Inside Out Family Fun Day

I was contacted by Vineyard Church a couple of months ago about a project they run in the summer on Oakwood Hill Estate called "Inside Out" when they "take the church out of the building" and provide help with DIY and gardening to those living on the estate who would like it. The week rounds off with a Family Fun Day held out on the recreation ground on the Saturday. It was the Fun Day that I was asked if I would be interested in collaborating on. So RVHS Community Arts helped out in a couple of ways. Firstly we provided a Street Dance Practitioner (Ian Black) to run drop-in lessons on how to bust some funky street dance moves and secondly I worked alongside Dave Ross from Vineyard as well as a host of young volunteers from St Mary's Church to run the "Cre8" tent where people could have temporary tattoos, paint a tile, mug or tea-light holder, try their hand at spray painting using stencils and even leave their mark on a specially-made graffiti wall.

Arriving at the recreation ground at 10.30am there was already a hub of activity with lots of people mucking in to put up tents and stalls, inflate giant human-football and bouncy castles and also erect the main stage and sound-check with the bands. By 1pm we were ready to go and soon the place was buzzing with lots of people. We had a steady and constant stream of people coming through the cre8 tent and it was fab to see so many people finding ways to express themselves creatively. I noticed a huge amount of young people decorated their tiles and mugs specifically for someone that they loved: parents/grandparents/friends... and lots of the patterns/pictures included sunshine, rainbows and flowers... it's nice to have a positive story about young people to tell when the papers are always so full of negativity.

So all in all I think lots of fun was had by everyone who came down to the rec. ground on Saturday and I look forward to more collaborative work with the guys at Vineyard in the future!