About Us
Crafting hopeful futures, together.
We craft hopeful projects for better futures through participatory, creative activities that promote individual reflection, collective curiosity, and build hope for wider change with and for people in difficult life situations, based in the North East of England.
Our Story
Creative practice, and craft practice in particular, have a long history of being part of community-building and making change in the world. As an organisation set up as a Community Interest Company, we take inspiration from this heritage and bring it together with reflexive, care-ful, and trauma-informed support practices for people in the North East of England.
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Crafting Hope was founded by Dr Angelika Strohmayer in 2024, building on more than 15 years of experience of designing, delivering, and evaluating participatory, creative programmes around the world, and a decade of experiences of researching the role of purposeful creativity in support services (at Newcastle University, Swansea University, and Northumbria University). This work has spanned the co-design of a theatre production with children in care in Bucharest, Romania, to co-designing literacy activities in libraries in Nepal and Moldova, and most recently co-making of the Story Chair programme to support women in touch with the criminal justice system through craft and storytelling skills in the North East of England.
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We know how important it is for people to have safe spaces to build community, to reflect on their own experiences, and to imagine better futures with others. We also know that this kind of work requires collaborative cross-sector working, in hopeful and equitable partnership. We show that through our work with third and public sector support organisations, arts and heritage venues, and creative practitioners to equitably imagine and work towards better futures for people in the North East through hopeful and purposeful creative craft practices.
