An Inkwell Revolution

Revolution Electric Press invites Inkwell to run

Children’s Craft Week for half term

Revolution is a successful bar and restaurant chain with several individually designed premises across the UK. Revolution Leeds is situated in the Electric Press building in the heart of Leeds Civic Quarter right next to Millenium Square and the Leeds Museum, recently refurbished, the bar boasts a beautiful and eclectic interior with comfy seating and a homely feel.

Revolution Electric Press already has a very child friendly policy offering a tasty full children’s menu and a Children’s Craft Day every Sunday. To help develop these services further, Daisy Allwright (manager at Electric Press) suggested teaming up to offer a whole week of activities over the half term break while also supporting and raising money for Leeds Mind and Inkwell. We were honoured to be chosen to be part of this project and Daisy explained it was due to ‘the important work we do in raising awareness of mental health issues, supporting local communities and our creative expertise’. Donations raised at the event would be very kindly match funded by the company.

Five Inkwell volunteers and five Revolution bar staff teamed together to provide a week long kids craft activity programme which included giant pom pom making, lantern making, comic books and robot building. Our volunteers who have experience in facilitating craft sessions at Inkwell and run the Art Monsters Saturday Club led and planned the workshops. All the staff at Revolution really got behind the project too and volunteered their time, promoted the event and made donations to help make the week a success.

Art Monsters at Inkwell is a monthly kids workshop on the last Saturday of every month that is specially designed for children aged 6-12. The themed activities are often based on what interests children at the time and run alongside the schools national curriculum.

The Electric Press building covers a large expanse on several floors and it was the dance floor that doubled up as the craft area which was decorated with pretty bunting and old retro school tables and chairs. Children of all ages dropped in and got their hands dirty creating wonderful pieces of art. Not surprisingly, the adults seemed to get rather involved in making stuff too, proving that creativity is all inclusive and really is good for the soul!

The pom pom and lantern making sessions at the beginning of the week helped create beautiful decorations that adorned the space for the entire event.

Thursdays Comic book session was a hive of creativity and imagination. Stories ranging from ‘The Butterfly’ to ‘The Uncontrollable Scribble’ were all written and illustrated by the children.

The craft week ended with Fridays robot building session: pots, string, cardboard, lollypop sticks, recycled lids and bottle tops were all used to create mini robots and an army of larger robots that the children carefully decorated.

The week was a great success and we all thoroughly enjoyed working with Daisy and the team at Revolution. We would like to really thank Revolution for providing us with this opportunity to help raise funds and promote our services in the heart of the city centre. A grand total of £325 was raised this week through craft activities and the generosity of Revolution match funding the amount collected. Fundraising is an important aspect to our work and money raised at such events helps us to continue to provide support and activities to people experiencing mental health difficulties, break down stigma and bring communities together.

Possible plans to run a similar project in the summer have already been discussed and we look forward to seeing the team at Electric Press again soon. We would like to say a huge thank you to the staff at Revolution, our volunteers and all the children and families who came down and supported us.

Amanda Burton
Inkwell Development Worker