Bee is 20 years old, making her our youngest participant. She started coming to Clever Betsy on a trial basis whilst she was still at school in the Spring of 2023, joining us properly in September of the same year. She is non-verbal and has one-to-one support.
Our challenges with Bee are to encourage her to make her own decisions when choosing fabrics and colours; she tends to just pick whichever is nearest, but when she makes a more informed choice, her colour sense is out of the box, but nearly always works. The support workers who attend with her help Bee make a lot of her own choices and work independently wherever possible.
Bee took an active role in Clever Betsy’s summer project, all about landscapes. She went out with the group and took some photos locally. She was then asked to choose her favourite from four of the best pictures.
On this occasion, she appeared to study all of the photos before selecting her favourite, and we have noticed her making choices more often lately.
During the time she has been with us, Bee has experienced machine sewing, Hand sewing, Embroidery, Card weaving, Printing, Painting, Drawing, Stop motion animation,
Felting, Batik and Clay modelling.
She had an abstract painting in our exhibition last November, which was sold to a member of the public. Many of the cards she has made have been very popular and sold well, especially the drawing of the girl jumping for joy, which she has clothed in various fabric outfits and mounted onto card.
Recently, one of our other participants taught Bee how to crochet. Bee learned so quickly and now can crochet both chains and stitches. When we are less busy with our summer and Christmas projects, we may set her a crochet target, for example, to make a blanket!