Keeping Creative at Home
Whether you're a teacher, a parent, or both, our new blog series will help you and your children through this tricky period of adjustment
Let's Craft arts packs
A New Direction is coordinating the delivery of Let’s Craft packs in London as part of a national initiative to ensure children can stay creative during this challenging time
Launched in response to coronavirus, A New Direction has partnered with Crafts Council and Mayors Fund for London to assemble and deliver thousands of Let's Craft arts packs to children across London.
The packs aim to keep children and young people engaged and creative, and ensure that those children most in need don't miss out on the health, wellbeing, and educational benefits of creativity.
The packs include high-quality arts materials such as paints, pens and paper, along with learning resources and activities for children to try out at home. Arts and textiles teacher Andria Zafirakou, winner of the 2018 Global Teacher Prize, has created a resource for the packs which you can download here.
Over the course of Summer and Autumn 2020, we delivered a total of 8,300 packs of arts supplies to 109 different hubs across 15 London boroughs. In deliveries made in October 2020, we also included a range of resources from across the cultural sector, linking to our Half Term Boredom Buster blog which you can read here.
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Where are packs being delivered?
To distribute the Let’s Create packs across London, A New Direction has been working with Kitchen Social – a food provision programme run by Mayor’s Fund for London – alongside other local partners including Specialist Crafts, Berkley Homes, Hobbycraft and Camden Town Brewery who are generously providing supplies, and helping with assembly and logistics.
While we hope to continue providing packs through the Kitchen Social sites, we are unable to share details of delivery dates and locations.
One small child didn't want to wait until she got home – she told staff 'I want to start drawing now!' Her dad told us that she wants to draw all the time and that it was amazing to get such lovely stuff. Another child told us 'everything is in this box'
- Islington Play Association (one of the delivery sites) -
How can I support this project?
Project partner Crafts Council have recently launched a fundraising campaign with the aim of raising £100,000 to distribute a further 10,000 packs across the country.
Text CRAFT to 70085 to donate £10 or visit their webiste to donate online.
The Let’s Craft appeal builds on Arts Council England's Let's Create campaign which distributed more than 25,000 art activity packs across the country during lockdown through Arts Council England’s Bridge organisations and their local partners. Arts Council England was able to fund the Let’s Create packs thanks to the National Lottery. Crafts Council and Art Fund have provided additional support.
