Cam & Dursley Pop Up Creative Café takes part in Discover at Home Arts Award

Over the summer, Churches Together in Cam & Dursley organised 5 weeks of Pop Up Creative Cafés to support communities during the summer holiday after months of lockdown.

The events were completely free and offered tea, coffee and homemade cakes for everyone, children’s lunch bags (150 per week!) as well as take away creative craft kits for children. Over 1000 people came along and the events were supported by wonderful volunteers (of all ages) from across the churches and the wider community.

It was also an opportunity for the children to take part in the Discover at Home Arts Award - the new online version of Arts Award which was launched in response to lockdown. The Arts Award places were funded by Real Ideas with support from the Create Gloucestershire network and Cam and Dursley Creatives - a local network of people who are interested in making the area a more creative place to live, work and play.

Abi Nicol was one of the organisers and told us how they did it:

“We gave participants a free craft kit with two pieces of clay, a tool, instructions and a YouTube link to two ‘how to make’ films. The task was to make a pinch pot and a sheep or animal. The young people had a week to make the pieces and then return to me for firing.

I linked with local ceramics artist Karen Hilliard who delivered the films, then fired and glazed the work made by the young people, giving them highly polished finished pieces and a real understanding of the processes involved with making ceramic pieces.

The young people researched Karen and her work, looking on her website, digital platforms and local shops that sell her work.

I kept the participants up to date with progress photographing the ceramics at each stage of firing/glazing etc via our Facebook page.

The children shared their work in different ways: with family members, friends and with Abi at the Creative Cafés. This was incredibly exciting for them, it created a real connection, a positive focus to the summer and giving them something to be hugely proud of.

As a result a group of 12 young people have now achieved their Discover at Home Arts Award and are keenly awaiting their certificates!

As well as the ceramics kits, the children had the opportunity to take home other creative kits that included everything needed to make bunting, blow football games, wind chimes, speakers, watercolour pictures, willow lanterns and keyrings. In all, 811 kits were produced by volunteers for the children in the area.

Over 100 kits were donated to GL11 families whose children needed activities to do, as there are still very few playgroups open. 70 kits went to The Door Youth Project who were able to encourage their young people to make the crafts with these kits. Particular excitement was seen when the bunting kits and cardboard speakers arrived!

Many parents said that they had been struggling with lockdown and home schooling; they felt there was very little to do during the summer holidays that was affordable and where they felt safe and knew it would be fun.

Running the cafés and creating the kits was a lot of hard work but lovely feedback from families made it so worth while. Here’s a selection of comments:

“We have loved it thank you so much! Has definitely made the holidays easier xx”

“Thank you so much, we have really enjoyed the sessions and the crafts, the ceramics are so lovely.”

“Thank you again, my girls have loved coming along every week!”

“Huge well done to you guys for putting this on. An amazing event which we will look forward to each week!”

Rev Fiona Crocker who initially came up with the idea of the Creative Cafés sums up what the Pop-Up Café meant to the local community:

“It provided a great opportunity for the local churches to work together, to give generously of their time and resources, to our local community and also to get to know each other better as we worked at pulling it all together. This could have only be done by leaders listening to one another, laying down their own agendas and keeping focused on what was important. This was - providing a safe place to be and stirring up the creative energies within us and our community. It was great to see all ages involved throughout the summer. “