Autumn Activities at Funny Wonders
After starting both our Changing Faces and High Peak Youth Robotics projects for the 2025/2026 academic years in mid-September, we’ve had successful autumn terms with both.
Members of High Peak Youth Robotics have made great progress with building their robots and some attended a friendly ‘scrimmage’ event in Sheffield on Friday 21 November where they could practice driving their robots in a game arena. You can see pictures on the project page here. We’ll post a proper update about the project, to introduce the theme and the challenge, in the New Year.
Our Changing Faces group worked towards making speeches, which they delivered on the final workshop of the term. We played games and did exercises to develop various skills. During the term, we also ran a range of craft activities, including drawing visual illusions, completing pictures, trying flower-arranging, creating Halloween windows, making fancy snowflakes, and making Christmas cards. You can see some pictures on the project page here.
In October, we received a grant from the Postcode Community Trust, thanks to the People’s Postcode Lottery win in Taddington in August. They make awards to local good causes, through their Millionaire Street Grant Fund, and we were nominated to receive an award! And we were one of the three organisations in the Tesco Stronger Starts voting units in the stores in Buxton and Whaley Bridge since October – we hope you voted for us!
In November, we had our annual PAT-testing day in November, always a thrilling day, and started to discuss the theme for the Buxton Flowerpot Trail 2026 – we’ll announce what it will be in the spring.
Excitingly, we sent our child puppet (last used in Buxton Drama League’s 2017 production of Dracula) to a film production company in London, for it to star in an independent film(!) – we hope to be able to show some photos from this next year – and we sent our Season’s Greetings puppets (last used in 2022 in The Wirral) to an am-dram group in Worcester, who will be performing Alan Ayckbourn’s festive play in January and February.
Over the autumn, we also finalised our project evaluation reports for our 2024/2025 projects and calculated our environmental impact for April 2024 to March 2025 – we need to plant 1.32 broad leaf trees to offset our impact, which our FWiSP (Funny Wonders Sapling Producer) will be arranging in due course!
We have also been updating our project archive and funding record and been planning, and writing, funding applications to be able to continue our projects next year – it never ends!
Finally, in early December, we held our Christmas get-together. This year, we headed to the Old Clubhouse. The night featured a review of the year and quiz rounds, including a shark quiz by our youngest volunteer, an allotment-themed dingbats quiz by our Chair, and my famous Board Meeting Minutes Quiz!
If you’re looking to get involved with an active community group in the New Year, we’re always happy to welcome new members to our team. Please get in touch.
Wishing you all a lovely festive season. See you in 2026.
Ali and everyone at Funny Wonders
