It really doesn’t seem like a year since my last article for the newsletter. Time really does fly past!

2015 has been yet another incredibly successful year for us with another 500 plus workshops being run for local groups all over the UK with fantastic results from the attendees throughout the spectrum of the Arts, from music through to pottery. The photographs in each newsletter show the quality and range of the projects.

Once again we set up stall at Teenage Cancer Trust’s “Find Your Sense of Tumour” conference. This year our feature piece was a series of “Wishing Trees” and over 60 delegates created leaves and decorations with their own personal messages to hang off the branches. Our teachers also ran the ever popular jewellery, bag and T-shirt decoration workshops.

Our major grant in 2015 was to Mind The Gap Theatre Company in Bradford to help assist in the training of young actors with disabilities. We are delighted to hear that Coronation Street has cast one of their star actors, Liam Bairstow (pictured here), as its first actor with learning disabilities. Liam plays the part of Alex, nephew of Cathy Matthews, who is Roy Cropper’s new love interest!

We also continue to support many other local and national charities and our major project for 2016 is to fund a new Art Centre for Orchard Vale Trust, a Somerset based Charity providing residential care for clients with learning disabilities. The new stand-alone centre will allow them to continue to develop art projects which are currently limited by a lack of suitable space within their existing buildings.

As always, on behalf of the trustees and our numerous clients, I must thanks all our teachers and operations team for the hard work they all put in to make LifewithArt the successful charity it is.

Have a wonderful 2016. David Pigott, Trustee