Feedback from our partners confirmed an ongoing need for Let’s Craft beyond the pandemic, as families absorbed the lasting fallout, from crises in young people’s mental health to the soaring cost of living. Between winter 2022 and summer 2023, we made three more deliveries of craft packs, distributing a further 12,960 boxes to families all over the country.
This has given our partner organisations a chance to do more for their communities without having to source funding. Annabel Cook, deputy chief executive officer of Artswork, says Let’s Craft has given the Southampton-based community project “an opportunity to work in new areas, to really target specific partners, and to work in priority areas which we currently haven’t got enough funding to work in otherwise.”
Louise Hesketh is programme manager for networks and partnerships at Curious Minds, a charity tackling unequal access to creativity and culture for children and young people in the North of England. Hesketh explains that her organisation will use the craft packs in an outreach programme for children in receipt of the Pupil Premium over the school holidays. “This summer we’re working with a small, town-based partnership in Ellesmere Port, led by Theatre Porto, who produce and host children’s theatre. They’ve got great links to their local food banks and really good school connections, so they know all their Pupil Premium students. They are building the packs into their summer plans,” adds Hesketh.
Felicity Martin, communications and marketing manager for Arts Connect, a centre for cultural education working for children and young people in the West Midlands, says that her organisation delivers Let’s Craft packs to family hubs right across the Black Country. “These relationships are very new for us and have developed directly because of Let’s Craft; we hope to grow them over time,” explains Martin. “We’re supporting the delivery of the packs with craft workshops in certain hub areas, to embed understanding and use of the packs with families.”