Consciously Weaving Connections – voices of Soham children reached far and wide in 2025
Six fundamental principles to support health and wellbeing developed through listening to children
“I think it’s important that children have a say, because even though we don’t get to vote we are still a part of the community.”
- Bethany (aged 10), The Shade Primary School, speaking as part of a panel of experts in the Houses of Parliament, November 2025.
We know it takes time and resources to meaningfully involve children’s ideas in systems thinking. Thanks to support from partners, particularly in Public Health and the East Cambridgeshire Integrated Neighbourhood team, Fullscope was able to invest these in our work to listen to primary school age children in Soham during 2025. Reflecting on this last year, we can see how opportunities for growth for everybody were created as we consciously took the time to weave new connections.
Where We Began
The work began with the recognition that we needed to hear from younger children about what mattered to them as part of the ongoing review of the services that supported their mental health and wellbeing. We knew that Fullscope’s commitment to working in creative ways to enable ideas to be explored and expressed would be critical for this work and carefully planned with our artist colleagues how this could be possible within the structures we were working with.
Charlie (aged 9) “I don’t usually tell people about my personality. When I did the map my imagination burst out of my head. It helps me to draw - it makes me look differently. Once I used up my whole rubber. There is less pressure than when we use words. You can explain better. Sometimes you can’t let it out and then you feel stressed.”
Mapping Soham Stories was originally conceived as a small project in early 2025 that might meet small groups in the three primary schools in Soham, a small town in East Cambridgeshire. The work rapidly expanded and eventually connected three school communities to work in new ways, listening creatively to over 1,100 children.
Our Reach
The result of this work, What Matters to Us, has been:
Synthesised and shared through films and exhibitions
Published as recommendations for system partners
Developed into a free to access resource to enable ongoing knowledge generation and sharing of young children’s ideas and wisdom.
(from left): Ruth Sapsed, Fullscope Associate; Bethany; Hilary Cox Condron, artist; Charlotte Cane, MP; Joy Martin, The Shade Primary School; Charlie; Ashling Banon, East Cambs Integrated Neighbourhood Programme Manager; Hannah Chapman, Cambridge Acorn Project; Sharon Wright, The Shade Primary School.
In November 2025, Bethany and Charlie, two children from The Shade Primary School in Soham, contributed to a round table discussion on the new NHS 10 year plan for a neighbourhood NHS, talking about what matters to them. They were invited by MP Dr Simon Opher, the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Creative Health and were the only children on the panel, which included 15 professional experts from across the UK. This short film captures some of the key moments from the presentation. A link to the whole event is below.
One of our key aims was to ensure that we not only heard what the children said, but also that we acted…..What children, young people, families and adults often identify as needing to thrive are not necessarily the structures or services that we keep building and funding. Creative health is an approach which can help us move from a focus on treatment to a focus on prevention, as well as being an inclusive approach for hearing what matters from seldom heard voices…..What children have told us will form an integral part of the review and redesign of children’s mental health services…these priorities will also feed into the design of the new regional children’s hospital.
- Ashling Bannon, Integrated Neighbourhood Programme Manager, East Cambs
This creative approach to listening to and learning from young children about what matters to them has now been published as a free resource for schools, available here.
