INSTIGATORS of a new youth club for Calstock are hoping villagers give it a big thumbs up when they come for a taster session tomorrow (Friday).

The Calstock Youth Day will provide fun, free half term activities as a taster for the new youth club that’s coming to the village.

The Youth Day will give young people a chance to meet the organisers of the new youth club, Lara Kramer and Susan Moores, play some games and have their say on the types of activities that they would like to see in the village, whilst enjoying some free pizza.

Lara said: ‘We thought the youth day was an opportunity for both children and parents to come and meet us and get a feel of it in a safe way. We’ve come up with this idea for the youth club and we’re happy to put it on, but we need to hear from the community, the young people and the parents themselves about whether they think it’s a good idea and if it is a good idea, what they want to see.’

The Youth Day is taking place tomorrow (February 17) in Calstock Village Hall from 1-5pm. Young people aged 8-16 years old are invited to join Lara and Susan for table tennis, board games, crafts and pizza.

Lara explained: ‘The main idea is to come and hang out and feel comfortable in the space and get to know Susan and I in the daytime.

‘We thought we’d open it up as a safe and friendly space during half term so that those children that have parental permission and are older than 8 years old can come down and just hang out for the afternooon.’

The taster day will provide Lara and Susan the opportunity to listen to both the communities and the young people’s ideas for the youth club and the sorts of activities they wish to do.

‘There are two aspects: one is come and talk to us and find out who we are and the second thing is to provide a bit of activity in the village during half term’, said Lara.

‘The thing about traditional youth clubs is that you are driven by young people. It’s not going to be a series of programmed events, although we have got a few ideas about the sort of things we might do.

‘We don’t want it to be another school session where they are just given a programme of events.’

The youth club that will begin once a month on the last Friday of every month will provide the young people the freedom to try new activities, meet new people, grow their confidence outside of a home or school environment and provide a space to ‘hang out’.

‘My experience has told me that in the first instance young people just want to hang out, they just want to be with eachother’, explained Lara who is a former youth worker.

‘If it’s successful and people want to do it, we may also do trips to somewhere close by or we may do some field games when it’s springtime, utilising not just the hall, but what’s around in Calstock as well.

‘There’s also an appetite to put on a junk band music session and circus skills.’

The proposal for the youth club was an idea that Lara brought to the Calstock in Conversation event that was held at the hall in December last year, with much of the Calstock community in agreement that the village needed a youth club.

Lara and Susan hope to draw on the resources of the village and the people of the village to ‘provide a lovely, rich, cultural and playful experience for the younger people of the village to both give them a bit of freedom and confidence to meet others and to explore being in a space that is a safe and held environment.’

At the community event, Lara spoke to some young people who said they ‘would be really keen’ and ‘there’s lots of willingness from the adult community which is really positive’, said Lara.

‘But I just want to hear from the young people to see what they want. We’ll be there on Friday and we’ll just see what happens.

‘It’s also not just for Calstock kids, the wider Tamar Valley are very welcome. We’d love to hear from people that aren’t in Calstock too.’