Purple Elephant, the organisers of Frome Children's Festival and Toy Library takes a look at its incredible successes this past year as it has pivoted from established group-play together to supporting the most vulnerable families in the area.

"As Easter approached last year we already knew there would no free summer Frome Children's Festival, no regular Toy Library lending, no stay-and-play sessions and no school holiday open activities. We took a deep breath..." explained Director, Sue Wills.

In the first lockdown this tiny company compiled and created over 1000 free craft, cooking and sports activity packs, gave away over 100 Christmas presents, provided a series of small scale, super-safe half term and summer holiday activities and held small scale socially-distanced Christmas parties. All activities offered free meals provided by their partners, Fair Frome.

2021's response to school closures has already seen the home-delivery of 170+ free educationally-focused packs for those either with additional needs or struggling to engage with home schooling. and the Toy Library now proudly offers a free home-delivery service, allowing families to safely borrow games brought to the door.

Purple Elephant have also launched 'Small Steps', a new early-years support service providing parenting advice for families of pre-school children and set up an online Befriending Service which matches experienced, vetted volunteers with vulnerable children for a weekly Zoom chat.

Sue Willis tells us "The year presented many challenges but also brought unexpected rewards such as recruiting several new, lovely volunteers and supporting over 30 teenage volunteers to develop event management skills and complete units for their Duke of Edinburgh awards."

None of this would have been possible without the support of volunteers, generous public local and online donations,partnership working with other organisations and grants and sponsorship including:

• Kids Out
• The National Lottery
• Somerset Community Foundation
• Live West
• Frome Lions, Carnival and Rotary clubs
• Somerset County Council
• Frome Town Council
• The Somerset Fund
• Pat Newman Memorial Trust
• Selwood Housing Association
• SASP
• Magic Little Grants (Postcode Lottery)
• Wessex Water
• Lettings R Us
• Storagebase
• College of Bowen Studies
• Julian Baker
• TSL
• Western Airducts
• Cox and Cox
• Dennis Maps
• Sam Ferris Associates

Photos: LostWithoutTrace