Children and Families

Pre-order the High Peak ABC here

We are excited to launch our beautiful ABC book made specially for the High Peak by our early years team, Karl Harris, Andrea Joseph and Lucy Jackson.

Launch day has a special treat – celebrated poet, Helen Mort is coming to perform a poetry reading of her own work and lend her support as one of our HPCA ambassadors.
Lucy Jackson with perform the song and get us all singing along, there will be an arts activity for little ones to enjoy, and Andrea Joseph will be signing copies of the book at the sales counter!

Pre-order your copy for collection on the day here.

How we made the book:
Our early years team has spent 2022 running workshops with babies and families in messy paint play and music making. Local artist, Andrea Joseph has used these babies’ first mark making to create 26 beautiful collages illustrating our special corner of the world. Karl Harris, our early years project manager then tasked participants at Project eARTh and Thomas Fields Care Home with the acrostic poems for each word, ably assisted by writer Lucy Jackson – who also created this foot-tapping, hip-swaying song with more children and families (click to listen).

Now that all the participants have had their copies of the book, it is now available on general sale for everyone to enjoy! At just £15 a copy, you get an rich book to treasure and at the same time supporting High Peak Community Arts to continue our mission.

A High Peak ABC

We can’t keep it to ourselves anymore!

Our early years team has come up trumps with a glorious High Peak ABC book and song (for general release Spring 2023).

The work has been in creation in messy arts and music sessions since the summer, and our early years project manager, Karl Harris, said “I’ve loved this project because usually babies and toddler sessions are all about process and experience, but this has been a chance to actually produce a finished artwork for the whole community to enjoy”. He has worked with artist and reknowned illustrator, Andrea Joseph and writer and musician, Lucy Jackson, to take the first paint marks and word ideas of a new generation and turn them into music and artwork which celebrates our beautiful corner of the world.

Email sophie@highpeakarts.org to join the waiting list for pre-ordering the book, which is going to print before Christmas, but won’t be delivered until mid-February at the earliest.

Our FREE early years music sessions continue with Lucy meeting a growing group of mums, dads and grandparents at Providence Church in New Mills on a Wednesday morning. These sessions are running until 14^th December – get in touch with Sophie (sophie@highpeakarts.org) to book, or to sign up for info about our plans for 2023.

This work has been funded by Arts Council England and The National Foundation for Youth Music.

A High Peak ABC

Welcome to the High Peak ABC song! Listen here:

HighPeakArts · The High Peak ABC

The High Peak ABC, book and song have been produced since May 2022 by our Early Years team, Karl, Andrea & Lucy.

Family Fun Friday! Bookmaking!

May 29th, and it’s hotter than Rome in the High Peak, so don’t forget your sunscreen as you enjoy our fifth installment of fun creative activities for families with young children from Karl, Frances & Margit our Early Years specialists – something to explore together during these extraordinary times!

Family Fun Fridays will take you on a journey of creating art with nature, marbling paper with items found in your kitchens, explore shadows and shapes, tell stories, make books and more. We hope that you all keep safe and healthy, entertained and happy! There will be five activities in total, being released one at a time on every Friday in May starting on Friday 1st May. We had project planned for families this summer, which is now on hold, but get in touch if you want to join us when we can meet again. Click here for week 1 , Click here for week 2, Click here for week 3 and Click here for week 4

This week our Family Fun Friday activity is Bookmaking!!

For our final activity we’re showing you how to make a simple book with craft items that you might find around the house. The original project first took the children through the language of books –

author, illustrator, front, back, spine

– and ended in them creating their own book to share with others.
Depending on the age-range we made various types of book but the zig-zag style, with it’s simple concertina fold, is by far the easiest to make and can easily be enjoyed by everyone.

If you have any rubber stamps or home printing kits in the cupboards then now’s the time to dig them out but not essential – pens, pencils, crayons, stickers, collage and any craft items can all used on their own.

To celebrate completing the books we made reading dens with the children so that they could enjoy them alongside a variety of favourite commercial books from the classroom book corner. Some of our dens were in cosy areas indoors and a few were even created in exciting locations outdoors. We hope that you’ve enjoyed our online version of the For the Love of Books project and we really look forward to working with you on our new Early Years and Families book making project when the time comes.

And here are Margit’s activity cards:

Click here to download a pdf

As always our Family Fun Friday activities were originally designed for young children and their families but they can easily be undertaken by all the household during the lockdown. Let us know how you get on with BOOKMAKING!

We hope that you’ve enjoyed our online version of the For the Love of Books project and we really look forward to working with you on our new Early Years and Families book making project when the time comes.

These activities have been supported by the Ragdoll Foundation.

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 1

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 2

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 3

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 4

Family Fun Friday! Shadows!

Back to glorious sunshine in the High Peak this week. But to help cheer up any dull moments, here is our fourth installment of fun creative activities for families with young children from Karl, Frances & Margit our Early Years specialists – something to explore together during these extraordinary times!

This week our Family Fun Friday activity is Shadow Puppets!

Playing with light and creating shadows at home is one of the simplest and most satisfying creative activities that we can all do. It’s lots of fun and is bursting with open-ended opportunities for children of all ages to explore.

Young children are particularly fascinated with exploring shapes and textures – watch how Frances creates interesting shapes with everyday objects from around the house in our first video.

Older ones enjoy creating characters than can ‘sing’ and ‘dance’ and ‘act’ in their own little performances. This character puppetry performance was undertaken during our original project, so this week we’ve also included the For The Love Of Books film that we made with Mark and Benn from Metro Media at St George’s C of E Primary School in New Mills. The children of the Early Years department at St George’s really enjoyed this activity and we hope that you give it a go at home during these exceptional times and beyond.

And here are Margit’s activity cards:

Click here to download a pdf

As always our Family Fun Friday activities were originally designed for young children and their families but they can easily be undertaken by all household members during the lockdown. Let us know how you get on with SHADOW PUPPETS!

These activities have been supported by the Ragdoll Foundation.

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 1

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 2

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 3

Family Fun Fridays! Marbling!

We hope you’re recovering from the blast of overnight freezes in the High Peak this week. To help you do that here is our third installment of fun creative activities for families with young children from Karl, Frances & Margit our Early Years specialists – something to explore together during these extraordinary times!

This week our Family Fun Friday activity is Marbling! We’ve adapted the original activity from For the Love of Books to use things found around the home. We were particularly inspired by a book called ‘Space Walk’ by Salina Yoon and in the project we went on to make an interactive creative play space for the children to explore life on another planet.

Marbling is instantly gratifying. Young children gasp and giggle in wonder at the beautiful transformation that occurs to a plain piece of paper as they dip it into the ink tray and adults marvel at the impressive results.

No two pieces of marbled paper are alike and there are lots of things you can make with the end product: bookmarks, greetings cards, backgrounds for further paintings – and, here, an other worldly planet to stick up on your wall or window!

And here are Margit’s activity cards:

Click here to download a pdf

These activities have been supported by the Ragdoll Foundation.

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 1

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 2

Family Fun Fridays! Hapa Zome!

Here is our second installment of fun creative activities for families with young children from Karl, Frances & Margit our Early Years specialists – something to explore together during these extraordinary times!

This week our Family Fun Friday activity is Hapa Zome! Originally devised by eco-artist India Flint, the technique has it roots in Japanese art but it’s now taken off as an educational and fun activity the world over.

Karl says this was one of the most popular activities during For the Love of Books, and we’re delighted to present you with a version to try out at home. Enjoy Frances’ film taking you through the process and Margit’s illustrated activity cards with step-by-step instructions for you to follow.

You can find out more about India Flint and her School of Nomad Arts here: https://www.indiaflint.com

Click here to download a pdf

These activities have been supported by the Ragdoll Foundation.

Click here for Family Fun Friday week 1

Family Fun Fridays! Wild Art!

We bring you some fun creative activities for families with young children from our team of Early Years specialists – something to explore together during these extraordinary times!

Family Fun Fridays will take you on a journey of creating art with nature, marbling paper with items found in your kitchens, explore shadows and shapes, tell stories, make books and more.

We hope that you all keep safe and healthy, entertained and happy!

There will be five activities in total, being released one each Friday in May, starting on Friday 1st May. We had project planned for families this summer, which is now on hold, but get in touch if you want to join us when we can meet again.

Click here for week 2

Click here for week 3

Click here for week 4

Click here for week 5

This week it’s ‘Wild Art’!!

There is an activity card to give you ideas and tell you what you need, and a photo card for inspiration, but first watch Frances’ video demo!

Click here to download a pdf

These activities have been supported by the Ragdoll Foundation.

For the Love of Books project manager Karl Harris tells us a bit more about designing the activities:

“When it became apparent that we would all be living under various lockdown conditions for some time I called Sophie at HPCA and we decided to put out some activities for people at home at the moment with young children. For the Love of Books is a tried and tested project, so I contacted two of the delivery artists, and we worked together to come up with a special version for these times. For the Love of Books took a series of age-range specific books and produced open-ended and fun creative activities from the content. These activities don’t replicate those sessions exactly but we were very fond of some of the ideas that we had devised so we looked more closely at some of them.”

About the team

Karl Harris, Frances Walker and Margit van der Zwan have worked together for the last three years on our very successful For The Love Of Books project, partnering with nurseries and other early years settings. Karl coordinated the production of the activities and said, “Our original roles and creative delivery skills were all thrown up in the air and Margit the musician became Margit the illustrator, Frances the creative play expert became Frances the video blog presenter, and I tackled my fear of technology head on and learnt how to use a computer far better than I’ve ever done before!”

About the activities

Karl says:

“We’ve designed Family Fun Fridays with activity cards and videos to engage and entertain all members of the household. Activities are open-ended, using items that can easily be found around the house and garden – or on your daily exercise outdoors. We want to big up our beautiful High Peak flora and fauna, and appreciate how the natural world can nurture the creativity and wellbeing of a new generation.

You won’t find any colouring-in sheets or word searches here but we will instead be taking you on a journey of creating art with nature, marbling paper with items found in your kitchens, explore shadows and shapes, tell stories, make books and more. We hope that you all keep safe and healthy, entertained and happy, and we really look forward to working with you all again on a new project that was originally scheduled for this summer but is now on hold for the time when we can meet again.”

Karl Harris | Margit van der Zwan | Frances Walker

For The Love Of Books

Our creative arts and literacy project for Early Years and Families – For The Love Of Books – ran from 2016 – 2019. Local artist Katy McCall led the initial pilot project before taking up the post of Family Learning Manager at Manchester Art Gallery. We then recruited local Early Years and Heritage Education expert Karl Harris to lead the project through another two year programme.

Karl worked with a variety of Creative Practitioners well versed in Early Years practice to develop the pilot project into a thematically linked 10 session suite of activities. The sessions are designed to give young children the opportunity to strengthen their literacy skills and interests through new and familiar creative activities. The open-ended activities range from unusual mark-making techniques using equipment sourced from the natural world, simple and advanced level print-making, sun-print photography, music appreciation and music-making, circle games with songs and rhymes, shadow puppetry, light and colour play, 3-D construction, multi-sensory activities, Forest School sessions and more. The activities have been developed and delivered by artists Daisy Strang, Beth Bishop, Frances Walker and Margit van der Zwan with Karl providing strategic age-range specific support. Links were also forged with Alison Hill (DCC Community Engagement Officer and 0-5 Co-ordinator for High Peak and North Dales) to support with identifying new and varied settings to host the project across the district. A video showcasing one of the settings from Y1 was commissioned from Metromedia Communications Ltd.

Y1 saw the project return to the three settings that had been involved in the pilot project whilst Y2 branched out into pastures new. The first of these settings was Little Stars Glossop – a private day nursery in Hadfield – who hosted the project in the Autumn Term and our Ragdoll Foundation funding was enhanced and supported by a local crowdfunder campaign. A community event held at Lymefield Garden Centre and a donation from Tarmac (???) has provided further support. The final two settings for the project will be Buxton Nursery and Bradwell Pre-School where project delivery commences in the coming weeks. Many thanks to everyone who has funded, supported and worked on our first Early Years arts project.