During the summer holidays, young carers in Bath participated in a multi-arts project run by award-winning charity Create, to give them creative and social time away from their caring responsibilities.

Part of Create’s national art:space programme, the project took place at SouthGate, Bath, with the support of the on-site team and with funding from joint-landlord, British Land. The young people participating were aged between five and 24, and registered as young carers with Carers’ Centre Bath and North East Somerset.

Throughout the summer, the participants explored three art forms with Create’s professional visual artists: in late August, they made sculptures with Sheridan Quigley, having made a mural with Jenny Leonard and photo collages with Jack Cornell earlier in the summer.

The art produced during all three parts of the project was inspired by the theme ‘secret garden’. This range of activities encouraged the young carers to develop a variety of interconnected artistic and technical skills, aimed at boosting their self-esteem.

There are over 700,000 young carers in Britain, who on average take on seventeen hours of caring responsibilities per week. Some care for more than fifty hours each week. School holidays can be a difficult time for young carers. For many, without school’s daily routine, increased time at home equates to an increase in time caring for a relative.

Create’s art:space programme develops an environment in which both creative and social skills can be nurtured, and young carers are able to come together to channel their creativity collectively. By working together, the young people develop their communication skills and create peer-support networks. Each series of workshops culminates in a sharing on the last day of the project.

Roy Maguire, a spokesperson for the event, said: “In B&NES, according to the 2011 census, there are over 3,000 young carers in the region. We work with five to 25-year-olds – young children, teenagers and young adults, and we only have contact with about 800 of them, so you can see that there is 2,000-odd that are hidden in the region, and that’s probably because they see it as a normal way of life as they’ve been doing it for so long. They don’t see that they’re providing anything special, they are just being who they are.

“It’s our passion to seek these guys out and give them some support, and arrange activities to go on. All through the school holidays and throughout the year, we provide family activities, such as horse riding, go-karting, and camping.

“We’re fortunate that we don’t have to raise lots of money, as there is a group in B&NES called Friends of Young Carers, and they raise money for us for taking kids of this age group (all under-eighteen), so we don’t have to raise money for it, which is brilliant. For those eighteen and over we do have to raise money, and I’ve raised over £1,000 this year for them, by doing some running and having my legs waxed! We’re hoping to start up a drop-in, once a month in Radstock in the Autumn.”

Artist, Sheridan Quigley, said: “I as an artist love working with groups of people like this. It’s all about that notion of the use of art to actually unhook your emotions, to allow you to be in your own head, rather than having to connect with your own responsibilities as a young carer.

“That is the absolute essence of it all, and it gives them an opportunity to completely step outside their everyday lives, which are hard, and be allowed to be completely themselves, without having to have any responsibility to anyone else.”