In the autumn of 2025 in partnership with Bridge Creative CIC we launched the Community Voice Fund.

This is a pot of money offered to people with a learning disability or autism living in County Durham – to run a 6-month project to help improve the lives of other people with lived experience in County Durham.

In November we chose the final applicants who then attended our pitch event – where they each did a presentation about their project.  The public who attended got to vote for which pot of money each project would win.

We have now funded 6 separate projects across County Durham that will both benefit people with a learning disability and autism, and be run by them, with support from us and Bridge Creative.

These projects will run through 2026.

This work gave people with lived experience the opportunity to:

• Create a project to benefit others
• Participate in an application process including a public pitch event involving presenting the project
• Manage budgets
• Run a project from start to finish (with support)