Climb4 Spotivate Success

Exciting things are happening for VANEL Member organisation Climb4, who last year with the help of VANEL, submitted a successful funding bid to Sportivate’s ‘This Girl Can’ to fund their eight week dance programme ‘Yes You Can –  Dance’.

Back in January we reported that the dance class was due to start in February and are happy to report that the first dance class took place as planned last week at the Grimsby Institute. The class, which is aimed at young women aged 16-19 and who want to increase their level of physical activity, is currently being piloted by students studying Hair and Beauty at the college. Over the course of eight weeks students will have the opportunity to improve their level of physical fitness and have fun experimenting with a number of different dance styles. The class is being delivered each week by Climb 4’s Chief Executive, Sarah Hagerup.

Sarah, who has a background in teaching and performing arts, had originally planned to use a portion of the funding to train a young person with a background in dance to run the sessions. However, by the time Climb4 had submitted their funding bid, the funding had almost ran out and so they were unable to do this.

Sarah said, “Climb4 is all about giving opportunities to young people, so it was disappointing when we found out that there wasn’t going to be enough funding to train a young person who could deliver the sessions and give them the chance to develop their skills”.

Following the eight week pilot there are plans to apply for other pots of funding to deliver the programme to other cohorts within the Institute. It is hoped that there will also be an opportunity for students from other subject areas to engage in other programmes based around expressive arts such as music, art and performance. The creation of new activities such as these would enable young people to have the opportunity to train and deliver the activities themselves. It is hoped that eventually these activities could be offered to the wider community and other organisations as part of Climb4’s ‘Arts for Health’ programme.