organisations, they will be enlarged and displayed in outdoor public spaces on the three estates later on this year.

Made With Many are delivering the ‘Greetings From…’ project in partnership with Lemon Pop Workshops, Community Watch, Support Northamptonshire and the Office of the Northamptonshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner.

Stephen Mold, Northamptonshire’s Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, said: “I’m happy to have been able to support this project, which I think is a really creative way to engage with local people in Wellingborough and find out more about how community safety and wellbeing can be supported.

"I hope many people seize this opportunity to take time to think about the area in which they live and come up with some brilliant, inspired designs for their postcards.”

For more information about this project and how to get involved visit www.madewithmany.org/greetingsMade With Many is a community-led arts programme that produces events and activities designed to inspire more local people than ever before to take the lead in experiencing, creating and taking part in high quality arts and cultural activities.

Made With Many is part of a national Creative People & Places (CPP) network, funded by Arts Council England to increase engagement in the arts in areas where people have fewer opportunities to get involved.

Message from the editor: Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the highest standards in the world. The dramatic events of 2020 are having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers and consequently the advertising that we receive. We are now more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news by buying a copy of our newspaper.