Village festival provides the funding for a Wild Club and an Art Club

Shute Festival is funding two new after school clubs at the village primary school this term.

The initiative is part of the group's outreach programme, paid for with a grant from the East Devon AONB Sustainable Development Fund.

The clubs, which run weekly, are a Wild Club taught by an experience forest school leader Ceri Richards and an Art Club run by local artist and teacher Heather Fallows.

Patrick Germscheid, head of school, said: "It has been wonderful having two unique clubs which has allowed the children to develop new and important skills."

The Wild Club involves a variety of activities which take place in the school gardens and in the surrounding woods including planting, insect and bird identification and recording, forest games and gardening.

The Art Club is teaching children drawing and painting techniques using water colours and improving their observation skills. It is using the surrounding plants within the school as inspiration and models for the art.

Both clubs aim to produce tangible outputs for an exhibition of work by the children in the autumn term.

Samantha Knights, a parent at Shute Primary and co-director of Shute Festival, said: "We are so thrilled to have been given this grant. It has made a big difference to the children involved and we are going to do what we can to ensure that we manage to sustain both clubs in the long term."

Shute Festival, now in its fourth year, will run from September 13 to 15. See www.shutefest.org.uk for all details.