PSU wins Cultural Impact Wales Award 2025 for helping its local community.

Posted on Apr 09, 2025
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Llanelli’s People Speak Up has won a Cultural Impact Award for its innovative approach to helping older local people, improve health and wellbeing especially for those living on their own and in isolation through it's Creative Home Delivery Service Project.

The first inaugural Cultural Impact Awards, organised by Get The Chance and Tempo Time Credits, was held at Porter’s Bar in Cardiff on the weekend. PSU was shortlisted in the Culture and Health category for it's Creative Home Delivery Service, a programme which is delivered across Carmarthenshire.

The programme, created in partnership with Carmarthenshire County Council, Hywel Dda University Health Board and Connecting Carmarthenshire, is designed to help older people, especially those who are lonely and living in isolation, to be engaged and help improve their mental health and wellbeing using arts and creativity. The Creative Home Delivery Service sees GP’s, facilitators and Connecting Carmarthenshire refer cases and match them with a professional facilitator and freelance artist from PSU. The artist and facilitators go into that older person’s home and delivers a one to one session.

The Creative Home Delivery programme was born out of a need to stay connected with PSU’s community of older people during COVID, but the need to continue delivery this essential service was highlighted when they ran a pilot project, Kreative Kinship on Prescription in 2023, and seeing how important this bespoke one to one service is needed in rural areas and limited access.

“We have been working on improving this bespoke home delivery service since the start of the Covid Pandemic, when we were locked down as a community, when we realised that our older people needed to have those community services taken to where they live, in their homes. Zoom was not accessible for all!” PSU’s Founder and CEO, Eleanor Shaw.

“We want to thank all our freelance artists - storytellers, poets, writers singers, dancers, rappers and visual artists who go into people’s home and help them overcome barriers to engagement, and support their mental health and wellbeing. We want to thank the 100s of participants who have taken part in this project. Thank you for trusting in our team, our artists and welcoming us into your homes to help you on your journey.

It really has been a magical journey, not for just the participant but also for the creative team. Relationships have developed, new jobs have been created, we have seen an improvement in mental health, wellbeing, mobility has increased and the older people that were not leaving their home for months, started to visit us at our hub. A ripple effect of community resilience and personal empowerment has come from just a very simple idea.”

Based at the Arts, Health and Wellbeing Hub, Llanelli’s, People Speak Up (PSU) is a social, arts, health, mental-health, and well-being community organisation working across Carmarthenshire.

PSU connects people to help them find their voice, and create healthier and resilient communities through storytelling, spoken word, creative writing, conversation-based activities, participatory arts, volunteering and training.

“Seeing mum excited and happy about a creative endeavour has been wonderful. It is a positive thing that we can talk about when she has lost so much to her illness. Witnessing the positive effects on her makes me feel happier and less stressed.” Carer

“I was in a lot and now I’m out every day…learning how to socialize because I didn’t do that much.” Participant “Partnership working has been key to developing this service: Carmarthenshire County Council & Hywell Dda University Health Board have trusted us with referring the most vulnerable older people into the service and commissioning us as part of The Connecting Carmarthenshire Project. A Big Thank you to Arts Council Wales for funding us and continuing to support our arts and health services.” Eleanor Shaw, Founder and CEO of PSU.

More information about Creative Home Delivery Service can be found on the People Speak up website and social media channels