Harrogate charity's £150k grant from National Lottery is a 'major step change'

Founded in 2013 by Susie Hart MBE on her return to the UK, after 10 years of living in Tanzania, where she founded the social enterprise Neema Crafts, Artizan International offers hands-on hospitality training, work experience, and creative craft workshops for people with disabilities.

The grant of £151,509 from the National Lottery Community Fund will allow Artizan International to run an exciting new project for people with disabilities for at least the next two years.

Called The Artizan Collective, the initiative will deliver a timetable of activities ranging from social nights, weekend creative sessions and drama clubs to co-production groups, bread making sessions and nights out on the town.

Artizan International’s UK Director Liz Cluderay said: “We are so delighted to share that we have been awarded a grant from The National Lottery Community Fund for

our project "The Artizan Collective".

"This grant was the biggest I have written since I started grant writing four years ago and is a major step change for Artizan International.

"This funding will allow us to run this exciting project for the next two years and create the sustainability to allow it to continue long after that.

"All of the elements of this project had been led and curated by our disabled young adults and their ideas of what a good life looks like for a young person with disabilities in our region.

"The aim of the project is to increase the services we can offer to our disabled community in North Yorkshire and attract more members and partner organisations to work with us.”

In addition to Artizan International's retail outlet on Oxford Street in Harrogate, in 2022 it opened the doors of an innovative Café and Creative space in on Cambridge Road in Harrogate, specifically to create training, work-experience and high-quality day services and employment opportunities for adults with learning disabilities.

The National Lottery Community Fund is the largest community funder in the UK and aims to distribute £4 billion to the community by 2030.