Producing what we Consume

Yesterday we had a wonderful time hosting a community play day, alongside women from the community. It’s brilliant to see how the women have grown in confidence & can see their skills & capacities. 

It all started last May, when we created Well Good Socials as an open social space in the function room of a pub. Luckily one of the women who worked behind the bar decided to give it a whirl & she brought her mates along.

It didn’t take long before we all started to chat about what we cared about & before you knew it, it had become a community organising space.

The women were fed up with the local offer during the holidays as part of Holiday Activities Fund – there was little that they felt was accessible, both in terms of location or ability to cater for whole families. They also wanted to be involved. ‘Our kids are always in school, be better to spend the money, helping us to do stuff together.’

So that’s what we set out to do. Make our own. 

Last summer we tried out community play days and learned a lot.  It was great fun with tie dying in the park, sports day and the end of summer festival being particular highlights. We ran it on a shoe string budget and managed to get some Brighter Boroughs Funding for an end of summer trip. 

At the end of the summer the women decided that yes, we can do this, so they did it again in October. 

So this week was the first go at doing something that could qualify for holiday activities fund cash. We extended the hours and brought in some extra resource to help with planning. We’d discovered Vera, who lives locally. An octogenarian who happened to set up all the Wigan youth clubs back in the day. She offered to coach the women and provided some mentor support. We met with the HAF team who very generously offered us some flexible funding to try out 4 days to see if we might want to take on the summer challenge (of course we do 😉) so we had more money to play with. 

Tuesday was the first day & it was amazing. Junk modelling, making bubbles & a lunch provided by a home grown catering business. 75 children joined in with their parents, carers, aunties, uncles & neighbours. 

We discreetly asked people if they accessed free school meals & that helped us work out that we can offer free to everyone play with the grant so that we might attract families who have free school meals. We stuck a donation box near the buffet table and there was £28 in there by the end of the session. Brilliant.

We shared plans for a play container in the park over summer & children & adults were well excited- to be able to do things together. Making memories of having fun together during tough times is so important. 

Tomorrow at the next play day we have a young peoples planning group to begin thinking about the type of activities we might want to wrap around the family summer play. We already know that fishing and boxing are high up on the list.

Watching the community produce what it consumes is a real joy 💕