Over the summer of 2022 we ran a programme for families called PLAYTIME. For PLAYTIME we filled the Clore Garden Studio with amazing loose parts resources from the Scrap Store in Leeds. Imagine a room absolutely jam packed with huge tubes, crates, boxes, tyres, cable drums, all for children to help themselves to and play with in any way they like. This loose parts play really works to engage children (and their grown-ups!) of all ages and really encourages curiosity, creativity and imagination as they build, construct and play.

In response to PLAYTIME we have now created an ongoing series of PLAY Days. On the second Friday of each month we fill our School of Creativity space with these open-ended resources and children under 5 and their grown-ups are invited to come together to play, be curious and be creative with simple, loose parts resources. 

The brilliant thing is that most of the resources we use in these PLAY Days are available to buy in our Shop of Creativity.

The Shop of Creativity is the Whitworth’s new venture in partnership with the Scrap Store in Leeds, which is a social enterprise focused on helping the environment by reusing waste materials from businesses as resources for art and play. The Whitworth’s Shop of Creativity sells low cost, affordable, creative art materials. Most of these resources are discarded materials that would usually be destined for landfill. These items like pipes, cable drums, cardboard tubes, cardboard & plastic bobbins, which are all amazing at encouraging open ended play and sparking creativity.

We have always been regularly asked by parents and teachers where we get all our resources from and now we can finally say we sell them in our shop.

PLAY Days run on the second Friday of each month. You can drop in between 10:30am and 2:30pm and there’s no need to book just come along. Please check our website before setting off as dates and times may have changed since this post was published.