During June, our Community Development team ran several creative activity sessions for parents at Grange Pavilion.

The idea arose during our holiday craft activities for children when the parents noted that they had really enjoyed getting involved as well, and would welcome something similar for themselves to do during the school day.

Keen to create a space for parents to gather and talk, our Community Development Officers, Sabina and Noward, set to work on finding a venue and the craft activities and planned a 4 week session starting on 6th June.

Sabina: “Our first Event was successful having a mixture of attending 7 adults and 4 children and as weeks went by we had more and more adults attending our sessions … The community was surprised with the activities involved from making Ukrainian dolls to Henna art to general exploration of art and crafts. It’s great to see people walking out from our sessions with Henna art and canvas colouring or just simply walking out with a smile on their face.”

The team also discovered through conversations with the attendees that there were other skills they were keen to learn beyond crafts.

Noward: “[We] have gladly had the opportunity to talk to the women on a 1-2-1 basis to ask for crucial feedback and assess if they have enjoyed the sessions – from this I found that they would like to see the sessions continuing.”

Topics parents expressed interest in learning about included basic drug awareness, first aid as well as general career advice and support. With this information we will now look to run further sessions that help to develop the skills of attendees.

It has been very exciting to see a simple idea that came out of a conversation with parents develop into a supportive and beneficial activity for the community. We’re looking forward to seeing what happens next!