A gentle peaceful creative space where children can explore their own creativity. An Aladdin's cave of wonder .Beautiful varied art supplies to combine with recycled materials. Professional unobtrusive support. Beautifully prepped projects designed to scaffold and give a helping hand to those who might initialy struggle to get going. Set in my studio there are lots of inspirational books too. A place where adults can tap back into their inner child and wonder. Space to work large scale and collaboratively on bigger projects. Themed arty parties also are an option .

Project Summary: A workshop held at the Stockport Art Gallery in conjunction with Tracy's "Eye Candy For The Soul" show. Re-using old broken toys to create something new, these fantastic pieces were created by a very enthusiastic group of children, parents and grandparents.

They were exhibited alongside Tracy's "Big Friendly Robot" in her "Eye Candy For The Soul" show and also went on tour with "Big Friendly Robot" to a few local libraries. The pieces brought back memories to children and adults, causing conversation, sharing memories of childhood but also bringing attention to the ongoing use of plastics to make what become useless throw-away items.

Project Summary: After looking at posters and pictures of various mini-beasts using magnifying glasses, the children at All Saints school in Marple were asked to design their own unique mini-beast that would also become part of a collaborative mural.

Project Summary: Using chalk or oil pastels on white or black paper, children age 4 and 5 years old created an independent spiral snail design referencing the school's giant African pet snail, Susan, and recurring spiral shapes found in Nature. The pieces were then mounted and displayed all together for an eye-catching display.

A collaborative project inviting the children to feel free to express themselves. We provided huge pieces of white paper on the tables.

Starting with big brushes and black ink . We asked them to draw continuous wiggly lines moving around the table their lines crossing over one another. They loved doing this.

Then we provided them with all kinds of art materials to try out in a very free and non intimidating way. Filling in the shapes , smudging, scribbling, painting colours Allowing them to get messy no limits.

They then collaged painted papers on top building up lots of layers of texture and colour.

One child exclaimed with great excitement how Mad it all was and so they added the word to the painting as a final touch. The children absolutely loved doing this , they were so excited and the sound in the room was joyful. They then all created paper bag masks and we went outside in the street and pinned up the Mad painting . Great fun .

Sometimes when working in a creative environment with children it feels like a session can go out of control, all it really is is children feeling really free

To firstly play ,experiment and also to push boundaries. So it is up to the mentor to allow that freedom and how far to take it then gentle redirect when It feels it is getting a little crazy.

This started off with me providing them with a box of beautiful hand painted buildings that make up a town created lovingly in a weekly art and wellbeing session by adults.

They were given to the children to build the town. There was an older child of 10 and two 5 year olds.The older taking a leadership direction role.

This was wonderful as they decided where things went and started a dialogue, their imagination running free.

We put down a sheet of blue paper for water and green for the park.

They arranged the buildings in an orderly fashion around the edge of the table.

I gave them a box of  fake flowers to create gardens and pom poms to add colour and details.

Whilst helping other children with their projects the three building the town got quite carried away. The older girl asked for permission to give the younger two some unicorn shaped confetti to sprinkle on the town. When offered to them squeals of excitement erupted.

They then found other boxes of confetti, gem stones , various crafting bits and bobs around the studio and started to empty them all over the town.

They were laughing and joyful doing this, the letting go , the freedom to just throw all of these brightly coloured items onto the town. The older girl trying to gently hold the two younger ones back without much success .

Another child in the session said ‘it looked like a unicorn had thrown up all over it ‘ the whole sight of it attracting lots of interest.

It actually looked beautiful it was an example of answering to an urge of what many of us might feel but hold back from doing. There was no holding back here.

I said to them,’ you do realise you are now going to have to sort all of this out.’

They momentarily looked shocked as if I might be cross with them.

One little girl did start to pick out glass gems and put them in a basket, another started doing the same with the pom poms, so after the freedom of expression they were being asked to reverse the process by tidying up.

They obeyed me but in this case I did not want it to seem at all like they were being punished I said to them, it was ok and that it actually looked very beautiful and thank you for helping me start to re organise but now will go and do something else.

We left the ‘installation’ there.

I later sat down to observe , I started to tidy by picking out similar objects, re-organising and it felt a little bit like looking for shells on a beach or in rock pools for tiny creatures, it was therapeutic to sort through the sparkly items.

Pleasing to the eye.

So this can actually be a continued activity of constantly sorting and organising and grouping by colour, or object etc.

Some people love to sort and organise things it is actually therapeutic snd aids concentration and focus.