Across 2023/24 we have facilitated a combination of face to face and online All About Me Creative Experiences for care experienced children and young people and their supporting adults, in partnership with Gateshead Council and funded by the Integrated Care Board. Each child and their adult took part in over 14 hours of creative therapeutic activities in a group setting, facilitated by Associate Artists and Pastoral Support Workers.

More than 11,000 people have accessed our Creative Life Story Work website since we launched it in November 2022, with the aim of helping people deliver better life story work for children and young people. More than 600 people are Creative Life Story Work members, giving them access to all the resources on the website and 12 Live Classrooms per year.

Arts Council England commissioned Blue Cabin to facilitate a national action research programme exploring cultural and creative education for care-experienced children and young people. Together, virtual schools and cultural organisations have been undertaking training and delivering projects to discover how cultural and creative partners can best serve care-experienced children and young people.  This pilot year has funded four partnerships in Leicestershire, Norfolk, North Yorkshire and Brighton and Hove.

Through Arts Award we support care-experienced children and young people to achieve a national qualification whilst developing their confidence and skills in creativity, communication and leadership. We’ve recently launched a range of packages for virtual schools, helping them support care experienced children and young people to achieve Arts Award accreditation.

In December 2022, Blue Cabin and Nepacs were awarded funding by the National Lottery Community Fund to deliver a three-year creative arts programme with care-experienced young men serving sentences at HMP Deerbolt in County Durham. Year one of Creative Aid is now complete and 10 ‘lads’ (the term we use to describe Creative Aid participants, preferred by the participants themselves) have explored artforms including poetry, scriptwriting, typography, graphic design and portraits with visiting artists.

We’ve continued our partnership with Darlington Virtual School and, in  2023/24, 47 children and 20 of their supporting adults have taken part in creative experiences. Family events held at venues including Theatre Hullabaloo and Raby Castle have included a show, such as Thumbelina or Fireside Stories with Santa, followed by creative activities led by our Associate Artists. Four young people achieved their Arts Award Explore after learning how to make animated short films during a summer school with Associate Artist, Laura Degnan.

Every baby and child aged five years or younger, who is in care in Darlington, has been given a pack of free music-making resources to help them form an attachment with their foster carers. This is part of This is the Place, our programme of music-making for children aged 0 to 5, alongside their foster carers. We delivered more than 65 hours of regular music sessions for babies aged 0 to five (207 engagements) and their carers (179 engagements), alongside training for foster carers and council staff, to allow music-making to continue at home. We also worked with musicians, Carol Bowden and Katie Doherty, to develop a bank of free, early years music resources which is available on our website. In 2024, This is the Place will expand into Redcar & Cleveland.