A Ticket To Thrive from Lots of Lovely Art
Welcome to our #TicketToThrive campaign. We believe wholeheartedly that doing something creative with your child will benefit you both. We’ve asked some other people who believe in the power of creativity to talk a little about a benefit they have seen when families get creative, and to suggest a simple activity that you can do at home. Today, we hear from Selina and Alara, founders of Lots of Lovely Art.
Tell us about Lots of Lovely Art: Lots of Lovely Art started off as an art studio, Cafe, Children’s Design shop and Library for families in Istanbul. I owned and ran it for more than 12 years, and it created a wonderful sense of community, and love of art and books in the local and ex-pat families we catered for.
Two years ago we decided to move our family (two young daughters) back to the UK due to the volatile political situation in Turkey and our move was quite sudden and unplanned ;)
Here I began to teach after school clubs in schools and other workshops, but was frustrated at how few children I could reach as just one person… My sister in law Selina is an incredibly talented graphic designer and we have always worked together, and we came up with the idea of the boxes — so that we could provide an art studio experience in everyone’s homes! Seli’s amazing skills as a designer and my experience teaching art for close to 15 years, made it a match made in heaven! We launched at the Babyccino Christmas fair last December, and it has been a whirlwind since then!
Ticket To Thrive is all about encouraging families to do something creative together. What do families and children gain from your art boxes? LoLA box is brilliant to encourage creativity at home — either for older children to be independently creative (there is everything they need in the box) or for families to be creative together… If anything, we find parents are looking for an excuse to find fun and creative things to do with their children, and the LoLA box pretty much spoon feeds it to them, taking away the stress of coming up with all the ideas and materials.
One of my favourite stories is of a mum who came back to us telling us that she was going through a difficult divorce and had begun “sharing” her daughter with her ex-partner and that the process was very difficult for them… At this point they bought a LoLA box, and she was shocked at how much her daughter began to talk and share while doing art with her mum — the calming creative time allowed her to relax enough to open up about her feelings! How amazing is art, no?!
Independent creativity where children feel free enough to create what they want, how they want (with some ideas and tips to show them the way), is so important for some many things — building self confidence, analytical thinking, problem solving, a love of beautiful things, as well as a stress free way to relax and have fun! You can see children going into the “zone” or the “flow”, and it’s magical….
How can families get some of those same benefits at home, outside of your boxes? LoLA boxes help to make it easier at home, but having a well stocked basic set of good art supplies (we would recommend Ikea and Reeves..), and a small space/table/basket which they can freely reach and go to whenever they want is all your really need… I also have a lot of postcards of brilliant paintings, sculptures and works of art I love around the hosue that the kids get inspired by… Today as I was making dinner my 5 year started creating her own version of Keith Haring’s dancing men (which she had seen in the Colour box), and my 10 year was inspired by a postcard we had got while we went to the Picasso exhibition at the Tate, and I showed her her sketch from the museum, and she created a painting out of it! This was all at the kitchen table with only water paints… So yes visiting galleries and exhibitions, having art books around, all of this helps…
Here’s an idea for a simple Drip Art activity to do at home:
- Put a few different coloured liquid water paints — or you can make your own by diluting some water paint with water — into some egg cups.
- Find a nice thick piece of paper, best if it is water colour paper, so that it absorbs the water well
- With your pipette start having fun and dripping blobs of colour all over your paper!
- When finished try not to move or touch the paper so that the blobs of paint don’t pop or drip around, and leave to dry overnight!
Lots of Lovely Art aims to support creativity in children through art, through workshops and an exciting subscription service for artist-inspired projects at home. Each month, LoLA produce a different themed box of amazing art supplies and inspirational project ideas which can be delivered via your letter box. For more information, to buy a box, or sign up for a subscription please visit their website. You can also find them on Facebook and Instagram. They have very kindly given us one free LoLA box to giveaway. Please visit Let’s Play London’s social media channels (links below) for more details and to enter.
Let’s Play London shines a spotlight on the best theatre and live performance for Under 5s in London. Find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
