Last Saturday I spent the afternoon at the Shop of Possibilities (their blog here), a space run by the South London Gallery. It is a truly amazing space, filled with stuff to make with, stuff to play with and space to do it in. The unit that houses it is an ex-shop which had apparently been empty for a considerable amount of time before the SLG took over it. I really enjoyed being there, the staff were very welcoming as were the children. There were no structured activities, just the freedom to get on and do whatever you fancied.
I played catch with a bunch of the children for a while, and also did some drawing& colouring with them. I basically joined in with what they wanted to do, and helped when necessary. I found it very inspiring, it reminded me of bits of my childhood where we always had a box of milk tops, loo roll tubes, old paper and other bits, glue, paint and sellotape to play and make with, and complete freedom to make whatever we wanted.
I really liked that it was unstructured too - there was space for everyone to do what they wanted, inside or out, sitting and drawing or running and bouncing.
