For the past 10 years our well-respected youth arts charity has been running an alternative education programme based around creative educational activities. The sessions take place during term-time at the Soft Touch Arts centre on New Walk which has full disabled access and offers an inspiring and safe environment for children to learn. Students have the opportunity to complete an Arts Award as part of the offer. Students aged from 9 upwards with an interest in art, music, video, craft, fashion or anything creative get a tailored package of support either in small groups or on a one-to-one basis with our skilled staff team. Here’s an example of how we work in partnership with Ellesmere College.
Ellesmere is committed to giving their students opportunities to experience different environments and exciting ways of learning. Two different groups of students attend a half-day weekly music session and a full day weekly café/enterprise session. The music session enables them to play and record music together in our well-equipped music studio, learning how to play different instruments, experiment with technology, count beats, learn lyrics and work as a group to play and perform music. The café/cooking session enables a small group of students to learn cooking, catering and customer service skills in a real café environment every Wednesday. Some students also go on to volunteer to help in the café over the school holidays and have the opportunity to join other after school creative projects. Here’s a short film showing students helping to run our Wednesday lunchtime cafe https://www.soft-touch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/softtouchcooking.mp4
We also provide one to one sessions which are tailored to individual needs and we work with schools and support staff to provide individual learning plans and activities. We offer both short respite activities as well as continuous full-year or full-term session slots for individuals.
If you would like to refer a young person please contact Joe Crofton – joe@soft-touch.org.uk
