Summer in a Box is a collaborative partnership project which worked to develop and deliver at least 1600 ‘Summer in a Box’ Arts and Heritage Activity Packs to children across Suffolk in July/August 2020.
Led by Suffolk County Council, the project worked with partners across the county to create and deliver activity packs to children receiving free school meals from the Suffolk Virtual Schools list. Museum partners include The Long Shop Museum, The Red House, Aldeburgh Museum, Ipswich Museums, Moyse’s Hall Museum, West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village, Gainsborough’s House, The National Horse Racing Museum, the Museum of East Anglian Life and Lowestoft Maritime Museum.
The project also worked with Keep Moving Suffolk, Rock Paper Scissors, Festival Bridge, The Hold, Suffolk Says Thanks, One Life Suffolk, 5 Ways to Wellbeing, Change 4 Life, Suffolk Music Hub, Let’s Talk Reading, Take 5 Challenge, The Source, Suffolk Libraries, Suffolk Children’s University and the Suffolk Community Foundation.
The Department for Education (DfE) awarded £962,676 to Suffolk County Council from its Holiday Activities & Food programme. The programme provides children in receipt of free school meals access to positive, enriching summer holiday activities and food. This is normally delivered through holiday activity clubs.
As a result of Covid-19, there was limited holiday clubs over the Summer holidays. To continue providing engaging summer holiday activities, Summer in a Box was developed, to bring the fun home. Suffolk County Council awarded the AfSM a grant of £32,000 from its DfE funding to support the development of museum activity packs. These funds enabled museum partners across the project develop, create and deliver 1600 museum activity packs. Museum packs included arts and crafts materials, along with museum specific activities, objects, experiments and trails.