PLAYgroup

PLAYgroup is a creative befriending project that sees local mothers befriending newly arrived mothers through creative sessions with highly skilled professional artists.

Each session is cross-artform, co-delivered by two artists of different disciplines. Building relationships and aiming to develop the newly arrived mothers’ confidence, develop relationships with local mothers and children and enabling them to access local family provision independently; engaging them in high quality arts activity and providing access to further local arts and family opportunities.

The participants involved are of many different cultures, faiths and ethnic groups, this project uses the commonalities of parenting young children, discovering and learning new things through the arts and living in the same community to unite them.

ESOL is an integral part of the PLAYgroup model. A specialist ESOL practitioner not only supports the creative delivery of the project, but also leads a half hour session prior to the creative content to introduce the themes and vocabulary that will be later explored by the artists.

Befriending is the heart of PLAYgroup and we are guided by 5 key principles:

1. Providing creative opportunities for ‘newly arrived’ mothers and ‘local’ mothers to build relationships.  

2. Engaging in cross-art form collaboration through a range of modalities (music, movement, visual arts). 

3. Connecting to and building strong partnerships with schools/community settings and their teachers/facilitators.

4. Incorporating ESOL into PLAYgroup sessions, to make learning English accessible and fun. 

5. Creating creative sessions that are accessible for all. Using nonverbal descriptions, demonstrating by doing.  

PLAYgroup is usually delivered weekly in 4-6 week blocks. Sessions can accommodate five newly arrived mothers and their children and five local mothers and their children. Each session is an hour and a half in duration, with half an hour dedicated to ESOL specifically for the newly arrived mothers followed by an hour long creative session. We then end each session with a more social time for refreshments (provided by us!) and chatting afterwards.