Back in January, we started working with the Home-Start Family Group. The group expressed their feelings of disconnectedness and felt that they needed some help with creative activities to try and regain some of the contact that had been lost throughout the first national lockdown. This was done through weekly online consultations with the group. We wanted to create a resource that the participants could use at home with their children and provide all the materials that they would need along the way. We discussed what kind of activities would most benefit the participant’s children and what support they needed at home in order to build the package of activities.
We looked at the problems faced by the participant’s children that the group themselves had identified; the parents in the group had highlighted that the children were having great difficulty with expressing how they felt during lockdown. This age group were hit particularly hard during the lockdown and felt that they lacked the creative inspiration gained from things such as messy play and toddler sensory classes which were all cancelled. The parents also felt isolated and lacked the confidence to do some of these things in their own home, some of them becoming parents in the pandemic. This was also carried over to the children who were separated from their peer group and from their families.
All the materials for the activities were delivered in a canvas tote bag which the participants can then use again. Similarly, many of the activities included are geared around participants being able to make their own art materials; salt dough recipe, edible finger paints, play dough, all of which are reusable and environmentally friendly. Several of the activities are designed to be completed outdoors; and this is to encourage the families to get out and explore their city and surroundings. This impacted positively on their mental health and wellbeing.
Alongside the materials, participants received the ‘Big Creative’ book which is a collaborative effort between the Home-start participants, the Creative Learning Team and the LACD Design team to tailor a learning resource and journal that is specific to the group’s needs. It will also be used to form part of a legacy for Reconnect, a community project spanning several organisations aiming to combat Covid-19 isolation.
The group were keen to use materials that they perhaps hadn’t had much experience with before such as clay, textile and magnetic tape, learning new skills along the way. We were keen to combine art, science and nature to create an enriching home-learning experience that families could engage with at home and outside. We were eager to show them that making art isn’t just about buying expensive materials at a time when a lot of people may face financial concerns. By using a lot of recycled materials, we were also teaching the children the importance of reusing or conserving resources. We began to open up their imagination by using household objects to make marks; sticks, leaves, stones and flower petals for collage and even experimented with ice, snow and food colouring to make sculptures inspired by David Batchelor’s ‘Waldella, Dundee’ in The McManus.
With the McManus being closed to the public until very recently, the group expressed that they had missed the opportunity to visit, in particular to see the temporary exhibitions ‘Time and Tide’ and ‘A Love Letter to Dundee’. Bringing the exhibitions to them virtually through the ‘Big Creative’ book and online sessions, we have tried to remedy this. During our weekly virtual sessions, the group are given the opportunity to ask questions about our exhibitions and are given support to develop their knowledge and understanding of their favourite objects in the museum, giving them the confidence to share this with their children.
The ‘Big Creative’ book is intended to be a guidebook that parents will use again and again or pass on to friends and family for them to use with their children. In addition to this, the book serves as a memento for the children and their families of this period in time, with pages dedicated to documenting their thoughts and feelings during the pandemic. The intention behind each activity and challenge was to allow parents to create alongside their children; to strengthen bonds, enhance moods in a positive way, improve speech, develop fine motor skills and to encourage and motivate the parents to continue on with these activities long after the sessions have finished. This resource is as much for the parents as it is for their children.
The project has been made possible thanks to Art Fund support and additional funding from Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust.
McManus Creative Learning 