Infinite Arts

Anchor Point is a dynamic, one-of-a-kind community outreach and skills-training centre in Birmingham, a practical, caring response to the complex needs of inner city lives. Building on Betel UK’s 25-year track record as a national charity helping the marginalised, homeless and addicted, Anchor Point will address head-on the hardships of social exclusion, substance dependencies, family breakdown and unemployment in one of Britain’s most under-resourced urban wards. The three-fold vision is: to create a thriving community hub that integrates seven family-friendly businesses, each serving the public, that simultaneously deliver a range of employment skills and addictions- recovery training all under one roof. Anchor Point will offer a safe, welcoming environment to residents and university students of greater Aston where they can flourish. Hundreds will enjoy an impressive restaurant serving homemade food, drinks and baked goods, affordable arts performance and fitness training, a children’s softplay arena, a gender-neutral hair and nail salon, catered banqueting, plus multi-purpose meeting and conference facilities for hire. All these diverse activities inter-link, sharing one 40,000-square-foot building just outside the boundary of Birmingham’s Clear Air Zone. When compared to most other social inclusion models nationwide, Anchor Point’s multi-purpose skills training sets it apart as truly exceptional. All seven social enterprises will be staffed by recovering Betel residents, each a member of our successful, therapeutic, work-based recovery model. This means that Anchor Point not only promises essential socialising for scores of city-wide youths and families. But it will also serve as a healing, restorative workplace, helping men and women to break with substance and welfare dependencies alike. Together, the businesses will simultaneously train for future employment more than 60 men and women in the process of rebuilding their lives and families after years of life-controlling drugs and alcohol addictions, homelessness and criminal offending. Anchor Point revives the power of local community. It is a visionary investment in lives where restored men and women, now clean from addictive substances, re-build confidence and a vitally important work ethic as they “give back” to others. Inner city neighbours are likewise enriched, embracing old friends and new relationships in an atmosphere of belonging, leisure, learning and personal growth. The outcome? A swelling synergy of people’s potential, as one by one they are encouraged, equipped and empowered for purposeful new directions.