Celebrating four years of Let's Craft

The run-up to the summer holidays can cause alarm bells to ring for many parents across the country. Rather than being a chance to bask in the excitement of spending more time together as a family, many working parents spend hefty sums on childcare; many don’t have that option and must sustain six weeks of as-affordable-as-possible fun. Reflecting on my first year working on Let’s Craft, a programme run by Crafts Council to deliver free craft materials to children who otherwise wouldn’t have access to them, I’ve come to understand how seemingly humble craft supplies – from scissors, paper and glue to sequins and pompoms – benefit all families, helping keep children’s lives bright through creativity and play.

By the end of 2024 we will have delivered 15,000 craft packs, each one bursting with over 1,000 pieces, to children across ten local areas of need, including Dover, Plymouth, Wolverhampton, Newcastle, to name a few. Most of these packs have already been delivered in time for this year’s summer holidays.

The social impact of creativity

Let’s Craft is run in partnership with Hobbycraft, bringing Crafts Council’s relationships with regional community support organisations together with the craft retailer’s powerful nationwide distribution network. Launched in June 2020 to support children whose families who were unable to afford art supplies during lockdown, we could not have anticipated how the appeal would grow in four years to serve so many different kinds of need. In 2023, most of the children receiving Let’s Craft packs were children in care, children in receipt of free school meals, children whose families are experiencing housing instability, whose families have no recourse to public funds, or whose families are fleeing conflict.

Families tell us that receiving craft packs has enabled them to enjoy spending time being creative together. “We made some lovely things and the kids use all their own ideas,” one parent says. “They even made a card for Father’s Day for their Dad.” Another parent shares: “Thank you so much for giving us a box full of fun and happiness.”

Hobbycraft’s commitment to getting children making has nurtured the success of Let’s Craft, while our community partners have skilfully shown us where need is greatest. This in turn has helped Crafts Council sharpen our understanding of where craft is at its most powerful - to act as a tool for change in society.

Craft as an act of community care

Our partners tell us that Let’s Craft has helped them build stronger connections with their communities, helping people they otherwise couldn’t afford to. The programme has inspired cultural programmers to incorporate craft in their own work with young people, enabling local authorities to bring more families of diverse need into their services.

In response our delivery of craft packs this May, Ivan Henderson, deputy leader and cabinet member for economic growth, regeneration and tourism at Tendring District Council, in north-east Essex, tells us: "The boxes were given out across the district to young people in care, young people from the Ukrainian community within Tendring, students at a creative event, young people who attend Essex Children and Family Wellbeing Services across the district. Everyone was very surprised, thankful and overwhelmed to receive them. Things like this really do mean so much to our area.”

Olu Adesanu, Cultural Enrichment Officer at Islington Council, says that Let’s Craft has, “enabled us to build more links, with more people, in more places. Community centres are still the largest recipients of packs here in Islington, but what we’ve now done is build a connection with our Refugee and Migrant No Recourse to Public Funds teams, which has been really valuable,” adds Adesanu. “We’ve found that families from Afghanistan and Ukraine have been the biggest beneficiaries since then; the officers that work with them keep asking us when the next delivery will be.”

Imagining futures through making

Through my work with Let’s Craft, my own mission to be an instrument for change - harnessed through creativity - has deepened. During lockdown, I worked as a nanny for a family who had a playroom stocked with everything I could think of to make things with. We raided the recycling bin for junk modelling materials and used an inordinate amount of sticky tape; part of daily work was to help the child I looked after decide whether to use crayon, chalk, or cut and stick. The little one had space, time and resource to traverse their imagination through creativity and play and that journey was shared with me.

Now, working on Let’s Craft and hearing about how children find joy, solace, and moments of calm through the craft packs, my nannying experience serves as a potent reminder that access to craft and creative outlets should be the rule, not the exception. Evidence shows us that using their hands to make things is integral to a young person’s development. We know that crafting improves mental wellbeing, hand-eye coordination and cognitive skills and Let’s Craft packs facilitate this with materials of varied colours, shapes and textures which promote a multi-sensory learning experience.

As its first ever fundraising appeal, Crafts Council mobilised many different stakeholders to spread the word about Let’s Craft. To connect with children that would benefit from the packs, Arts Council England shared their insight with us to identify community organisations across the country, from London to the Midlands, the North, the South and in-between. These organisations brought expertise in bridging links between the education and cultural sectors to bring young people greater opportunities.

Building support in difficult times

In the inception phase, Hobbycraft sat alongside other generous supporters including TOAST, The Works, YODOMO and Cox London, who spread the appeal through their own craft-engaged audiences. Through this, Let’s Craft outperformed its funding goal, and between August 2020 and August 2021, 11,700 packs were produced and distributed to young people all over the country.

Early celebrity supporters including Victoria Beckham, Jenny Packham and Claudia Winkleman saw the potential for powerful change and lent their names to the appeal. Today, we’re proud that Keith Brymer-Jones, ceramicist and a fervent advocate for creative education, supports Let’s Craft. Keith joined young carers in Dover last October for a creative session with their craft packs, giving these children a chance to – well, just be children (and for Keith to try his hand at a different aspect of craft).

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.”

Humble materials, transformational vision

The mission of Let’s Craft has been to help dismantle barriers to creativity and to empower future generations of makers from all walks of life. Continued cuts to arts funding and the closure of craft-specific courses have put the UK’s creative industry in peril and in June, Crafts Council became a signatory to the Manifesto for the Visual Arts, urging the new government to cultivate a more sustainable cultural sector. With the Labour government now in power, we hope to see this work taken up in their policies. A lot is at stake for the sector and our society. It brings me hope to imagine that tomorrow’s celebrated makers could be among the young people who receive our craft packs - having started their journey in craft with the glitter, lolly sticks and pipe cleaners that Let’s Craft put in their hands.

Faith Rubia is Learning and Sector Support Co-ordinator at Crafts Council. Learn more about Let’s Craft and donate to our appeal at craftscouncil.org.uk/lets-craft-packs-children . Please note donations will close on 31 July 2024.