About Us
Arts Factory has one simple aim and that’s to create life-changing opportunities for people who feel marginalised and think that they no longer matter. We believe, more than anything, that no one should be written off and that everyone has something positive to contribute to our community.
What we do – our strap-line, which has been with us from the very beginning says it all “No more throw away people”. This means that we work tirelessly every day to give people the support, motivation and opportunity they need to show what they can really do.
Our Past
Picture this. It’s 1990 in the Rhondda Valleys and a group of local people is growing increasingly tired of being excluded and labelled as “problems”. Instead of accepting that judgement, this group committed to actively doing something about it. They decided to work together to improve the quality of their lives by creating Arts Factory – our independent development trust that is still going strong today.
Literally thousands of people have benefited since we started.
Our Future
At Arts Factory we believe in a stronger, more inclusive community. And so, we create volunteering opportunities for marginalised individuals.
Our volunteers contribute to a range of team-based projects that:
- provide valued services that meet needs in the wider community;
- create opportunities to learn and develop invaluable skills; and
- develop social enterprises that will fund our work in the future.
Through these projects volunteers develop confidence, improve self-esteem and gain new skills, as well as becoming part of supportive social networks. And they give back even more than they gain. They provide valued services to the wider community, they feed into and support social enterprises to fund our work and they then go on to help create opportunities for others.
It’s three-sixty degrees of sustainable community support and supply.
And it works!
Our Operations
Run from our community building (Trerhondda) in the heart of Ferndale, the business has overall operational responsibility for the day to day management of itself and oversees the following social enterprises and in response to the needs of the community:
Arts Factory Design Studio
An award-winning creative design agency supporting responsible businesses to get their message across
Factory Books
An online store supplying collectable books to customers from all over the world and which creates volunteering opportunities for at least thirty people every week
Trerhondda Community Hub
A beautiful stone-built rentable busy community hub, based in the town centre of Ferndale in the Rhondda Fach, which provides flexible business workspace and houses a variety of groups and services.