From Art Therapy to Fishing, barn dancing to Tesco tokens, Lending SPACE on tour to Neurodiversity Week Celebrations, March was another busy month at SPACE. These are just a few of our highlights!
Making time for you
The first of our new Art Therapy courses specially designed for Parents and Carers took place this month. Facilitated by a registered art therapist the group spent a number of weeks together in a supportive, non-judgmental space, playing with and making art whilst relaxing and making time for themselves. The group was a huge success with everyone absolutely unanimous in their verdict that they didn’t want the sessions to end.
“Thank you for opening my eyes to this experience it has been very special.”
We are running another course starting after the Easter holidays and are really looking forward to further increasing the range of opportunities we provide for parents and carers to get together so please email us at events@spaceherts.org.uk with any suggestions!
Springing into our summer events schedule
Yay! Fishing is back! After a winter break we were excited to be back at Manor Farm Lakes for our first Introduction to Fishing of the season. The fish must have missed us as much as we’ve missed them as they put on a fabulous show. Perch, Bream, Rudd, Roach all put in an appearance and all of our intrepid anglers enjoyed a satisfying number of catches. Even the weather played ball. It’s great to be back and we can’t wait for all the sessions we have lined up for the rest of the year now.
Hot on the heels of fishing we have many more seasonal favourites coming back into our regular Spring and Summer schedules over the coming months with golf, watersports, animal encounters and boat trips all to look forward to name just a few. Of course all of this is in addition to our already packed schedule of over 20 activities each month to choose from – there’s something for everyone from roller skating to climbing, graffiti to aerial gymnastics, online cooking to therapeutic farming and so much more.
Community Fundraising Heroes
We can’t say it often enough – without the support and commitment of all of you raising money for SPACE we simply couldn’t do what we do.
The a cappella vocal group From The Top presented ‘Mamma Mia’ with songs and words for Mother’s Day including poetry reading and folksongs raising a brilliant £311.35 for SPACE. Our team thoroughly enjoyed themselves at the concert and were blown away by everyone’s generosity.
“From the Top have really enjoyed collaborating with SPACE to put on our Mother’s Day concert. We were delighted to make SPACE our chosen charity. One of our members has first-hand experience of how much help SPACE can offer, as a grandparent whose grandson has attended many SPACE events and whose family have benefited from the support groups and talks they offer.”
A big thank you as well to Tesco and all the local Tesco shoppers! You kindly selected SPACE to receive much-needed funds by voting for us in stores including Rickmansworth, Ware, Clifton Express and more between October 2023 to January 2024. As a result we received community grants as part of Tesco’s Stronger Starts scheme totalling £3,500 to help us to continue to deliver the work we do.
The Rotary Club of St Albans Verulamium also supported SPACE with a very generous donation of £1,000 after raising money for us at their Barn Dance earlier in the year. From do-si-dos to promenades the SPACE team danced the night away and were very grateful to everyone who partnered with them and their many left feet! We were made to feel extremely welcome and it was a huge amount of fun with lots of laughter and great company.
Workshops on-demand
The first school term of 2024 saw over 3,200 parents and carers register to take part in our workshops and courses. They could all do safe in the knowledge that if for some reason life took over and they weren’t able to participate in real-time they would be sent a recording of the workshop which is available for them to watch for 7 days. We have over 40 workshops and 7 courses running this upcoming term and they are filling up fast – don’t miss out on booking your space today.
“The trainers were very approachable, professional and friendly. The sessions were really informative and I felt supported with my questions and concerns. Thank you.”
Neurodiversity Celebrations
One of our favourite things is going out and visiting schools, settings and other charities and organisations in our local community. A big thank you to Southfield School for hosting our mobile Lending SPACE, enabling us to showcase some of the types of resources and equipment available to borrow from our SEND lending library – and of course the parents and carers who were there were able to borrow on the spot. We had a great morning trying out all the different things, we even had a wonderful (and daring!) demonstration of the giant spinning top. Parents and carers left with arms and cars full of resources.
We had a great day at Tesco HQ as part of Neurodiversity Celebration Week – we met so many Tesco employees and it was a pleasure to help and advise so many people on how to help create neurodiverse friendly workspaces. And of course many of the employees are also parents and carers who were so kind and positive about the support they get from us with lovely feedback such as ‘you are lifesavers’ and ‘we are in awe of how much you do and how passionate you are’.
We could also be found at Croxley Green Library as part of the Croxley Green Parish Council weekend of celebrations for Neurodiversity Celebration Week. So many families came to join us and explore our sensory area. We had spinning, balancing, jumping, rolling, hiding, crawling and of course plenty of giggles. The library had lots of things to do, from rock painting, a Lego table, colouring, and some lovely little books being made celebrating differences and who we are. All in all it was a wonderful way to celebrate.
We can’t wait to see what is around the corner in April – do join us.
