Sarah Cressall, founder of the multi-award winning arts and crafts franchise, The Creation Station, has been awarded an OBE
Sarah Cressall, founder of
The Creation Station, franchise, has been awarded an OBE in the 2023 King’s New
Year Honours List. Sarah, 56, was given the award for her services to
creativity in education, entertainment and business.
An OBE, (Order of the
British Empire) is awarded to a person who has a distinguished regional or
county-wide role in any field, through achievement or service to the community
including notable practitioners known nationally. When complications during
pregnancy confined Sarah to a wheelchair, she attended local activity groups
with three preschool aged children but found they were very prescriptive with
all the children having to do the same things. As a result, Sarah identified a
gap in the market for activities that engaged and sparked each child’s natural
curiosity and in 2002 she launched The Creation Station.
Sarah awarded the first
Creation Station franchise in 2007 and today has 61 franchisees offering
creative arts and crafts experiences for children and adults. These include
parent and baby workshops, preschool STEM classes, afterschool and holiday
camps, birthday parties, adult creative craft workshops and Paint & Sip
events. Activities are also run in partnership with
leisure centres, holiday camps, local pubs and care homes.
Head office runs a
creative activity entertainment agency which provides franchisees with contract
work and leads. Event entertainment includes activities at shopping centres,
festivals, in-store events and the Kids Zones at both the Olympic and
Commonwealth Games.
As a nationally recognised
brand that has shared their classes and events with 1.8 million people to date,
and who have the largest number of reviews on Trustist of any children’s
activity provider in the country, they are also involved in collaborations with
international brands such as Hasbro, Sky
and Crayola and are the expert creative provider for OOMPH care home trainer.
The Creation Station has
received a 5* Franchisee Satisfaction Score from WorkBuzz for the last three
years and were recently named as number 39 on the Elite Franchise Top 100 List.
The franchise donates products, workshops and online activities to many
national and local charities including Home-Start and Starlight Kids.
Sarah first joined the BFA
in 2009 and served on the board from 2019 to 2022. She said: “It was always
important for me to do things the right way, so I went to the BFA for that help
and advice and stepped up to serve on the board, not only to continue to raise
standards in the industry but also to ‘give back’ to an association that has
been so supportive to me and my business.”
Discussing her award Sarah
said: “I am of course delighted that my work has been recognised and I’d like
to thank my husband Duncan and our three boys Sam, Ollie and Josh for their
support and all our fantastic franchise partners and the team at The Creation
Station, but I’m also really pleased for the franchise sector. I think the
benefits of investing in a franchise are still not fully recognised by many people
and I hope this award will help to further raise the profile of franchising as
an ethical, professional business model that can offer fantastic
self-employment opportunities to millions of people across the UK.”
Pip Wilkins CEO of the BFA
said: “I remember having my very first meeting with Sarah, sitting at her
kitchen table at her home in Devon as she launched the franchise over twenty
years ago. From that day to this she has been a prime example of a franchisor
who has run their business in an ethical and professional manner, abiding by
our and her own, strict code of conduct. We are absolutely thrilled that her
hard work and professionalism have been recognised in this way, and that in
turn it has created a very public ambassador for franchising in the UK.
Congratulations Sarah, the
industry thanks you and we look forward to seeing more exciting things from the
Creation Station in the coming years.”
