‘IT’S ARTY TIME’

DEVELOPING ARTS ACTIVITIES WITHIN COMMUNITY SETTINGS

As told by Susan Watson, Parent

I’m Susan, a mum to Dylan aged 4 ½ and Alice aged 2. I was looking for an activity to do with my daughter and I was attracted to ‘It’s Arty Time’ as she’d always enjoyed any art and craft we’d done at home. As a second child, Alice doesn’t naturally have her own set of friends because she just meets up with the friends we met when her brother was younger. So when we started coming to Arty Time I hoped she would meet and make friends with a new peer group.

Alice is starting to really look forward to coming to Arty Time each week. I try to encourage her to overcome any shyness she might feel by joining in fully myself. I see Arty Time as an activity I do with Alice, rather than sitting drinking tea with mum friends while she messes about with a paintbrush on her own. The more you put in the more you get out, so I tend to do less adult socialising here. The rest of the week she has to play while I’m busy, at home or wherever, but I devote this time to her every week.

Alice has learned her colours much quicker than her brother did, which may be because we talk about colours all the time while we are painting and sticking. Her fine motor skills have also improved since she’s been using pencils and paintbrushes regularly.

I love coming to Arty Time too. I enjoy spending time one-to-one with Alice in a structured way as well as meeting new people and their children. It’s made me more confident to do art and craft at home and I’ve borrowed some of the ideas to do with my older child. In fact it’s a testament to the success of Arty Time that my son loves coming too, during school holidays when the group still runs – even though it’s designed for toddlers, he gets really engaged with it.

I have a physical disability, so the building a group meets in is really important. Normally I find myself having to make requests and suggestions to improve accessibility when I first start using a space. One art group I tried going to with my son would not have been accessible to anybody – parent or child – with a wheelchair. But lots of thought has gone into the design of this building and it’s refreshing to see an accessible toilet and changing facility already here.

I don’t know if some people might be put off the idea of meeting in an ‘art space’ though, either because it’s a new kind of environment for them or because they are worried their toddler might break something. I remember when we first came being terrified that Alice would crash into a particularly delicate looking sculpture!

I would like to do some longer projects at Arty Time – things like papier-mache that we could glue the first week, paint the second week and varnish the third. I think the group could do with some more publicity too, since it relies mostly on word of mouth.

Story told by Susan Watson, Parent attending ‘It’s Arty Time’

Storycatch supported by City of York Council (Inclusive Arts, Arts & Culture) - July 2010