Educational Sessions

We know that individuals can progress with the appropriate activities and support.

Our Information Technology room promotes the opportunity for people to expand on their I.T skills and also offers numeracy and literacy support for individuals that need to progress in this area.

We understand that communication is key to enable progression and our dedicated team of staff ensure that all activities are adapted to meet each individual’s unique communication requirements.

School Holiday Service

We understand the difficulty some individuals may have finding stimulating activities daily during school holidays. That’s why we offer the opportunity for youngsters to attend Freespirits on days and times that suit them either with or without support.

Bee Active

Ensure people stay connected by putting smiles into our community.

Our mission is to keep people connected healthy and active by delivering out services, the Bee-active way. This involves high energy enthusiasm and innovation to deliver the best possible value and experience that will put a smile on the faces of our customers.

Communication through Drama

We’ll always go out of our way to adapt our workshops, providing a bespoke experience to ensure the needs of our service users are fully met. Our ‘Communication through Drama Programme’ developed for Free Spirits Day Care Service, is a perfect example of this.

We’re so honoured to have been asked to support Free Spirits Day Care, an incredible charity based in Abbey Hulton, Stoke-on-Trent, who provide a personalised care service for people with an array of complex physical and learning disabilities.
Prior to working with Free Spirits, our ‘Confidence through Drama Programme’ had been running for some time, and we’ve found the format to be really successful. However, due to the needs of Free Spirits service users, we felt that we needed to change the focus a little, and the ‘Communication through Drama Programme’ was created!

The focus of the ‘Communication through Drama Programme’ is ever growing and includes:

– Interaction
– Communication
– Stimulating senses
– Memory skills
– Movement

The sessions are filled with music, different textures, signing, movement, group and individualised activities, and so much more. The reactions of those who participate are overwhelmingly heart-warming week on week.

Leading up to Christmas 2018, Free Spirits service users and staff worked with us to create their very own Christmas show. It saw service users and staff recreate the ‘Polar Express’ through a group dance routine, memorised dialogue, and in the background stood the train that the group had created during the show’s development sessions. There was a singing solo of ‘Little Donkey’, more group and solo dance routines of ‘Last Christmas’, and further songs performed in Makaton signing.
The performance also brought the community together, with guest performers from Carmountside Primary Academy and St. John’s Day Service.

For the fourteen children, from year five at Carmountside Primary Academy, the experience has had a hugely positive impact. For many of them the term ‘disability’ was very much unknown, and a few admitted to being a little nervous. Their participation in the show was in conjunction with, and in addition to, the ‘Loving Learning through Creativity Programme,’ through which we are a resident arts provider within Carmountside Primary over the next year. This is a partnership programme with Stoke and North Staffs Cultural Education Partnership, Arts Connect West Midlands, Partners in Creative Learning and YMCA North Staffordshire aiming to engage young people, who are disengaged or at risk of becoming disengaged, with arts activities linked to the curriculum.

Through the programme we have been exploring ‘disability’ and the impact arts can have on engagement, and they got to see this first hand during Free Spirits’ show. The children loved the experience and have asked to have more involvement with Free Spirits, and we even received thank you cards explaining how much they had enjoyed it.

“Thank you for taking all 14 of us to Free Spirits and teaching us the Makaton sign language songs…we have done incredibly.”
The Free Spirits show was also made even more special by the input of the audience, who really got involved, singing and clapping along with us. They helped us to truly celebrate the achievements of all those involved in the show and on behalf of Kreative Foundations and Free Spirits we’d like to say a huge thank you for your participation.

From start to end the show was brilliant. It really started off the Christmas spirit in the best way possible – community, friends and families celebrating together. Well done everyone!

Serenity Farm

Working with Freespirits is a wonderful and rewarding experience and exactly the reason that Serenity Farm was opened. Serenity Farm is somewhere for people to come and forget about their troubles, to interact with animals and enjoy the countryside, animals play a remarkable role in reducing anxiety and taking care of the animal’s  needs increases people’s confidence and sense of achievement. The farm comes alive when the Freespirits bus arrives, the staff are happy and motivated and they quickly help the service users into the barn to meet and greet the animals, their is always an excited commotion as the animals love having visitors and treats! The staff are always keen to get everyone involved and so we allocate farm tasks to everyone, everyone is helped to get involved and praised for their good work. Its very rewarding to go around the yard feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs, Grooming the horses and laughing at the goats on the trampolines, there’s always lots of laughter and excitement and we have fun working as a group together.

The Princes Trust

‘Together everyone achieves more’

Why we come to free spirits?

We come to free spirits to engage in a variety of activities with the service users to help increase confidence in young people aged 16-25 as well as engaging and stimulating the service users of Free Spirits.