The Story Box at Home

We love our Story Box events full of storytelling, games and crafts, but since the Covid-19 restrictions were introduced in March we haven’t been able to host them in our favourite venues across the region.

So it’s been a good week for us as we launched The Story Box at Home for 4-11 year olds. 

Families were able to pick up a free Creative Spaces Co. tote bag with a book for the whole family to enjoy plus an activity pack with all the things you’d expect from one of our events - crafts, bubbles and a sweet treat!

We gifted books and activity packs to 101 families working with The Positivitree at Bloom Building, Everyone’s Aigburth, Walton Vale Community Shop and The Drive Centre.

A really big thank you to Onward Homes, OrstedUK and Torus Foundation for helping us make it happen, as well as News From Nowhere who helped us get such a good deal on all those books!

You can now watch our Story Box picks on our facebook page and youtube channel featuring How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers, Look Up! By Nathan Bryon, Grandad's Island by Benji Davies and Ruby's Worry by Tom Percival all performed with The Bookworm Players.

It was lovely to meet so many families across Merseyside, we hope you’re enjoying your new books and have had lots of fun with your activity packs.

@createspacesco we had so much fun with our packs! We covered the house in homemade decorations and the children love their books, thank you! pic.twitter.com/MIIKCqqHgB

— Mrs B (@lovesmypickles) October 31, 2020

Big thank you to @createspacesco for our Halloween activity packs, loads of fun & we are looking forward to reading the book at bedtime 👻🎃📚 pic.twitter.com/5acP9rIVAL

— Hayley Taylor (@haylestayl) October 31, 2020

@createspacesco Thanku so much we love them 🍂👻🎃 pic.twitter.com/zbBtvCrZmJ

— ellen mcgrath (@ellenmcgrath11) October 29, 2020

Someone is enjoying their @createspacesco #StoryBoxatHome pic.twitter.com/bXkmtJHagq

— Claire Whitehurst (@Mybelle79) October 28, 2020

Writing for the Soul

In mid-March when many of us were beginning to social distance from friends and family we had an idea to bring people together through the written word; as well as provide a creative outlet amongst the chaos. And so, Writing for the Soul was created; a Liverpool Region zine for people to share stories, poems, musings & more from our collective isolation.

We put a call out on social media for new writing and 12 people submitted a collection of short stories, poems and musings; reflecting on life at the beginning of the UK lockdown.

To help bring it all together we worked with local artist Louis Tuckman to create the beautiful design and Ronnie Hughes of a sense of place to co-edit.

We hope you find comfort in these pages of writings from the soul, and that you know you’re not alone in your loneliness. And maybe you’ll want to write something yourself...

Read it online here.

Good Times at Thirlmere Park

Over the next year we’ll be spending time on Thirlmere Park, planting wildflowers with the Scouse Flowerhouse, hosting clean-ups and bringing more Good Times to a great pocket park in Everton; we’ll be working with local residents and fellow community organisations to make it happen.

This is off the back of our first Good Times event over the summer, full of games, yoga, storytelling, screen-printing and bubbles in a great hidden space.

Since then we’ve worked with local residents and young people from Catch 22’s National Citizens Service project to litter pick, helping to make a great park even better; so kids can play, neighbours can meet and we can all enjoy spending time outdoors.

Our next couple of community clean-up events will be on Sunday 6 October and on Sunday 3 November at 11am followed by hot drinks and light refreshments at Kitty’s Launderette, we hope you can make it!

Lottery Win for Creative Spaces Co.

Creative Spaces Co. has been awarded £10,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund to deliver a series of arts and culture events across Liverpool over the next year!

Creative Spaces Co. Founder and Managing Director Rachael O’Byrne said “Receiving this funding is a great boost to the work we’re doing across Liverpool and will enable us to make even more good things happen!”

Over the next 12 months the social business will be delivering a number of Story Box and Good Times events in spaces across North Liverpool.