How a Lockdown Kitchen Table Became the Heart of Our Craft Club

When the world stopped in March 2020, I didn’t panic like most parents I think I was very naive at the consequences of what was going on around me. I automatically created a folder and collated worksheets for each subject (curriculum based)f or each child to start using everyday. I would spend evenings planning for the next day of schooling like I was a paid, qualified professional at one point I couldn’t recognise who I had become at a time where people were living in panic and worry.

My girls are sociable creatures. They are at their happiest in a room full of people, talking too loudly, making each other laugh, surrounded by cousins and friends and the kind of joyful chaos that makes a house feel full. Lockdown took all of that away overnight, and I watched them adjust to a quieter world with a heaviness that I wanted to lift. I could only think of how much they may regress as little humans who were still at such a crucial age of personal development.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I got out the craft supplies. It was time for my hoarding of art supplies and tons of stationery to pay off

It started simply enough, plan craft, make the pack, promote them online, send out the packs and join everyone at the kitchen table via a Zoom link. We would be greeted by a handful of children on screens looking for a smile, looking for connection and eagerly ready to do something fun and creative.

The sessions were structured but never rigid. Each one had an educational thread running through it — encouraging the children to read, to discuss, to engage with something beyond the activity itself — but mostly, they were just joyful. Children who had never met became fast friends across screens. Bristol, Manchester, London — it didn't matter. They were together, and that was enough.

As weeks turned into months and the rules shifted around us, something unexpected happened. Some of our regular online crafters were able to join us in person. We had built a community that now existed in two places at once — around my kitchen table and on screens across the country — and it worked. It was messy and imperfect and genuinely wonderful.

When lockdown finally lifted and the school gates opened again, I thought the sessions might naturally come to an end. Instead, they evolved. The craft clubs continued as after-school sessions, filling a gap that many schools had been forced to leave — extracurricular activities that had been quietly dropped in the chaos of navigating a post-pandemic return. We were there to catch some of what had fallen through.

It was a hard time for children in ways that adults are still only beginning to fully understand. The disruption to routine, to friendship, to learning — it left marks. But creativity has a way of moving through difficulty that is hard to explain and easy to witness. In those sessions, I watched children concentrate, collaborate, laugh, and make things with their hands that they were genuinely proud of. That pride matters more than people give it credit for.

The things they made during those sessions have not been forgotten. They are displayed on bedroom walls and shelves like small personal galleries, mosaics and portraits and painted pieces that belong entirely to the children who made them. I still love hearing about it. Who would have thought that something so simple — a pack in the post, a Zoom call, a kitchen table — could leave something so lasting.

These days, the craft clubs have found a new home. We now run sessions at a beautifully landscaped location at Barking Riverside in London, and the energy is just as alive as it ever was around that kitchen table. Different setting, same spirit. You can find images from our more recent sessions in the journal and on our instagram account — do have a look around.

And we are not done growing. The plan is to expand to different venues and areas so that more children can experience what our regulars have known for years — that making something with your hands, alongside other people, is one of the simplest and most nourishing things you can do.

Keep an eye out for new locations coming soon. We would love to have you at the table.