Creative Rural Communities for the Vale of Glamorgan Council

Nicola Sumner-Smith works as a Programme Development Officer for Creative Rural Communities for the Vale of Glamorgan Council as part of the Rural Development team.

Creative Rural Communities have supported colleagues in the Council to create ‘Vale Heroes’ which has two key elements, the Vale Heroes web pages which showcases all the fantastic work and services going on in the Vale in relation to supporting residents during the pandemic. This includes voluntary groups shopping for residents, or starting new business ventures like cooked food delivery. The second is a Vale Heroes Crisis Grant Fund which aims to support community groups and organisations to offer new services or to sustain their activities.

Nicola believed that as there was a huge wealth and diverse range of support activity going on the Vale, the Food Vale website would be a great tool to highlight all the food businesses and keep the Vale heroes search for free services, this seems to have worked well.

Nicola believes this service has been important in the community to highlight all the good work going on in the Vale, celebrating the ‘heros’, but also so that people have the opportunity to find help and support as they need it, in a way that’s easy to navigate and all in a new place.

They have received a really warm response from all the service providers that are listed and have welcomed the chance to promote their services so that they can reach more people.

Both businesses and community organisations have been happily involved in the Vale Heroes Grant Scheme. Nicola and her team have been able to sign-post a number of applicants to existing support or initiatives which they can benefit from. See Vale Heroes Web Page.