Festive 500 - Cycling 500km between Christmas and New Year

James Pole is raising money for Art Against Knives
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Festive 500 · 24 December 2021

We intervene early to prevent young people from becoming victims or perpetrators of violent crime. We embed creative spaces in London’s most isolated communities, co-designed with young people, that build on their strengths and create opportunity. These award winning spaces include a music studio and multiple nail bars, all open 48 weeks of the year. In these spaces our team of creative, highly skilled professionals provide skills training, mentoring and specialist support. Our spaces have become highly effective reporting mechanisms, enabling young people to come forward about major problems they experience, and access the support they need - putting them in the lead in safe and trusted environments and connecting them with multi-agency support. What makes our approach special is that we are fully rooted in communities and at the same connected with industry and specialist support. We work with participants long-term as their needs cannot be met through short-term, one-off interventions; we always co-produce our programmes and enable young people to shape the support they need. We build trusted relationships, resulting in participants’ active engagement: they seek our support when they face significant risks and challenges.

Story

I am raising money for Art Against Knives, a London based charity whose primary goal is to use creative spaces to intervene early with at-risk young people to prevent them becoming victims or perpetrators of violent crime. These creative spaces include a recording and podcast studio, as well as multiple nail bars.

As with most charities, funding has become increasingly difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic. As such we are running a fundraising campaign to keep open our main youth centre in Barnet. Please click here for a short video explaining more.

This Christmas I will be taking part in the “Festive 500” challenge which will involve getting on my bike and cycling 500km between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. I’ll be doing all of this outdoors, regardless of the weather so I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed for a mild, dry Christmas.

For those that want some very low level entertainment / want to see how much I suffer, then it'll all be posted on strava here

https://www.artagainstknives.com/


Donation summary

Total
£2,999.60
Online
£2,748.60
Offline
£251.00

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