The Blood Bag Project Workshops

I have held a number of craft workshops with a group of year 4 children from a local primary school. We have done two after school sessions and two afternoon sessions to create 'Blood Bags' for 'The Blood Bag Project' organised by my friend Leigh.

I have posted about 'The Blood Bag Project' previously which you can read here.

Between the nine children they made a total of 14 blood bags. They all found Chloe's story very sad and were really keen to help make Chloe better. The kids took great joy in explaining to their classmates what we were doing and why.

On Friday 18th May the school held an art exhibition. Each class had studied a particular theme and created art works which were up for sale. The exhibition was open from 2-5pm and we had a table where we worked on the blood bags. We got lots of interest from parents and other pupils in the school and had flyers on hand for them to take away. Hopefully we inspired other people to get involved too.

Some of the finished Blood Bags

close-up of the finished Blood Bags



The pupils hard at work on exhibition day.



Lending a hand; an after school workshop.





Exhibition: Julie Arkell at The Bluecoat Display Centre

Julie Arkell, Image courtesy of the Bluecoat Display Centre website.

I met up with some of my old course friends in Liverpool last weekend to go to the Julie Arkell exhibition at the Bluecoat Display Centre. We all decided that when we are grownups with our own houses we would like one of Julie’s adorable figurines to adorn our new abodes. Hopefully we won’t be waiting too long!

If you want to pop down to see Julie’s exhibition it’s on at the Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool until this Saturday 12^th May.

The Bloodbag Project

The Bloodbag project organised by Leigh Bowser aims to raise awareness of Diamond Blackfan Anaemia (DBA) and offers you a chance to show your support and do something to help.

Leigh's neice, Chloe suffers from the rare condition DBA. Chloe needs regular blood transfusions to survive. Find out more about Chloe's story here.

Leigh, like many others is unable to donate blood so cannot help Chloe through what appears the 'normal' route. Therefore she wanted to find an alternative way to help. That is how The Blood Bag Project was born.

As a sign of your support and to help raise money Leigh has created a community project, The Blood Bag Project. She is asking you to create a textile blood bag (using the template here). The bags must be made from textile and must be created using the template so they have a sense of unity. The rest of it is up to you. The blood bags will be exhibited in some way and then will be auctioned off individually with 100% of the profits donated to The National Blood Donation Service (50%) and The Anthony Nolan Trust (50%).

Don't forget, you can also give blood. Find your local blood donation centre here.

You can follow the Blood Bag Project via the website, on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Here's my first blood bag: