A spooky sensory Halloween party at TouchBase Pears

Written by Lydia Willetts on

At Sense TouchBase Pears, we brought together Sense services from across the Midlands to celebrate Halloween in spooky style.

At Sense TouchBase Pears, we love a party. We’re always looking for the next opportunity to dig out our best fancy dress, to bring people together and, if you’ve ever visited us, to decorate the building for a celebration. And Halloween was no different.

From the moment you stepped inside TouchBase, you were greeted by spooky characters, Halloween bunting, lights and cobwebs and one very festive facilities team.

A group of nine women stood together in a group, smiling to camera. They are all wearing fancy dress costumes for Halloween.

A Halloween party for everyone

Most of our activities at TouchBase Pears are for the whole community but this party was a little different. We invited people from our services across the region, including Sense College, BaseCamp (our day service) and our residential homes.

We knew we’d have a broad mix of guests, each with different complex needs and so it was really important that the party could be enjoyed by everyone, whether that meant being fully immersed in music and dancing, or enjoying a cup of tea and a spooky cupcake in a quiet space.

A group of people enjoying a Halloween party.

Making spooky sensory

We hosted our Halloween party in our theatre space, The Buzz, a huge room, made dark and spooky by floor to ceiling blackout curtains.

Decorations and fairy lights covered all of the walls and coloured spotlights illuminated the dance floor. A Halloween playlist provided the perfect soundtrack to an afternoon of dance-offs whilst large speakers and Subpacs allowed people to enjoy the vibrations from the music.

A young man places his hands on a speaker to feel the vibrations of the music being played. The speaker is decorated for Halloween with cobwebs.

We’re already looking forward to our next party

After a few hours of dancing, balloon bouncing, cake eating and tea drinking, we ended the party how every costume party should end… by awarding prizes for the best dressed guest and staff member.

With so many fantastic costumes, it was a tough call, but the prizes went to Emily, a student at Sense College and James, a support worker from BaseCamp.

A man in a fancy dress costume wearing a long blonde wig and a silver space suit, holding an inflatable guitar.
A young woman with short brown hair with skeleton hand hair clips in is wearing a black dress covered in white spider webs.

Now that the ghosts and the ghouls are packed away for another year, we’re already thinking about what our next celebration will be and wondering if we can squeeze another party in before we decorate for Christmas.