Category: Activities

There has been a flurry of feedback from projects that the Areti Charitable Trust has helped to fund over the past year. Here are some of them.

Lancashire Boys & Girls Club provided activities for 371 children over the school summer holidays at Forrest Hills, Lancaster.

Lancashire Youth Challenge took young people to Cumbria to engage with the landscape and learn more about woodland and farming.

Lancaster Boys and Girls Club also provided activities for young people during the summer holidays, focussing on healthy living, healthy eating, exercise and having respect for the environment.

Arnside & Silverdale AONB fed back on their year working with pupils referred from Chadwick School. The headteacher noted the beneficial impact of spending time in nature for the pupils, and for 2023/24 it is hoped to train a member of Chadwick staff as a forest school leader.

Meanwhile, the RSPB at Leighton Moss continues is inviting local primary schools to the nature reserve.

And, finally, Escape2Make have been working with their Green Club, Bicycle Club and Duke of Edinburgh group.

The Morecambe Bay Partnership is inviting schools to visit Cockerham and Cockersands Abbey, as part of the project funded by Areti.

One of the projects that The Areti Trust funded last year (and which had to be adapted to comply with Covid regulations) was a project combining the natural world and dance. A team from Ludus Dance worked with children from Ryelands Primary School to create an activity about autumn and the changing colours of the trees and landscape. The children took part in a walk around the local park, where they were shown how to identify different types of trees and explored their qualities and potential.

The project also highlighted the importance of preserving and looking after our local wildlife, and the topics of plastic pollution, pollinator decline and local walks for the children came up in all sessions.

For the Areti trustees it was a pleasure to watch a video clip of the children dancing as trees or as butterflies and to sense their delight in the project. The project resumes with Ryelands next month; Ludus will also be working with North Road Community Primary School in Carnforth this spring.

It has not been possible for most of the activities planned for 2020 to take place, but the Lancashire Association of Boys and Girls Clubs have managed one. During October half-term 6 young people from Lancaster went on a residential course at Ormside Mill outdoor centre in Cumbria.

Sadly – but not surprisingly – most of the activities funded by The Areti Trust at the beginning of the year have had to be postponed. The trustees were therefore very pleased to learn that Lancashire Youth Challenge managed to complete a modified version of their Coniston Challenge over the summer. This enabled 2 separate groups of young people to spend 3 days (non-residential) caving, hiking and ghyll-scrambling – a character-forming experience that enabled them to put lockdown out of their minds for a short time. (And also – a common theme it seems with such mini-adventures – involved them getting very wet!)

During the February half-term, Lancaster Boys & Girls Club went to the Anderton Centre, Chorley, for a one-night team-building residential.  They got wet and blown about – and learned more about working together.