Create a Crest

As the first lockdown hit in March 2020, the Greater Creative project was about to embark on an extensive summer activity programme.

Families were tasked to make a household crest on a leather hard piece of clay. Working party members scattered across the parish (in every village/hamlet) used their driveways as tile collection and tile completion deposits. For those shielding, tiles were delivered in sanitised bags by members of the working party.

In a community of 2,300 households, 306 residents and families brought their completed family crests back to be fired and to be part of the village public memorial pieces. We installed the pieces before Christmas 2020, one board in each village.

Winter Woodland

Half-term workshops

Greater Creative ran two full days of workshops with children aged between 4-11 years old. A total of 38 children attended over the two days! The first workshop was with Lisa Green who helped the groups create their very own robot wind chimes all of the children loved making the robots from up-cyled materials. The children were encouraged to design and then create their robot from scratch meaning each robot was very different.

Our second workshop was with Jayne and Laura, who helped the children made dream catchers through weaving various materials to create their designs. Some of the group created their own techniques to weave and construct them with amazing results! The group also had time to make bird feeders using apples and seeds. The children were all proud of their creations and excited to hang them in their gardens! Given the recent cold weather we bet the birds were pretty excited too!

Intergenerational workshops

With the Newton Community Association, residents from Newton and across the parish (a few from over the hill in South Normanton too!) came together with their sewing machines and scissors to create some community bunting for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

Local crafter extraordinaire Hayley Pell from ‘Feeling Crafty’, came to facilitate us on her first community crafty session. . . . and it was a blast. The Newton Church was packed, we listed to music, slurped cuppas, had a beasty scone, nattered and did a lotta cutting and sewing triangles together.