Stockwell Park Youth Creatives
Providing activities for children and young people is a priority here at The Community Trust. For the past 5 years, we have offered free activities including cookery courses, treasure hunts, dance, yoga, drama and music classes and trips for our local children and young adults. A team of passionate and highly qualified staff and volunteers are committed to continuing this work and expanding what we offer to respond to feedback from children, young adults and parents/carers. In 2021, we held an Open Day here at the centre where we asked children, young adults and their parents how we can best serve them. This year, we have been responding to these ideas and requests.
We believe that the voices of children and young adults should be heard and respected, so we offer them the chance to express their thoughts and opinions to one another and to adults who will listen and encourage them to develop these. I large part of this conversation and debate takes place in our podcast studio, where our children and young adults are supported in making material for a youth podcast. The ideas come from them and they run, record and edit the episodes themselves. We are hoping to release these on a public platform one day!
We also believe that opportunities to experience cultural spaces and go on exciting trips should be available to all, so we try our best to offer regular outings to interesting places, particularly to those on pupil premium/free school meals, or who have parents/carers who work at the weekend.
We recently took a group to Hindleap Warren to touch base with nature, improve their team skills and face their fears swinging in the trees!
We have computers in the centre which are free to use and the youth club offers qualified tutors and mentors to assist our members with their school work. We want to help each of our members to achieve their potential, so we also help connect them with other local organisations who can offer support in specific areas.
This month, we opened our building to a company called Robothink (Barnet) who led an engineering workshop for 30 participants of a range of ages. We came together for a whole Saturday and built a series of robots, working individually and in small groups to follow instructions that challenged our maths and science skills. We offered a free vegetarian lunch and enjoyed sitting together to eat, play the piano and chat.
On our most recent trip, we took some of our older members to see 'Small Island' at the National Theatre. 9 young members were accompanied by 3 of our facilitators and a member of our board on a journey to the South Bank, where we admired stunning views of London. We then sat together and enjoyed a meal, payed for by the Community Trust (the hot sauce contest was a sight to behold!) Afterwards, we braved the April snow (!!!) and made our way to the National Theatre.
'Small Island' is an acclaimed five-star production of Andrea Levy's prize-winning novel which follows the lives of characters from the UK and Jamaica over the course of the Second World War, the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush and the harsh reality of post-war Britain. It was an incredible introduction to theatre for our members, highly imaginative and funny and also tied in to the history syllabus taught in school. It also got us all thinking about our heritage and the experience of our family members who moved to the UK from abroad
We are currently building our contact list and are notifying parents/carers when an event is coming up. We also run drop-in art workshops for all ages every Friday evening from 6-8pm, hosted by WOM Street Art Collective. We are preparing to open our building every Friday after school for a ‘Youth Takeover’ over the summer, where children and young adults can participate in a choice of workshop and use our supervised safe space to play, work and socialise.
If you are interested in registering a child or young adult for our youth club, please contact our Youth Coordinator Poppy Clifford. We would be delighted to meet you!