The Church of England

Every year, Bowdon Parish selects a charity on which to focus all of its church-based fund-raising. Last year, we supported the Mission Development Fund of our sister church, St Mary's in Partington.

While our parish will continue to support Partington in many ways, our fund-raising this year will focus on ‘Project Unbroken’, a registered charity sponsoring Christian musicians and artists, part of whose role is 'working with the hardest to reach young people in schools, local communities and prisons in Greater Manchester and beyond'. Alex Greig from Project Unbroken explains that 'This world is a broken place, full of broken relationships, broken hearts ... and we want to give hope to people in these situations. Project Unbroken is about seeing the broken people in this world become unbroken.'

We first came into contact with Project Unbroken at our Wednesday evening Street Academy, where some of their musicians took on the role of music tutors. At the Street Academy, young people have the opportunity to learn drums, electric guitar, music production and street dance from professional musicians who are practising Christians. One tangible result of this tuition has been the formation of the youth band Twisted Agenda (pictured).

Project Unbroken has entered into a partnership with The Message Trust, a Manchester-based Christian charity that we know from their work in local schools with pop music groups LZ7 and Twelve24. Project Unbroken's band, MaLoKai, will be going into Altrincham Grammar School for Boys during the first week in March.

The first fund-raising event to support Project Unbroken is a ‘St Patrick’s Day Gig Night’ on Saturday 17 March in Bowdon Parish Centre. The evening will feature three youth bands (including Twisted Agenda), two adult bands, an open mike for solo performers and a fish and chip supper. Tickets are £6 without food and £10 with food. Please contact me, Will@BowdonChurch.org, for further information.
For more information about the work of Project Unbroken see www.unbroken.org.uk; for the Message Trust see www.message.org.uk.

Will Sudworth, Parish Development