We have welcomed two new members to our Grapevine team in recent weeks and we thought you’d like to meet them! First we have a new Senior Operations Officer, Lucy Gilbert, who joins us from working in the NHS and more recently as a Lived Experience Lead for a community interest company called Neurodiverse Connection. […]
Our long-established Help and Connect project helps autistic people and people with learning disabilities in Coventry make a plan, get connections, get work, and stay healthy and safe. Often we are meeting people in their hardest moments — but this isn’t just about surviving a crisis. Over a six-month period, we’re building individual strength, resilience […]
Non-statutory advocacy supports people to have their voice heard across a wide range of issues and events in their life. Our innovative service in Coventry — for autistic people and people with learning disabilities aged 17 or over who aren’t eligible for statutory advocacy — meets people where they are, offering a one-to-one service in […]
It’s an exciting time for our community organising work in Coventry as we welcome two new organisers to the Grapevine stable—and later this year, another campaigner working on disability justice with our Coventry Youth Activists! As ever at Grapevine, we enjoy introducing new people to our long-time supporters and new friends because our power comes […]
This week is Advocacy Awareness Week (13-17 October) and an opportunity to shine a light on the power of advocacy using a different theme each year. This year it is ‘Advocacy Works’—sharing stories that demonstrate advocacy’s powerful impact on people’s lives. In Coventry, Grapevine offers a non-statutory advocacy service to autistic people and people with […]
At the crux of a neighbourhood issue in Willenhall was a community feeling powerless to change what was wrong. So Grapevine community organiser Edwin Lukong set about the none-too-easy task of building connection, belief and leadership in local people whose voice and influence had long been limited. In the process of creating conversations, relationships, a […]
Unity, solidarity, working together for the common good—and for everyone’s sake—feel “out-shouted” by much louder cries of anger and division right now. On Sunday, Cabinet minister and Business Secretary Peter Kyle told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg— in response to marches and counter protests in London at the weekend—that “what worries me most are the divisions […]
One year since our ‘Organising Change’ event on building power and relationships through tough times, and just over a week since our final ‘big system conversation’ on the Healthy Communities Together (HCT) programme in Willenhall, Coventry—we share our latest #GrapevineAt30 blog. Firstly highlighting the release of our new ‘Neighbourhood health from the ground up’ HCT […]
Grapevine’s work illustrates how people and communities can meet one another’s needs, claim power and take action on what matters to them—transforming services and systems along the way. During 2025, we’re marking three decades by sharing our story of how we’ve gone from a small single-issue charity to an organisation at the centre of work […]