Chris Kimber was the lead VOS volunteer on the day at this interesting Chinese Lantern Making VOS workshop with Lucy Field and Claire Beadnell from Craftfabulous! The workshop is part of our wellbeing programme and took place in the Royal Maritime Hotel’s Quarterdeck Room. Chris has kindly shared his thought about this workshop and more generally the importance of wellbeing activities like this one. His story follows…

“There are twelve zodiac animals in Chinese astrology and a whole lunar year is signified by one of those animals. In turn, they all fall into one of five elements. On the 29th of January we entered the year of the snake, a wood creature which represents growth, flexibility and tolerance. Exactly two weeks later, eleven of us were gathered together in the RMH to learn how to create typical Chinese New Year decorations in a VOS wellbeing activity.

Under the very patient tutelage of Claire and Lucy of Southsea Sustainable Textiles, in two hours, we were to be shown how to fashion two hanging decorations, a pagoda and a lantern. So, one hour for each you’d think, wouldn’t you? As it transpired, with the myriad of little constituent parts, the templates, the buttons, threads and a gallimaufry (I love that word!) of other pieces, it was not as easy as they made it look!

There were paper squares, needles and thread, cotton tassels, glue and things I don’t know the name of, all of which have to be joined together, cut up or stuck down. Various expressions cropped up; “when is a knot not a knot?”, “loop it through the dangly bit”, “I don’t like my bottom” – it was beginning to sound like an arts and crafts version of a Carry On script. Half the way through and we were all still working on the pagoda-shaped hanging ornament.

However, there was also much joking and laughter. In the typical way of a VOS crowd, everyone saw the funny side and afterwards, everyone said they’d thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. Furthermore, all pagodas were finished with plenty of time left and some people even started to make a second one of these colourful and actually very attractive oriental trimmings.

All we’d needed was a sense of humour and those ophidian qualities of flexibility and tolerance. Plus the expert guidance of Claire and Lucy of course! It was all a lot of fun and can be scored as another great little gathering. In a Chinese fashion, we all took away our treasured creations to decorate and bring good fortune to our homes. All that remains is to thank Wendy and VOS for giving us the chance to share a delightful afternoon together and of course, to say Kung Hei Fat Choy!”

By Chris Kimber 

Image above: Group shot of service users with their lanterns

Images below: Service Users creating their Chinese Lanterns