Blue Drum was set up in 2001. It is a specialist community arts body funded by the Family Support Agency to nurture local arts and cultural work in Family Resource Centres. It is a not-for-profit company with a voluntary board, with 3 staff employed part-time and 13 other practitioners contracted to a two year EU Culture Programme research study.

The Blue Drum Happy Parent Initiative (HPI) is designed as a single experiential workshop for participating parents attending Family Resource Centres (FRC). Operationally HPI is delivered as an FRC-level support to FRCs, but it was also delivered, in some instances at regional, inter-FRCs level.

HPI arose as an attempt to insert an arts-based intervention in support of existing programmes and actions undertaken by FRCs within the context of their own strategic plans and developments.

Report contents:
• Blue Drum
• Family Support Agency and Family Resource Centres
• Happy Parent Initiative - background, outline and design
• Workshop description
• Implementation
• Review
• Discussion
• Conclusion

[For a video on this initiative and slide show on the report see related URL links below]