Big Way Of Life

This month's spotlight has fallen upon the F-Factor project being delivered in Denbighshire.

On a sunny Sunday morning in Corwen's War Memorial Park families gathered to take part in the F-Factor festival and get their children involved in healthy living. Completely free to attend, there was a plethora of activities and games to take part in, all getting children active and making them aware of the importance of healthy living.

They could try their hand at a variety of sports, including football, rugby, cricket, bowls and tennis, as well as other fun things such as inflatable slides, ball games and all kinds of crafts. Local sports teams, including Corwen Football Club, lent their time and expertise to organise games and skills workshops for children and parents to try, with cricket, in particular, being very popular. Llandegla mountain biking centre also kindly brought along their smoothie-making mountain bike, whereby cycling powers a blender on the back of the bike to make real fruit smoothies the rider can then drink themselves!

Continuing with the healthy foods theme, a team from Deeside College ran cooking demonstrations, teaching children to make fruit salads, fruit kebabs, vegetable stir fry, and other healthy meals they can try themselves or with their parents at home. The demonstrations went down a storm with everyone really pleased with the food they produced.

This was just some of the activities available outside but there was still more going on inside. There were tables of fresh fruit for children to get stuck into and information for them to learn about the different foods they eat. There were also more crafts including t-shirt making, which proved very popular.

Katharine Williams attended the event with her two children Daniel and Chloe, and she was very impressed with what was on offer.

She said: "We just came down to see what was going on and there's so much happening. The kids haven't stopped since they got here and they've really enjoyed all the activities.

"It's great that events like these are taking place. It gets the children actually doing something and will hopefully get them interested in healthy foods, which isn't always an easy task. If it wasn't for projects such as F-Factor they might not get the opportunity to come to events such as this."

F-Factor project leader Richard Griffin was there meeting and greeting families as they arrived, and he was delighted with how the day had been received.

He said: "It's really encouraging to see so many families here. It's all about community engagement with a health slant and that's what this festival is promoting. We have a lot going on and everyone really seems to be having a great day."

Richard was also very pleased with how the F-Factor project in general is coming along.

"We have got local businesses and schools involved, and overall we are looking at around 1,200 children that we have reached out to across the county. We still have work to do but feedback we've had so far has been really positive."

This is the third festival F-Factor have run, with a fourth planned in Ruthin on May 30th

Were you at the festival? If so then contact us or stop by the forums to let us know what you thought of it.