‘Great fun – thank you!’

‘Kids loved it, great activities’

‘We come every year and this is our favourite part of the festival’

Over the last six years, we’ve been regulars at delivering the ‘Useful and Beautiful’ making tent at the Barbican’s Walthamstow Garden Party Festival. For 2018, we set the theme of ‘Body Builders’, the idea being to create ‘body extensions’ to adorn festival goers.

Instead of the usual fairy wings, our mission was to take this a step further.  This resulted in bamboo stilts, tri-plane headresses, turning feet into hooves and swishing through the park with new animal tails. We invited local makers and members of the workshop to respond to the theme, each working with a team of young people to deliver the activities over the weekend.

This year we also partnered with Create Jobs, a fantastic programme supporting young people into the creative industries.  In the weeks leading up to the festival, we hosted a set design programme for a group aged 16 – 25 at the workshop, where they worked with resident set designer Katie Fotis to design and build a special photobooth where people could be photographed in their ‘body extension’ and a series of props to decorate the tent.

Makers who delivered the eight fun and playful activities over the weekend included Laura Blake, Lola Lely, Christina French, Scribble and Smudge, Queenie and Ted, Made By Ore, Patrick King, and Enrique Melin.