Mayor Visit and Informative Art

Sponsor’s and Mayor’s Visit
Our music/social meeting group has been growing slowly and lots of new ideas have been developing since our lottery grant in December 2016. We had a wonderful Christmas party, a visit from Santa, presents, and everyone had a happy time.
In January 2017, we had a visit from another of our sponsors M6Toll. Joanne and Sheena came to visit us on 26th January 2017. They could see how everyone was enjoying themselves, singing/dancing and could see our members were becoming confident and the friendships that have been developing over time. It was a happy and enjoyable meeting, Sheena and Joanne were pleased the members had the opportunity to express themselves through music/dancing and their grant to us helped this to happen. They were so impressed, they gave us another £500 grant to help our group continue. We have a lovely photo of Joanne and members of our group receiving the cheque.
In March 2017, we had a visit from the Mayor of Tamworth, Ken Norchi. He was a friendly and very interested person. He stayed 2 hours and was enjoying interacting with all our members, who felt at ease with him being at the group and a ‘new’ face.
The Mayor could see our members were happy and relaxed with their normal session. He was very interested in seeing some members demonstrating how they were able to play some tunes on a keyboard, with the help of coloured stickers on the keys and guidance from our music tutor and musician Darren Clarke of Black Sugar recordings. We have a lovely photograph showing our member Jonathan and Darren and the Mayor looking on (below). We are encouraging all our members to have the opportunity to play musical instruments and be part of our group, showing their different talents, with support and guidance.
Our aim is to put on a performance this year to show how they are enjoying being part of our group and how it is helping them to have the opportunity to socialise and grow in confidence in their chosen music or dancing talents in a safe and happy environment.
Our Art Group
With the help of the lottery grant, we have been able to expand our sessions to an art group, which is developing slowly in a calm and relaxed environment, a very important factor to help our members feel they belong, and where confidence and friendships can grow, whilst encouraging each other.
The lottery grant has enabled us to purchase a range of different materials, to give our members a choice to experience working with different paints/materials. An example of this was seen by a new member of our group. She had never used charcoal, and liked the ‘feel’ of a piece of charcoal and wanted to try it. She chose from a wide selection of pictures to draw an owl. Then encouraged to colour it in using pastel crayons, which she liked the ‘feel’ of too. It gave her the opportunity to experience different textures, colours doing something she enjoys very much.
We have some lovely photos of art work done by our members of Jellyfish(above). Also, the pictures of eyes(below). This was very interesting, encouraging our members to draw eyes and look at each other to see the shapes and colours of other people’s eyes. This was difficult for our members, as adults with learning/sensory disabilities find it is often a challenge to make eye contact with people. This was a very interesting session which produced some wonderful work as the outcome.
The photos(above) shows the talent of some of our members when drawing/painting rooftops. Showing perspective,distance when looking at rooftops. Another interesting photo (below) called Spunk Art, machine parts-industrial artwork, which our member really enjoyed doing and also likes machines and enjoys steam trains.
The Mayor of Tamworth was very impressed when he was shown a numbers of pictures of artwork done by one of our members. Our aim is to have an exhibition of our member’s work to show their wonderful talent.
Hi Yvonne,truly amazing art work,your group are extremely talented in what they are doing,happy and content,you just cannot buy these gifts !!!