Venture Arts is an award-winning visual arts charity based in Manchester.  They support learning disabled people to reach their full potential through arts and culture.  Their aim is for learning disabled people to be empowered, included and valued in the arts, culture and society. They exhibit our artists’ work regularly, in high profile galleries and exhibitions in the North West and nationally.

Each year they deliver over 1,700 in house visual art sessions. Their studio is a social, safe and inspiring environment where their team of professional artist tutors nurture individual talents and creativity, supporting all their participants to discover and develop their unique artistic identity. They also run work schemes which help learning disabled people to work and volunteer in cultural and educational environments.

Venture Arts worked with us on our third cookbook, Secret Dishes From Around the World 3. They commissioned the fantastic artist Justin P Lees to create a mixed-media artwork for the project.

FareShare Greater Manchester was launched in October 2008 to support communities to combat food poverty and food waste in and around Manchester. The team redistribute food to over 232 charities and community groups. Their community food members provide vitally needed meals, food parcels and snacks to hundreds of disadvantaged people every day.

Many of our ‘buy one, give one’ foodbank drive donations are given to FareShare Greater Manchester following sales at market events across the city. They an important partner in our collective effort to fight food poverty.

Manchester is also home to Emmeline’s Pantry – an independent foodbank specifically oriented towards women. The pantry started out in a hallway as a clothes bank for women in need, and now provides women with food, clothes and toiletries from an outlet in Chorlton. To promote healthy eating and independence, the pantry offers fresh food and does not pre-bag food donations, ensuring that customers can choose their own food instead of relying on allocated rations. In 2021, the pantry collaborated with Manchester Urban Diggers to build a community garden named ‘The Pankhurst Plot’, incorporating a play area, a mud kitchen and a woodland walk. The garden is an essential aspect of the pantry’s ‘Little Sprouts’ program, making sure that toddlers without access to their own gardens have the chance to play outside, and all food grown in the allotment is donated to the pantry.

We also admire Manchester’s Wood Street Mission, which provides practical help for children and families affected by poverty throughout the city. The mission’s ‘Family Basics’ program supplies struggling families with essentials like bedding, children’s clothes and baby items, as well as toys and books to encourage children’s education and development. All the mission’s services are free on referral, and include holiday book clubs to help teach children to read and the mission’s ‘SmartStart’ program, which provides children with non-branded school uniform items such as jumpers, cardigans, blouses and trousers, alongside sports kit and essential stationary such as pencil cases, maths sets and dictionaries. The mission also works to raise awareness about child poverty by coordinating events and conferences at schools, businesses and other non-profit organisations.

As part of the Secret Dishes From Around the World book tour, we spoke to artist Justin P Lees, who was commissioned by the Manchester based visual arts charity Venture Arts to create an original design for the Venezuelan section of the book. You can listen to the interview on our Share Your Secrets podcast, which is available for free via Spotify, Google and Apple!