1995 

Swamp was established in Househillwood road Pollok in 1995 by a group of local residents as a response to a lack of creative opportunities for young people within the locality. We became constituted in 1996 and began delivering support for young people through the provision of basic creative and artistic classes from within the local community centre.

1997 

Swamp secured its own premises in Cardonald based in the south side of Glasgow. The organisation changed its status to become a charity, company limited by guarantee and began the process of developing the structure of the organisation to meet the needs of the communities we serve. We operated from within these premises until the summer of 2000. Unfortunately the premises were reclaimed by GCC as part of a re-development of the local area. During this period, we delivered services from a building owned by the local development company which ensured we were able to continue to operate whilst we identified alternative accommodation for the project.

2001

We secured a long-term lease on a large vacant building within our local community and re developed it into a fit for purpose creative media centre which includes ITC suite, recording studios, state of the art film studio with chroma key technology, meeting rooms, fully fitted catering area and creative arts rooms.

2002 

We worked in partnership with the local regeneration company to design and deliver our first programme aimed at youth employability this led to us securing funding from the European social fund under the key fund strand which allowed us to design and deliver our first life skills programme, upon the success of this programme we secured additional funding from stages two and three of the key fund which enabled us to further develop both the organisation and the services we provided.

2006 

We secured our first contract with Scottish enterprise to deliver against the get ready for work programme which we successfully completed leading to further contracting of our services.  As Skills Development Scotland came into existence, we continued to deliver the life skills strand of get ready for work, engaging and working with some of the hardest to reach young people often achieving high retention rates and standards of success that led to continued contracting of our services. 

2013

We successfully secured a contract to deliver stage two of the employability programme meeting all additional standards required by Skills Development Scotland including all health and safety and compliance audits in addition to quality assurance requirements and successful SQA accreditation of our centre.

2015 

Swamp have developed new partnerships in other areas of Glasgow, we are also active in East and West Dumbarton and plan to deliver activity in both these areas in the future. We have increased our workforce and developed our sessional bank to include new creative staff. We are now a member of development trusts association Scotland (DTAS). We have been submitted by local residents for a award as community champions and have secured 3-year funding from children in need to develop a youth television station that will work with local school children to develop their creative interests.

2016

In 2016 we realised through evaluation that not all young people engaged in our stage two employability programme were successfully sustaining placements with other providers at stage three of the employability fund. Initially we questioned why we were able to retain and develop the young people and others were not! We came to the conclusion that for some young people more time was required. We addressed this through developing a stage one pilot programme for those young people that were struggling to sustain structured training activity and secured support from the People and Communities fund to develop and deliver the programme. As a result of this change over 98% of our young people were successfully progressing into positive destinations and sustaining their placements.

2017

Following the success of our stage one programme (98% success rate) we received further support from the Scottish Government to continue developing the pilot. As our reputation grew, we began to receive requests from local adults and other organisations within the community for support. We expanded our service to support other members of the community and secured Strengthening Communities funding which enabled us to take a more strategic approach to community engagement and the development of the organisation. We took over a stalled space adjacent to our premises which was causing local issues due to fly tipping etc and developed it into a functional creative garden that attracts volunteers from the local community. To achieve this, we secured funding support from GHA, Health Lottery and stalled spaces initiative. We employed two local people, developed horticultural activities and now have several cultural events in the creative garden throughout the year. 

We were successful in securing the opportunity to provide money management skills within the local community and now contract with the Wheatley Group to deliver these programs to the wider community. Skills Development Scotland in SWAMP now have significant experience of the strategic skills pipeline, following the success of both our stage one and stage two programs we decided to test the possibility of delivering an EF stage 3 training programme. We submitted a proposal and were successful in securing a contract from SDS to deliver this element of the EF fund and are currently developing this area of our work.

We continue to work with the schools delivering PSD support for young people disengaged from learning. We are engaged in the thriving places and sit within the Children and young people group. Due to the success of the programme in 2016 Kings Trust have expressed an interest in SWAMP becoming their preferred provider for delivery of their get into music programme and we continue to contract with them to deliver programs throughout the year. The 16+ team within city government have commissioned SWAMP to deliver several bespoke programs over the last couple of year and continue to provide both referrals to our employability programs and contract our services.

Swamp are now members of various strategic groups operating at a local and city-wide level addressing key themes in youth employability, health and wellbeing and cultural diversity.