Fantastic for Families Awards 2024

Published on 13 November 2024.

Organised by the Family Arts Campaign, the Fantastic for Families Awards celebrate family arts activities across the UK. We have been shortlisted for two projects developed to respond to local community needs.

Our play Igloo has been shortlisted in the Best Family Arts Activity, and our free creative holiday activities and meals, which we run in partnership with St Luke's Lunch, has been shortlisted in the Audience Impact and Innovation category.

Following performances at Bristol Old Vic in 2018 and a national tour in 2020, Igloo returned to tour children’s centres and community venues in January and February 2024; this time accompanied by a play session designed with local nursery, Easton Community Children’s Centre, to support sensory play, speech and language. To find out more about the tour and the feedback received, read our story here.

Creative resources, including an activity sheet and special illustrated Igloo picture book, were provided to help families continue with creative play at home.

“Over 1,200 children and their carers saw Igloo - for many it was their first experience of theatre,” said Dienka Hines, Travelling Light’s chief executive. “We took our performances into communities at the request of local nurseries and children’s centres who told us that costs and travel mean that they cannot take children to the theatre.”

One parent of a two-and-a-half-year-old, said: “The play and the book have really helped my daughter with her emotions. Since then, she has been able to say ‘Mummy I am very frustrated’ or ‘I am very sad’. She never used to talk about how she was feeling before.”

You can read more about our Igloo Stay and Play sessions and feedback from the external evaluation here.

Also shortlisted are the creative holiday activities we run in partnership with local food charity St Luke’s Lunch in Barton Hill. These take place at the Travelling Light studio during the school holidays, providing creative play activities for children, learning new cooking skills and eating healthy meals.

A parent who attends with their seven-year-old son, said: “We live in a high-rise block of flats and don’t have a garden. If St Luke’s and Travelling Light weren’t running this holiday club, he wouldn’t have space to run and play. He gets to be a child, he has freedom to be himself, it’s what every child needs."

You can find out more about our half term activities by watching this short film here.

Following shortlisting, entries will be judged by an expert panel of arts professionals. Awards will be presented in a virtual ceremony on 28 November 2024.

Visit the Fantastic For Families website to find out more about our shortlisting and read about all of the fantastic organisations and projects shortlisted this year.

Thanks so much to all our Travelling Light friends and funders who supported these projects: Arts Council England, Bristol City Council, The Coutts Foundation, BYCA, Garfield Weston Foundation, People's Postcode Lottery, Quartet Community Foundation, The Nisbet Trust, Thresholds Ltd, Charcoalblue, Holiday Activities and Food programme, Patricia Routledge Foundation.