Winter HAF Scheme 2024-2025

Amazing Christmas and New Year HAF Creativity

We were really pleased to be funded by Department for Education and Wolverhampton City Council to provide a range of enriching art, craft and BSL experiences for young people aged 7-16 (25 with EHCP). The HAF scheme provides funded places for eligible families, and recognises the impact holiday clubs have on children and young people. These schemes help young people stay active, eat healthily, take part in enriching and engaging activities and reduce social isolation. 

We design our activities based on previous feedback from young people and foster a sense of community, inclusion and support. Our sessions are generally staffed by a sign language interpreter making them accessible to BSL users.

Chinese lanterns created by the young people adorn the foliage in the atrium at All Saints Action Network

We ran our sessions on 4 days, on 23rd December 2024 and then again on 2nd, 3rd and 4th of January 2025. We were hosted by All Saints Action Network, and would like to thank all our staff and volunteers for making this another memorable scheme. 

​Here's a little snapshot of what the young people got up to on our scheme...

Day 1 : Christmas Crafts and Healthy Lifestyles

We took the opportunity to do some Christmas Crafts as there were still 2 days left until the big day! This included pinecone trees, tea-light snowmen, decorated cardboard baubles and wood slices and drawings. Here's what the young people told us in feedback about the activity:

• I like making the baubles because it was fun.
• I felt happy and excited. I really enjoyed with RAW. I liked the Christmas activity.
• ​I found today activities really fun.​
• I felt happy, enjoyed and safe. I enjoyed the most the arts and crafts.

It is a requirement of our funding that we deliver some information about healthy lifestyle choices, including about diet, and so we thought it would be fun to encourage the children to make their own Christmas characters using fresh fruits - which they could then eat.

​Here's what they told us about this activity:

• I liked doing the fruit activity and I felt happy with RAW staff
• I enjoyed doing the Christmas activities and the food activities as you got to taste and design fruits.
• This is the best day!

Day 2 : Tee Shirts and Cardboard afternoon

The children had a morning of creating their own tee-shirts. As you can see there were all sorts of different designs.

This was followed by an afternoon learning about RAW's founder, artist Alex Vann's journey from a final year university project to Real Arts Workshops, via the Wolves in Wolves public art project, painting the mayor of Wolverhampton and publishing his book 'Joseph The Useful Cardboard Box' which led onto some cardboard crafts including about healthy eating etc. The message being that from a seemingly small idea can come a whole business idea! Here are a few pics...

Here's what the young people said about this day...

• It was a great activity, and I loved making the T-Shirt.
• The staff are the best and I loved making my T-Shirt.
• The activities were exquisite today.
• I enjoyed doing cardboard stuff today.
• I feel really happy doing everything. I enjoyed making T-shirt and cardboard. The staff are kind.
• I liked the mermaid cardboard decorating and the T-shirt that we own design.

Day 3 : wooden model making, optical illusions and snake drawings

This was a busy day of creativity! Starting with assembling wooden models of animals, insects and dinosaurs - a good test of following instructions, patience and fine motor skill work! 

This was followed by our volunteer Wayne leading some mind-bending optical illusion type drawings on gridded paper.

As 2025 is Chinese year of the snake, some young people tried out their sketching skills on a drawing of a King Cobra - aren't they amazing?

Here's what the young people told us about this day...

• I liked the snake drawing. I like doing the illusion drawing.
• I like building my own butterfly.
• It was very fun and exciting.
• I liked doing the optical illusion and liked snake drawing.
• I enjoyed making the wooden crafts because it was fun.
• I really like today, it was really fun. I really enjoyed everything today. I really enjoyed 3D shapes today. Was the best day for me.

Day 4: Chinese New Year and BSL / Deaf awareness and games

The young people took part in a wide range of Chinese New Year activities, icluding making lanterns (using baubles), snake origami, painting Chinese characters on a 'magic' disappearing paint mat and making good luck Spring Couplets.

Then our very own Deaf role model, Gary, explained about his own journey as a Deaf person growing up in a hearing environment, including, meeting ambassador for the Deaf community and level 2 signer, Princess Diana; campaigning for BSL recognition by the Government and being a TV presenter (even appearing in hit TV show Byker Grove). Followed by BSL game of bingo, which included vocabulary about physical activities.

Lunch time runarounds!

We are lucky to work at a venue with its own football pitches and our young people love to get some fresh air and exercise at lunch times.

Survey results

We always ask for online feedback on the last day of the scheme. This is anonymous and gives us an insight into what the young people enjoyed most, how they rate our staff and our activity and helps us build and plan for future activities.

As you can see, we get an almost 5 star rating, which we are very pleased with.

100% of participants said they enjoyed taking part ans 90% told us that they learnt something new.

90% told us that they felt more creative/ inspired after attending our scheme.

End of scheme feedback (including volunteers and parents):

Thank you all for your kindness and support
 
Amazing work all through the week. Hopefully the HAF doesn’t finish as these kids need a place to go and in some cases some food too
 
Real Arts Workshops are great as usual privilege to volunteer for them
 
Amazing!!😀
 
It is very nice when we get to go out to football also 👍