As you may expect, some of our services have changed in reaction to the Covid-19 crisis.
While our doors have been closed to our members, supporters and customers, we have been busy with an influx of Covid-response projects behind the scenes. As we prepare to reopen our space, it feels timely to reflect and share stories with our user groups. Read on for an update on how we are adapting to this evolving landscape with a continued commitment to Reuse, Arts and Play.
Creative Play Packs
From the beginning of the lockdown, we understood that scrap materials would take on an especially powerful play value while families were largely confined to the home, for the following reasons:
Potential: there is no right or wrong way to play with scrap and each child will approach these materials differently, so scrap bundles have an almost unlimited potential depending on the recipient’s age, interests and ideas.
Novelty: at a time when little in our immediate surroundings is changing, scrap materials can provide a welcome novelty – scrap items can be quite mysterious and are often interesting shapes and colours, encouraging curiosity and wonder all round!
Longevity: scrap items don’t need to be stuck together to make a finished piece – they can be used as loose parts, combined and dismantled and used again and again, which is ideal for extending play over time without needing to find or buy more resources.
We started by designing resource packs for under 5s, children aged 5+ and sibling groups. We appealed to our followers for donations from those who were in a position to cover the costs of one or more packs, and matched donations with community organisations who were able to distribute resource packs among families in need.
We are sincerely thankful to our members, customers and supporters for joining the momentum of this initial donation-driven project, helping us to reach over 200 Bristol families with creative resource packs.
And this is just the beginning!
Having identified a need to support families in disadvantaged areas, in April 2020 Children’s Scrapstore were supported by the Foundation for Children to compile 570 creative play bundles to distribute via project partners Feeding Bristol. In order to fulfill this large batch of resource bags, we transformed our space into a series of activity bag production lines and recruited an energetic team of volunteers to assist with the task of processing this huge volume of scrap materials.
This project was followed by funding from the Quartet Foundation, which enabled us to reach a further 600 children with creative play resource packs.
Since then we have continued to design and collate activity bags for early years, children aged 5+, children with SEND, isolated older adults, adults in dementia care, young carers and families.
We are always happy to receive feedback from recipients!:
"a massive thank you my two little ones faces lit up like it was Christmas and they now have lots of supplies to make lots of lovely things"
"I would just like to say a massive thank you for the bags of craft items, we’ve had a bag this morning from our local food club and my daughter has been crafting for a good couple of hours so far!"
“she used the paints that were in the pack and she said she really enjoyed doing them - she has done some more. She says she thinks she's discovered a new hobby”
In addition to fulfilling our own projects, we have supported other organisations and cooperatives to provide resource kits tailored to their own user groups.
RIO, the Arts Council Bridge organisation for the South West have reflected kindly on the role that Children’s Scrapstore have adopted within the wider sector:
“Scrapstore have been incredibly active in Bristol and wider region in terms of supporting exactly this sort of idea over the last few months (helping us with Let’s Create packs now, Room 13 with similar, and many other initiatives like this that are – thank goodness – bubbling up all over the place). They have good supply and distribution networks, know their stuff, a great depth of knowledge and volunteers/other connections to draw on; plus they are a charity with aims around supporting everyday creativity.”
We continue to seek creative solutions to these new challenges – we know that many families are missing the creativity of our PlayRoom sessions and so we have developed We Are Makers! – a monthly themed subscription box that will support children to explore, create and play all month long! Find out more: https://shop.childrensscrapstore.co.uk/collections/scrap-bags-boxes/products/we-are-makers-craft-box-c-c-1
More news, coming soon!