Following 8 weeks of Story and Play sessions for under 5s at the Old School in Warrington, we have created a Parenting Playbook to support Parents and Carers with establishing play at home.
Thanks to funding from Cheshire Community Foundation, you can download your own copy to support play with the little ones in your life.
Combine all the dry ingredients and mix well
Add the food colouring to the water and then add the vegetable oil and water and food colouring to a large pan and mix together.
Add the dry ingredients and mix well
Cook over a low to medium heat until the dough starts to form and becomes dry.
Once all the dough has formed a ball, remove from heat and let cool.
Once cooled, knead the dough for 5 minutes to soften. If the dough is still sticky, put back in pan and heat for a few more minutes.
Wrap in clingfilm and store in air tight container and keep in fridge for 1 week.
Dilute the White Vinegar – 2 parts water to 1 part White Vinegar
In a Zip lock freezer bag, add a cup of rice, a tablespoon of diluted white vinegar and a few drops of food colouring.
Seal the bag shut, ensuring all air is out of the bag and spread the food colouring across the rice
Once throuroughly mixed, empty the bag onto a baking tray and leave to dry for a couple of hours.
Store in an air tight container for up to a year.
Want to download a free copy of our Parenting Playbook – A guide to support play at home? Follow this link
For Families who speak English as a Second Language who have been driven to Warrington by circumstance
At our Story Makers group we aim to support families who have arrived in Warrington through diverse circumstances by offering accessible, arts-based activities that encourage expression, community connection and celebrate our cultures, with support for ESOL learners.
Children, parents and grandparents are all welcome to come together to share stories, play and learn English.
Everyone’s story matters. Everyone is welcome.
Day & Time: Tuesdays 4.00-5.30, from 13th January 2026
Location: The Old School, Warrington, WA1 3AJ
Email: hello@storystitchers.co.uk to book your place or find out more
We have secured funding to run this group until June 2026. At the end of the project we may produce some kind of creative outcome like an exhibition or a book. This will be decided by the group in a process of co production.
No. You can join even if you only speak a little English. We help each other. We use pictures, words, and art to communicate.
Your family. All art materials are provided
It is free. These sessions are funded by The National Lottery Community Fund.
Tuesdays, 4 – 5.30pm, upstairs at The Old School, Warrington, WA1 3AJ
Flick Barry is a CELTA qualified ESOL teacher and has been a community artist for 20 years. She is experienced at storytelling work with all ages, including working with ESOL students and refugee families. She is British born and throughout her life is lucky to have worked and travelled around the world. Flick is supported by friendly staff and volunteers to ensure that your experience is a positive one.
Please send an email to hello@storystitchers.co.uk to sign up or find out more.
Please feel free to download and share our poster with anyone who you think might be interested in coming.
Like stories, beginnings are important. We are often asked
“How do we start a project? What approaches do we have? What attitudes do we foster?”
So this is how we unpack the beginning of things, how we establish relationships and cultivate joy and wonder.
If we support folk to discover joy and curiosity, they are more likely to connect with meaningful creative activity. The word glimmer entered our vocabulary from the trauma informed community. For those who don’t know, a glimmer is considered to be the opposite of a trigger. While a trigger may cause trauma, stress or anxiety to surface, a glimmer is considered to be micro moments that induce happiness. Once we become aware of those glimmers, we can start to build upon them and make more time in our life to do the things that generate those glimmers.
However, some of our participants are not ready for glimmer hunting. They are so bogged down in the stresses of life that even a glimmer is beyond them. So we will look for a Spark. If a glimmer is a micro moment, a Spark is a nano second. A flashing twinkle that may fizzle out before the participant has even recognised that jot of joy in their body. As facilitators, it is our job to seek the Spark in our participants and build upon it.
This is a very watchful practice. These Sparks might be a widening of the eyes, a satisfied sigh, a flicker of a smile or a leaning into the work. It cannot be achieved if we are too busy teaching a refined artistic skill or aiming for an explicit finished piece of work. In this stage this is how we establish a relationship, we want to connect to the human before we connect to the artist. This early stage of creative collaboration is built around accessibility and appropriateness for the participant. We call this Scrapbook Storytelling.
This could be a prompt sheet to encourage words or drawing their favourite things or telling us about their favourite character from a film, TV or book or collaging an object that they use everyday. From this moment we can really start to tailor the creative offer to match the common interests of the group. This is where the glimmers emerge and the participants begin to recognise the joy they are discovering in their creative practice. With our encouragement, we as a group start to seek the joy out.
This is done authentically. We, as artists, are also seeking joy. Instead of commenting on whether someone’s outcome is ‘Good ‘ or not, we give feedback on the approach: “I can see how you have made those dots using the pencil” or “You look happy. Is it the colours that you have used that are making you so happy?”
Once there is a collective feeling of joy seeking amongst the group, we are ready to access the next level of an artistic practice – Wondering. Wondering is our way of describing a creative curiosity that is born out of an artistic practice and exploration of an idea. It is not just about the participant wondering, it is also about the facilitator providing high quality artistic stimulus to provoke wonder. It often begins with a Wonder Box. A Wonder Box is a vessel filled with objects to provoke conversation. The box should reflect the conversations and interests that have been discovered in the previous sessions, curated to provoke a more in depth decision. This may evolve into something more specific like the inside of a carriage clock that houses clues to a secret character or a piece of audio that invites inspiration.
The Wondering stage is also there to encourage and cultivate creative skills. In this stage of the process the facilitator should begin sharing techniques to enhance the participant’s creative practice. In the previous stage, we may have used materials that are available at home – lots of recycled card, scrap paper, colouring pencils and pens. In the Wondering stage we will begin to elevate the materials on offer, Aqua markers instead of felt tips, Fineliners over pencils and introducing clay or acrylic paint pens. There is also some creative risk taking that comes with this practice. So we will scaffold this to reduce risk. If making a mark is too overwhelming for fear of getting it wrong, we will incorporate time and materials to practice.
As we work through the group’s Wondering era, the artist starts to see what the outcome could be. This is gently fed back to the group and feedback gathered about whether this idea is exciting to them as a collective.
We are thrilled to share news that we have received funding from Cheshire Community Foundation to pilot an 8 week project for families with children under five that puts imaginative play at its heart. Families will be invited to come along to our friendly sessions where we share stories, craft, sing and play. These sessions will take place at The Old School in Fairfield and Howley in Warrington.
The sessions will combine a more structured storytime session with a softer stay and play format and will be delivered by artists with experience as parents and working with Early Years families and settings. Every session will include open-ended play that sparks creativity, and storytelling that builds confidence and curiosity. We will provide a safe, welcoming space for all families.
There will be the opportunity for parents to play and craft themselves in a bite-sized way to give space for creative reflection. A no pressure activity that can be completed with a child on your knee.
At the end of the 8 week sessions we will take all that we have learnt and create a Parenting Playbook, this would be designed to embed play into the home. We will have digital copies and a limited number of printed copies that we will distribute locally through food banks and pantries.
If you would like to bring your family along or learn more about the sessions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
The recent passing of Thicht Naht Hanh has been felt across the world by so many, including those who knew him as ‘Teacher’. Those who leave such a legacy also open a door to many with their passing. I have to admit to only recently looking more into his teachings and this week at Story Stitchers we have begun that journey by listening. Listening to podcasts and audiobooks, reading and sharing.
We believe that true, unconditional and active listening are in many ways as vital to our very survival and happiness as the air we breathe.
When you make the effort to listen and hear the other side of the story, your understanding increases and your hurt diminishes. – Thicht Naht Hanh
First impressions
As a child I was always taught the value of a smile, a firm handshake, looking people in the eye etc.
Recent years have challenged the importance, relevance and appropriateness of some of these ‘good first impression’ staples. The pandemic has made the handshake an endangered species and masks have converted the smile into sparkly eyes and waves.
The biggest thing I have taken from these shifts is that while still valuable, maybe first impressions shouldn’t carry the weight they sometimes do. Someone might be late because they are the most generous person in the room, not because they are unreliable or don’t care. Someone might have scruffy shoes because they spend their time thinking how to be better at their job, or how to be a better person, rather than worrying about their shoes. Maybe eye contact is a battle that this person just can’t take on, but they are actually very comfortable in themselves and therefore a huge asset to any team or room. If we take time to listen to them and the information they give us, then we have already moved past so many obstacles.
Listening to your own curiosity
Sometimes the person we find the hardest to listen to is ourselves, for example: the impact or effect of our presence, or when our presence isn’t there. The world can be a busy place where we may feel judged or under constant pressure to be useful. We need to be on time, we need to provide, we need to be organised, motivated and driven. We need to help out the team, be there for our partner and family, keep in touch with friends, do our bit for our community, country or planet. Then we hopefully reach somewhere near the end of our task list, we eat and stop, just in time to go to bed before it all carries on tomorrow. There are many who talk about the need to stop, switch off, take time and escape. With our work we find that we also need the space to listen and be listened to. This can be going along to a class or workshop and having some new people in your life asking you about you and then you listen to others and are genuinely curious to know more about them. Or maybe it’s at work with colleagues who are sharing an idea or information that takes you by surprise or reminds you there is plenty you don’t know about them. Listening is often talked about in situations of major conflict and violence or in politics. But there are so many of us who just don’t get to be around others in a space where everyone listens to each other. A chance to express ourselves, to share in similar or very different views. The chance to go back into the rest of our lives and take in more from it. To listen. To actively listen. It may begin with those closest to us and then we find we are curious about other fascinating and wonderful people that we come into contact with during our lives. As we learn more about them, we learn more about ourselves.
And the great thing about listening is that we can do it straight away, right now. It is also a tool that never runs out and has infinite uses and benefits.
Thank you for listening.
Tom
Story Stitchers
Let's Gather Together In any way we can. Whether we are collectors or a collective We could be powerful. Let's Gather Together And discover the joy That fills each of us. We could be curious Let's gather together And listen with open ears. For such an act of kindness Is the grassroots of change and growth.
We are gathering in the soft glow if our screens, our virtual circle looks like a series of square windows. Perfectly aligned. We can see each others homes. Our plants, our pets, our pictures. Sometimes a child drifts in to say good night. We are a jumble sale of people. The colours of each small window vary. We are not all the same. We have different tastes, different drive, different experiences, but we all here to listen. To lean in and be taken by poem, prose or song to a world away from our perfectly aligned windows or the hum of our computers working, or our plants, our pets and our pictures. Our minds are filled with images of family roof tops dinners in India or a photography studio in Conwy or a a vibrant wedding party outside a registry office.
Flash forward to another gathering. We are in the room with parents and toddlers. There has been hushed moment with a book, a lively togetherness in song and now there is the gentle hub bub of noise as parents swap tales of the weekly challenges and children scrawl pens across pages mark making and mapping their wonder at how it works.
Flash forward to a group of teenage girls, stretching out on a quiet gallery floor. They are drafting poems about changing the world. They whisper ideas to each other. Every now and then their eyes light up at a great idea and an a smile unfilds hidden under their face masks.
Flash forward to the entrance to a community hall, 3 generations of a family arrive at the same time. The youngest aged 3 and 7 and filling a postcard with drawings and words and commitments of kind acts tomorrow. Granny is writing a message of thanks to the NHS and the parents are sharing what they love about where they live. They all hang their creating in a christmas tree amongst twinkling yellow lights. The children walk away with a chocolate coin and a sparkling wish bag that has come all the way from the North Pole. A thank you gift from Father Christmas for spreading Christmas cheer.
No one in any of these experiences was undeserving of the opportunity to express themselves. All were welcome to share something of themselves and a connection tonothers. All left, feeling a little brighter and a little comforted.
In a world if division , don’t minimise connection.
In a world of suffering, stop minimising joy.
In a world that can be cruel, stop minimising kindness.
Moments of connection, joy and kindness may be fleeting, but they should be celebrated. They are the ground work of curiousity, strength and resilience. That is our work as community artists, to generate a space to gather together.
Wild Wonder is a podcast for families brought to you by Stitch. We explore the outdoors and share stories about what we discover. We curate the podcast involving our children as we believe that if children hear others speaking, it makes them feel powerful with their own voice.
Each episode includes a walk about with our children, followed by a story inspired by what we discovered on our walk. This current series of podcast is being made at a time when the UK is under lock down due to the Corona Virus. The conversations happen within walking distance of our house and were part of our daily outing. We found these conversations with our children allowed us to hit the reset button. We felt more connected to each other and the habitat that surrounds us (which maybe at a better time, we would have taken for granted.)
You can find the most recent activities posted on Facebook or Instagram.
We have also created some activity sheets to accompany each story. These will be added below when a new episode drops.
We also have an account for Wild Wonder on Instagram where you can enjoy the photos of things we have found.
Nook and Cranny are looking for brave space explorers to go on a mission to go across the Universe. They are looking for spectacular space stories that can take us out of this world.
Nook and Cranny’s Intergalactic Space Mission is designed as a fourteen day challenge to help you shape your stories. The activities could last as long as you like them to, but we think you can do them in 15 minutes.
You can write, draw, move, make or tell to explore. You can look up what is actually out there in the stars or you can let your imagination roam through space capturing strange creatures, secret stars or unknown planets.
While these activities are designed for children, we think that they are a great intergenerational activity too.
You can download the full challenge below, including some extra resources to support this challenge.
Help Nook and Cranny complete their mission by sharing your creations:
Facebook: @storystitchers
Instagram: @story_stitchers
Twitter: @story_stitchers
Story Stitchers 