Chas Jacobs, a local artist, is an inspiration to many children in the Lancaster, Morecambe and surrounding areas, as a result of his regular involvement with many primary schools in the local area. His bold, bright, colourful paintings of well-known views and landmarks,  make his art work very appealable to the younger generation.

In summer 2017, we were lucky enough to be able to arrange a full afternoon workshop with Chas at holiday club. He chatted to the children about his own story first, and told them all about how he got to be where he is now.

We then spent the afternoon drawing individual pictures based on some of his own paintings and some large group murals which everyone contributed to. Chas helped the children with easy how-to tutorials and added some of his famous characteristics to give them a special finishing touch.

We had an amazing afternoon and he left Indigo that day with a few more young fans! Whilst Chas has a very busy 2018 schedule, we hope to be able to welcome him to holiday club again in the future.

We have a passion for connecting with nature and believe that environmental learning is the perfect inspiration for creativity. Little Zoo To You is one of our most popular guests who have visited us on multiple occasions.

Bringing a selection of approximately half a dozen carefully-selected little creatures, the children get to learn about each animal and interact with some of them. We have a different selection of animals and mini-beasts on each visit so it keeps it fresh and exciting for those who come to holiday club on a regular basis.

We encourage them to ask lots of questions and use their newfound knowledge and hands-on experience to create some art or craft work later in the day, connected to one of the animals.

On past visits, this has included an animal pottery session, collages made up of scavenger-hunted natural material and even baking animal biscuits! We love to see the huge variety of ideas and how wonderfully different everyone’s interpretation is!

‘We are not Noah, but we try’

– Gemma Murphy of Little Zoo To You

Little Zoo To You is a little ‘rescue’ zoo who come to you with a range of unique and exotic animals you will absolutely adore! All the animals that can be handled are safe and friendly. Gemma offers a hands on animal handling experience, which is tailored to the various ages of children…and adults! They offer events and programmes for animal lovers of all ages and can visit your home, school, nursing home, nursery or a family fun event, we can assure you that kids and adults alike will have a wonderful time – we LOVE their visits to Indigo!

Rest assured, they have full public liability insurance and are DBS checked.

Phil Gibson is a local music teacher, composer and Sound Therapist who has been teaching music to children and adults for many years. At Indigo Arts & Crafts, we try to bring as many aspects of creativity to holiday club as possible and these music sessions give children the chance to not only play with lots of percussion instruments (including some unusual ones they may not have come across before) but also to learn about the different countries each instrument originates from and how they’re made.

Phil is a regular visitor at holiday club, running a one hour session most holidays. With his calm, down to earth demeanour, the children are relaxed in his company and love to throw questions and instrument facts at him! The music sessions really do bring a holistic element to the clubhouse. It’s great to step back and watch the kids experimenting with different sounds and enjoying making lots of noise!

Hannah Robinson is a local young illustrator. When she was just 12 years old, she won CITV’s Share a Story competition and ever since, has dedicated her spare time to her passion of drawing and painting. At such a young age, her focus and determination is an inspiration! She has always wanted to be a children’s picture book illustrator and has shown other children that you can pursue your artistic ambitions, whatever age you are. Hannah delivered a character design workshop with us, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed.

She showed the children several of her own character designs and gave them some tips on how to plan, develop and practise their ideas which resulted in a wide range of fabulous, quirky characters that really came alive on paper! We’re looking forward to working with Hannah again this year.