'No one is left out!': Summer Holidays with Ignite!

Our Community Programmes team have been kept busy over the summer holidays with our Holiday Activities and Food programme. Funded by the Department for Education via Nottingham City Council, our programme targets children and families who are seeking-asylum in the UK by delivering our sessions in two Home Office accommodation sites in the city.

The format for our programme over the summer was delivering two days of activities in the sites before taking everyone on a trip on the third day; this was repeated over four weeks.

We delivered lots of different creative activities on site, including:

• Watercolour painting

• Making dream catchers

• Doing a scavenger hunt

• Hapa Zome printing

• Making finger puppets

• Cyanotype printing

• Making sculptures from clay

• Playing with chalks and chalk pens

• Making and performing with instruments

For our trips, we visited Stonebridge City Farm, Primary and St Ann's Allotment Association's Community Orchard. All sites were incredibly generous in their welcome to the families, and it was a unique opportunity for them to get out and explore the amazing resources that Nottingham has to offer.

At Ignite!, we work to unleashing the unique creative spark in every young person, and 'We leave no one out' is one of our key values. Many of the families taking part in this programme have little or no opportunity to take part in cultural, educational and creative activities and this programme underscores our commitment to enacting the Art of Belonging Pledge.

A huge thank you to fantastic volunteers who helped out at the sessions this summer, and also to the staff at Nottingham & Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum and the two sites for supporting us once again in delivering this programme.

We're looking forward to the October half-term sessions already! If you'd like to work with us on programmes like this, please get in touch.