End of 2021 & heading into 2022

Unfortunately the end of 2021 was difficult for me after testing positive with Covid at the start of November. It has taken me a while to get my energy levels back up. One highlight of the end of 2021 was evaluating a pilot Creative Writing Traineeship for the Foundling Museum working with some amazing care-experienced young adults, many of whom have special educational needs and/or experiences of mental health. It was interesting to see how they connected with the Foundling stories and collection, both in terms of similarities and differences to their own experiences. They wrote poetry with poet Belinda Zhawi around themes of identity and stigma, and built relationships with each other over a period of ten weeks. Many of them did not have other friends who are care leavers so this was a safe space to be supported by their peers and to share their stories. I am excited to be working with the Foundling Museum again.

Thinking ahead to 2022, all of my work is aligned with supporting young people into careers in the creative industries and museums & galleries either through setting up programmes, evaluating or mentoring:

  • Foundling Museum - evaluating the Foundling Museum’s Art Traineeship with care experienced young adults, which has been running for a number of years;

  • Tate - evaluating year 2 of Tate’s internal mentoring programme for Tate Collective Producers paired off with Tate staff, following on from the pilot programme last year;

  • The Photographers’ Gallery - continuing on year 5 of evaluating DEVELOP: Creative Careers through Photography for 14 to 24 year olds;

  • Freelands Foundation - continuing the planning of Freelands Foundation’s first paid traineeship role to start in September 2022, including making connections with secondary schools, colleges and youth groups across London and forming a group of arts organisations who also run traineeships;

  • University of the Arts London (UAL) - mentoring a young person who is studying or who has recently graduated from UAL;

  • Art on the Underground - evaluating and mentoring on a secondment programme within Transport for London (TfL). Interestingly the person on this secondment is not a young person but someone who has worked at TfL for a number of years. So how does this change the support they need to transfer into a more creative role?

Watch this space for future work announcements in 2022!