Our Story
Mission
Nimble Arts was founded in 2013 by Catherine Burgis and Rebecca Dixon (who now runs Beanstalk Arts).
As a company, our mission is to provide unique, high quality creative accessible childcare that nurtures children’s imagination and creativity while keeping them safe, happy and engaged.
Every day has multiple opportunities to learn, work independently and as part of a team, build confidence, make friends and explore personal interests through creative workshops.
Catherine Burgis
Our Values
Experienced
Our Team combine years of experience as teachers and arts education specialists with a thorough and constantly updated knowledge of childcare, child development and safeguarding practices.
The management team all have many years of classroom, behaviour management and special educational needs experience; and are regularly provided with training for in new child development and behaviour techniques and safeguarding.
Our visiting workshop leaders are industry specialists chosen to inspire children through creative arts, science, history, natural world and technology-based sessions.
Engaging
We have a dedicated staff member to design and create all our activities to make sure they are age specific and cover a range of subjects to inspire and engage every child. We are looking after children sometimes for up to 10 hours a day and this means the level of planning and the design and pace of our days is thought out in intricate detail. No two days are the same at Nimble: every day has a new theme, new items to make, new visiting experts to meet and new skills to develop while being supported by familiar faces in familiar spaces and lots of free active play. We have supported children all through their primary school journey from 4th birthday to leaving Year 6 and are always thrilled to welcome you to our Nimble family.
Qualified
We cost a little more than our competitors because we believe the way to ensure every child has a happy, healthy and creative day is by employing highly qualified and experienced staff at more than london living wage (with a ratio of 1 adult to 10 children regardless of age and 1:8 in our pre-school/Reception groups)
We also believe it is vital to have a full time trained medic on site at all times whose sole job it is to deal with first aid and any form of medical emergency. And finally, we believe holiday childcare should have the same high educational and safeguarding standards as school.
Community
We operate as a social enterprise with some of our profits being used to provide subsidised places for looked after children, families receiving Universal Credit and families with children with complex needs who are not able to access universal childcare without additional support.
We are members of the Out of School Alliance, the Institute of Children’s Activity Providers and the Professional Association of Childcare and Early Years, and work closely with Southwark Council to develop our services. Every child’s experience matters to us and we look forward to welcoming you to our Nimble Family.
Our clubs are registered on the Early Years and Compulsory parts of the Ofsted Childcare Register. You can see our last Ofsted report here