About Creative Play

The overarching aim of the project is to explore the relationship between creativity and play with practitioners and to inspire and enable children and young people take creative ownership of the spaces in which they play. Creative Play Journeys brings community artists, playworkers and people who work with children, together with children and young people in their leisure time.

Creative Play Journeys provide:
Creative Opportunity over 200 young people and 34 practitioners are involved with Creative Play Journeys each year

Creative Confidence the project introduces children and young people to new creative ideas and encourages them to flex their creative muscles. At the same time it helps practitioners cultivate their own creative practice.

Creative Partnership working in partnership with the practitioners artists support and encourage creative practice. Each year a group of young people called FUNK (The Film Us Now Krew) work in partnership with the artists and Play Torbay to document and develop the project.

Over the course of 7 months, participants who support the wide variety of groups, ranging in size from 10 and up to 40 young people, are offered comprehensive professional development. This includes the opportunity of workshops, a two day
training course and two full day sessions where artists work alongside them and provide a variety of tools and materials to make it work!

The project is devised and coordinated by Play Torbay, an independent charity whose primary purpose is to raise awareness of the importance of play in children’s lives and provide a range of free accessible opportunities to play. Creative Play Journeys is a three year project funded through the National Lottery Playful Ideas programme.

Community artists have a natural understanding about the need to support and encourage creativity and not to take over. Playworkers can be less confident and are supported by the artists. They are also inspired by the imaginative responses of children they know well and the way they respond to the challenges. Creative Play Journeys will develop the project to include staff training before, during and after the creative arts involvement. The intention is to build this into playworkers’ training as part of their continuing professional development.