How we started
The founder of the Creation Station is Sarah Cressall – Mum to three boys, so with a clear understanding of the difficulties involved in bringing out the best in your child and what’s important as a parent with young children.
Creativity has always been a passion of Sarah’s. While she worked as a senior manager in London, she pursued her passion for art and design and sold her artwork, as well as completing murals at Charing Cross for British Telecom and Exeter University.
She then gained an Art Management Diploma and became head of Art and Photography in a young adults’ disabled centre. She ran her own design business called Artworks and secured more commissions for her own creative work.
Becoming a mum!
Having children brought a different focus to Sarah’s life, especially when it came to keeping them occupied. She recalls the early years of trying to provide creative messy time: “The boys would only sit for a couple of minutes and announce they’d finished when I was still setting up!
It was hard to actually enjoy the activities with them as I was too busy getting everything out, washing up and trying to get them clean before they charged through the house.”
Creating something different
Sarah realised it must be the same for many other parents. She wanted to provide an experience for children and parents/carers that wasn’t quite like anything else available. This was back in 2002, and she spent the next five years steadily developing the ‘Exploration’ arts and crafts activity sessions.
Her aim was to inspire children's natural creativity at an early age in a safe and nurturing environment with the involvement of the parent or carer; not only was it great for children's development but it was really good fun to do this creative stuff with your child, especially when the ‘mess' was not an issue, and all the planning an dclearing up was done.
Her aim was to inspire creative thinking at an early age in a safe and nurturing environment; to stimulate children’s development in thinking and problem solving using art, craft, music and movement.
The sessions – which have already been enjoyed by thousands of parents and children - are designed within the Every Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) from the Dept of Education framework and take into account The Early Goals for pre-school children to help them with practise and develop their skills and to prepare for school.
"I know just how hard it can be to do hands on creative stuff at home, especially when they are little - they would have finished before I had set everything up! Painted finger marks down the hall for the 6th time made me think there must be a way of enjoying doing this stuff with them…and now thankfully there is”