Inclusive Arts Projects

Through the support of BBC Children in Need, the National Lottery and Community Foundation Wales, Touch Trust have been able to provide services for children and young people on Saturdays twice a month.

Throughout the pandemic, these sessions continued to be provided virtually, via Zoom. Thanks to our funders, our young people were able to access fun, themed sessions, traditional Touch trust sessions and group parties on a drop-in basis.

Our sessions on Saturday’s last between 30 – 45 minutes and are focused on boosting well-being and confidence in the young people who access our services.

We are now running these sessions again on a monthly basis from September 2022. Please see the news section for more information, or get in touch via the contact page to find out more.

“We had such a fun session! L was so full of giggles all through it! We loved it. Thank you so much to all the staff for all the amazing sessions we have had so far…they really are such a highlight of this year and we are super grateful for them to cheer us up, always” – Parent who regularly attends our virtual sessions with her daughter.

The most recent project that Touch Trust has run has been in partnership with two poets from Literature Wales. During this project, guests have had the opportunity to take part in a series of 6 sessions based around the weather as a focal point.

During the explorations of different weather types, our poets have created work which reflects the energy, words, movements and feelings that our guests have had.

WIND WORDS
GEIRIAU GWYNT
(For Emily, Maia, Romana, John, Nikki, Natalie, Darren, Gareth, Stephanie, Anna,
Isabella and Vikki)
Not with ink
But with our bodies
Every hand movement a metaphor
Every nod a simile smile
We are shaping sounds
Contouring feelings
Touching love,
Poems are atoms
Crashing through silent air
Drifting in the wind
Waking up our neurons
Pushing through our brain’s pathways
A muscle memoried picture
Electrifying axons
And handing on messages
Love letters
From the cerebellum
like kites flying flying
We are writing
Every cell pulsing
The careful cadence of connection
Jumping between synapses
Like disco balls
Glittering in sound and vision
Every molecule
Dancing incandescently with precision
To the beat the beat
Of syllables spilling
Verses visioning
Dreams to every day
We are writing
As birds in the sky
Freeing
Seeing
Feeling,
We are writing

Touch Trust was commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales’ National Lottery Fund to run a Digital Community Arts project during summer/autumn 2020 in the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic.  This project enabled us to reach out and support our community through artistic and creative engagement in a form of ‘playing one piece together’.  The project was delivered around Pachelbel’s Canon as a starting point to experiment new and creative ways of connecting with others through different art modalities.

Through the Zoom meeting app and other tools, Touch Trust Creative Facilitators from various fields in music, movement, dance and other forms of creative arts engaged with the participants and their carers to reach out to our community as widely as possible.  The sessions were created in a way so that our participants had an enjoyable time sharing their stories, being creative, and having fun while keeping safe.  All of our participants have made significant contributions to the final piece, which can be viewed below.