RUNNING 312km for create: dovile Eidimtaite’s story
In response to the widening inequality caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Dovile Eidimtaite – a soon-to-be primary school teacher – decided to fundraise for Create by running 312 kilometres over the summer. We spoke to Dovile about what inspired her to take on such a big challenge.
Why are you running 312 kilometres to raise money for Create?
I was thinking a lot about the distance I wanted to run. At first it was 100 km, then it was 200 km. I wanted the distance to mean something, so I decided to run the distance between Klaipeda and Vilnius, two cities in Lithuania where I’ve lived. That is why I’m running exactly 312 km for Create!
“The money you raise makes such a huge impact on children who really need it.”
Dovile eidimtaite
What does creativity mean to you?
I had an amazing upbringing at school, and I studied art and music professionally, so creativity has always been an important part of my life. I just finished training to be a primary school teacher in the UK and my dissertation explored creativity through music. Knowing that creativity is such an important part of all education has really inspired me. In the current climate, where creativity in the curriculum has been side-lined, I felt that it was important to shine a light on the importance of creativity.
How will you complete your challenge?
I think having a daily or weekly target for a big challenge is really good because you can look forward to it ending one day! I’m setting myself a target to run at least six kilometres every day, and racking up the number of kilometres I’ve run helps. I’m sharing my progress on Instagram. I post every two days, so the number goes down in bigger chunks – so far I’ve run 58 kilometres in just over a week.
What would you say to someone who is thinking of doing a fundraiser for Create?
I would say – DO IT! It is so rewarding for you and the charity. The money you raise makes such a huge impact on children who really need it, and this could change their lives, provide them with a feeling of belonging and inspire them to become the best version of themselves.
MEET SKY ARTS’ PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR 2020, CHRISTABEL BLACKBURN
Christabel Blackburn has designed a pandemic-inspired T-shirt to benefit Create, with 50% of the proceeds going to support our work. Here she explains why she is supporting us – and the importance of creativity in her life.
“I think we’re all agreed that creativity has been the answer to getting us through this pandemic,” says Christabel Blackburn, the recent winner of Sky Arts’ ‘Portrait Artist of the Year’ competition. “No matter what is going on outside, if you are creative you can always go within to find ways to get inspired.”
Blackburn, who beat more than 70 competitors and thousands of applicants to win the competition, is a firm believer in the power of creativity and its ability to help us navigate our way through difficult times.
“I have always felt passionately that the arts have the ability to heal and inspire.”
Christabel Blackburn
“I have two kids,” she says, “and my husband and I have both been working from home, so coming up with fresh ways to keep them occupied was a challenge: music and arts activities always trump playing with toys. For me, being able to escape to my studio from time to time was the tonic I needed to be able to cope with those challenges.”
LOCKDOWN DRAWINGS
Blackburn has been busy since winning the ‘Portrait Artist of the Year’ competition back in March. As part of her prize, she travelled to Connecticut to paint a portrait of musician Nile Rodgers, which will go on display in the Royal Albert Hall. She has also been creating pieces inspired by the pandemic and our lives under lockdown.
A collection of ‘social distancing’ drawings, created for an initiative called the Artist Support Pledge, all sold out within two hours of going live on her website. Blackburn has now decided to turn her favourite of those images, entitled Social Distancing outside a Post Office, into a T-shirt (pictured). She is selling this via her website, with 50% of the proceeds going to support our work.
“While we’ve all found lockdown challenging, I wanted to find a charity that could help disadvantaged and vulnerable adults and children in isolation,” she says. “I read about your Create Live! Zoom workshops with professional artists and support for older people in isolation, and knew I wanted to be a part of it.
“I have always felt passionately that the arts have the ability to heal and inspire. I hope that people will see this as a way to raise money for Create and an opportunity to buy a screen-printed artwork more affordably. While we’ve all found lockdown challenging, I wanted to find a charity that could help disadvantaged and vulnerable adults and children in isolation. I feel so lucky to have discovered this inspirational charity and hope I’ll be able to do more to support you in the future.”
Only 500 T-shirts have been produced in the initial run, priced at £25 each, so you’ll have to act fast to get your hands on one. The T-shirts are available on Blackburn’s website.
Nicky Goulder, our CEO said: “We are delighted and excited to have this support from Christabel. The money that she raises through sales of her impactful, topical T-shirt will enable us to empower the lives of some of society’s most isolated children and adults at a time when they deserve our support more than ever. Christabel’s work captures the loneliness so many of us have felt during the pandemic, and her support of our participant groups in this way is a perfect synergy. The Portrait Artist of the Year competition had me on the edge of my seat. That the incredible winner approached us to offer her support will inspire and delight our participants.”
We are thrilled that, as part of its ‘Creating Good’ initiative, WHJE has selected Create as its charity partner.
WHJE is the parent company of financial services marketing agency brandformula. It is looking to inspire, encourage and support its team to make a difference for our participants with all that they do, and it holds our ambitions and mission close to its heart.
“being a creative agency ourselves, we understand the impact of art, and how important and powerful it can be.”
Martin Wiggins, WHJE CEO
This morning, our CEO, Nicky Goulder, talked to the WHJE team about founding the charity 17 years ago; her passion for using creativity to empower and upskill vulnerable children and adults to connect, reduce isolation and enhance wellbeing; and the charity’s response to COVID-19 – delivering programmes via its new Create Live! delivery mechanism. She explained how the WHJE team’s amazing fundraising efforts will support us in impacting our participants.
Martin Wiggins, CEO of WHJE and Managing Director at brandformula told us: “Create’s mission, ‘to use the creative arts to empower society’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable people’, resonates greatly with our team. Ultimately, being a creative agency ourselves, we understand the impact of art, and how important and powerful it can be. It speaks volumes and everyone should have access to creative resources where possible.”
Nicky said: ”We are so delighted to have been chosen as WHJE’s charity partner and are excited to build a strong partnership with the company and its creative staff team. This will enable us to empower a huge number of lives through the creative arts. The company’s support is making an incredible difference at the current time, during the pandemic, when many of our participants are more isolated than ever before.”
WHJE have already raised a significant amount to support our work through their recent ‘Donate Your Commute’ campaign. We can’t thank them enough for their continued support.
Create Live! is Create’s online, interactive programme developed to reach participants during the lockdown, offering a creative lifeline to the most vulnerable children and adults in isolation. Over three days in June 2020, Create’s professional musician Mike Poyser delivered music workshops with young carers from The Honeypot Children’s Charity.
Frank (12) has been caring for his mum who has osteoporosis and sleep apnoea since he was eight. These are his reflections on the project:
“We’ve been having fun and learning how to play instruments. It has probably been the highlight of my quarantine. I liked learning the ukulele because I hadn’t touched it before and it’s nice to learn it so I can play it in the future.
“Create helps young carers because these opportunities would normally cost a lot of money. It makes young carers happy.”
Young Carer Frank
“I enjoyed meeting new people. In quarantine, I don’t normally get to see my friends. Just seeing other people and knowing they’re all other young carers made me feel like it’s not just me. It was fun working with the group. All these people I haven’t met and now I know something about them, all the little things that make that person them.
“Through the workshops, I’ve realised that music is really fun. It’s tricky at the start but when you get the hang of it, it’s nice. The final song was unexpected, how it turned out, but it was a good unexpected. I was happy with how the songs turned out.
“It was really fun working with Mike. It’s fun working with someone really high up and being taught by them. It’s always nice to learn something new. I’m not very interactive with other people usually. At school we have different friendship groups.
“I care for my mum. She has osteoporosis and she can break her bones really easily, and my dad had to leave work to become her carer. When my dad’s out it’s my responsibility to look after my mum. Because I’ve got my phone, she’ll always text me or call me and I will drop everything and go down to help her. She gets really shaky in her knees and she’s also got sleep apnoea, which means she can’t get much sleep.
“I think I’m more grown-up than the other children because I’ve learnt more life skills. I know how to cook. If my dad’s out and I’m hungry I can make jacket potato cheese and beans or something. Other people have the comfort of their mum and dad at home teaching them along the way, but I’ve learnt it all in the space of a year.
“Create helps young carers because these opportunities would normally cost a lot of money. If there’s not much money and you only have money to pay the rent or the bills and get food for the week then you can’t do it. Create gives young carers the opportunity to do this and it’s really special and nice to do other stuff. It makes young carers happy.”
Mike Poyser is a professional musician and Create artist. As our new project concept Create Live! came together we worked with Mike to develop a creative online project for young carers.
Create Live! is Create’s online, interactive project initiative developed to reach participants during the lockdown, offering a creative lifeline to the most vulnerable children and adults in isolation.
“It was an intense process adapting a Create music project for online delivery. Mild panic was my initial reaction! Nicky [Create’s Founding CEO] and I spoke on a Friday night, right at the start of lockdown, about the possibilities of workshops continuing online, how some aspects could work while others would be more of a challenge. We talked about safeguarding challenges and tech challenges and how we could innovate the work to keep reaching participants.
Mike Poyser hosting a staff trial workshop
“The following week we decided to put together a couple of sample workshops – firstly with the Create staff team as participants and then with a small group of young carers who Create has worked with a lot. How to get around the latency issue was the biggest challenge musically. In an in-venue session it is simple to play as a group, but over the Internet differing connection speeds mean that each participant hears the music at slightly different times. The solution for this was a combination of live performance and recorded performance. Recording sections of audio from the Zoom session meant we could take rhythmic ideas and combine them between sessions to create a band, then the live performance element was added on top of this.
“From these sample workshops, we learned a lot about the tech and what could work musically and how to create something quite effective and interesting. This led to a very long weekend of preparing and planning for nine consecutive music sessions with a group from Action for Young Carers in Nottingham.
THE WORKSHOP
The young carers perform a “horror” track with Mike Poyser
“During the workshops the first thing we discovered is the young people are totally chilled about the idea of working online – one participant even had their gamer headset on! We also realised that even though we were still in our own houses the combination of Zoom and some music instantly removed the isolation we probably all feel.
“We played musical games, we hunted our houses for instruments to play (pasta to shake, combs as a guiro, pots and pans to bash, books to slap together) and we started to play around with rhythms on these repurposed instruments. Once we had some cool patterns, we took recordings of these samples.
“On another session, we worked on writing lyrics for a blues piece. We learnt the structure of the blues and then put our spin on it. We even managed to perform this live, with keyboard and tuba in London and vocals coming from Nottingham!
“I was able to put together a track of the repurposed drum rhythms and the blues vocals. Once the participants had heard this and just how good it sounded, we were in business for writing more material, and we ended up creating quite an epic sounding dance track as well!
“For me, the first time we all met in the Zoom Room was really special. We are all stuck in our houses at the moment, and to see everyone meet and have fun through music was lovely! I was also amazed at how great the recordings through Zoom were and seeing everyone’s reactions when our first piece had been created was fantastic.”
TIPS FOR BEING CREATIVE AT HOME
Listen to your body and your mind. If you are feeling inspired, find some time and space to explore that. Also, be aware that some days you may just fancy watching TV.
The scariest part of creating something new is to stare at a blank piece of paper, so once you are in the zone just write ideas down as they come to you. The more ideas you have the better. Once you have some ideas you like then think about how to develop them. And then develop them!
Don’t put pressure on yourself. A song about cleaning the bathroom can be a really fun thing to write about. It doesn’t need to be turned into a hit, it can be a song that you enjoy. The process of writing it is the great part of it anyway.
Lauren Dickinson Clarke: “BEING CREATIVE IS THERAPEUTIC”
Lauren Dickinson Clarke is an English artist and designer who creates beautiful and whimsical homewares. Here she gives us an insight into her work, the importance of creativity in her life, and why she has chosen to support Create with a monthly gift.
Tell us about you and your work. How and when did you start making your pieces?
All of our designs start with an ink illustration, I try to design objects that elevate everyday interactions into fun and artistic experiences. I have been drawing and designing all my life but I launched the ‘LDC’ brand about four years ago and I have to say, I have loved every minute of it!
Which design did you come up with first?
My first design was ‘The Creation of Madam’ (pictured below) and it’s still one of my personal favourites. I drew it after a holiday to Rome when I was totally awestruck by Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Adam’. I drew a version for fun which replaced God’s and Adam’s hands with the hands of elegant women. But I fell in love with the concept so much that I ended up applying the design to everything from plates and mugs to wall coverings!
Lauren Dickinson Clarke’s Creation of Madam plate
Did it always start out as a business idea?
I’m an artist at heart but I knew that I wanted to build a brand which allowed me to share my values and passions with others. I suppose in a way, the emphasis for me was always more on wanting to build a community with those who love art, craftsmanship and are seeking new ways to express themselves.
Which is the most popular item that you sell?
Definitely ‘The Provocateur’ scented candle (pictured). We regularly have around 100 people on the waiting list for her and she just never seems to hang around long enough!
Lauren Dickinson Clarke’s Provocateur candle
How important is creativity and art to you on a personal level?
I would say it’s as fundamental to living for me as eating is. The act of creating is therapeutic, soul soothing, challenging and encourages you to find creative solutions to problems, which can also be incredibly useful in everyday life.
How does being creative affect your sense of wellbeing?
I know that when I stop being creative for any period of time, it sends me off kilter. I think that drawing, painting and sculpting can almost be forms of meditation. It forces you to be entirely in the moment and focused but also very free in your mind and open to new ideas.
Has it always been part of your life?
Yes it has. At a very young age I was drawing, painting or making little clothes for my teddies. After school it momentarily became less present in my life because I went on to study biology and chemistry at college rather than art. But after a few months, I realised that I had made the wrong decision so I swiftly changed direction!
When and how did you first hear about Create?
I heard about Create through a friend who told me about the amazing and creative work that they do with vulnerable and isolated people. This is a matter which is close to my heart and so I immediately did some digging to find out more.
Artwork from an online workshop Lauren attended
Why do you think Create’s work is important?
Engaging in a creative activity not only provides a mental and emotional escape but it can also give a voice to those who feel as though they aren’t heard. Young carers, for example, who possibly feel as though their choices in life are limited, are able to develop new passions and skills, which build their confidence and hopefully allow them to seek new opportunities.
Why have you chosen to partner with us?
Having attended Create’s creative workshops, I have seen first-hand just how uplifting and meaningful they are for those who take part. The recent pandemic has further highlighted the importance of supporting those who are isolated. It’s very possible that more people are struggling with loneliness and isolation than ever before and I think everybody has a duty to help and support those who need it.
What would you say to someone who was considering donating to Create or partnering with us?
Please do it! Create offers a much-needed lifeline to many in the form of community, creativity and support. Create is run by creative, compassionate and caring people who are incredibly driven to improve the lives of young carers, isolated individuals and many others who truly need a helping hand.
Follow Lauren’s example and give Create a monthly gift. Use the form below or click here.
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‘THE FEEDBACK WAS EXCEPTIONAL’: KRISTA SHARP FROM MYTIME ON WORKING WITH CREATE
Create partnered with MYTime Young Carers in Dorset to deliver a photography project via Create Live! at the end of May 2020.
MYTime’s Executive Director Krista Sharp (pictured) tells us about the organisation’s work, how they have adapted to the pandemic, and what it was like teaming up with Create.
“The opportunity to be creative is hugely important for everyone and it’s particularly important for young carers.”
Krista Sharp, Mytime
WHO ARE MYTIME?
MYTime Young Carers supports young carers and their families across Dorset. We work with children aged 5-18 who provide care for a member of their family.
Two-thirds of young carers say that they are bullied in school, and they regularly report feeling isolated from other children their age. The Children’s Society reported that young carers achieve nine grades lower on average than their peers.
Our work is hugely important. We bring groups of young carers together, giving them the opportunity to spend time with people who are experiencing the same sorts of things they are. This combats some of the isolation they can feel and gives them the chance to develop lasting friendships.
Young carers are incredibly selfless and compassionate. They are used to putting others’ needs before their own and this can impact their own life chances. We support these young carers to ensure they have access to opportunities, friendship and support, which will enable them to go on to live happy and successful lives.
COVID-19 DISRUPTION
During the pandemic, our young carers have experienced a significant increase in the care they are providing at home, as well as increased stress and worry around their own and their family’s health. COVID-19 has had a major impact on our normal provision for young carers.
We have had to cancel all our face-to-face activities and all stays at our R&R Retreat Centre. We had a whole series of young carer activities booked for the Easter and May school holidays, which would have provided our young carers with a break from their caring responsibilities. Sadly, all of these were postponed.
We have completely adapted our provision for young carers by creating an online programme called MYTime at Home. We have created and shared a huge variety of short respite activities for young carers on our YouTube channel and set up an online Zoom young carer youth group. MYTime has also started a food delivery programme for young carers and their families who are struggling to access the basic necessities and are unable to access any government support.
TEAMING UP WITH CREATE
Nicky Goulder (Create’s CEO) saw some of the work we were doing via our MYTime at Home programme and contacted me to discuss the work the charity had been doing, and the online Create Live! service that it had developed as a response to COVID-19. Nicky was extremely passionate about this work, and the value of bringing communities together during the pandemic.
When she described the format of a photography project delivered via Create Live!, it sounded fantastic. I knew immediately it would enable the young carers not only to learn a new skill but also spend some time with other young carers.
Our workshop was a three-day photography project with Alejandra. She was absolutely fantastic. She was able to teach our young carers a huge amount about creating beautiful and interesting photographs. They were encouraged to work in groups, giving them the chance to get to know one another and learn from each other.
They were able to form friendships with other young people who are going through a similar experience during COVID-19. It also taught them photography skills that they can now carry with them moving forward, and enabled them to explore their own home environments and to see them from a different perspective.
The feedback we received from the participants and their families was exceptional. After the project, one mother wrote to me to say: “It all brought a tear to my eye. The creativity and ideas produced in ONLY three days, without specialist photography equipment and all far apart, was just AMAZING! I think all the children will feel now that they have had a very special collaboration with others. I think you have sparked a new interest in the children for some that shall last a lifetime.”
They all really enjoyed the sessions, working with Alejandra and the team from Create. The participants have all stated they would like to be involved in another project were we to partner with Create again.
THE POWER OF CREATIVITY
The opportunity to be creative is hugely important for everyone and it’s particularly important for young carers. It allows young carers the chance to express themselves in a way which they might struggle to do if they were asked to put it into words. It also gives them the chance to see themselves differently.
None of the young carers who took part viewed themselves as photographers at the beginning of the project. By the end, they all said that they saw themselves as artists now, which is just incredible! One of the young carers has now developed a keen interest in photography and is looking to pursue it further.
The photographs that the young carers took were so incredible and of such high quality. We’ve asked each to share their best photograph with us, which we are going to have framed and displayed on the wall at our R&R Retreat Centre.
We are definitely going to work with Create again. The team are fantastic, the project was extremely well organised and supportive of the young carers needs.
A huge thank you to everyone at Create! You are absolutely brilliant and we would thoroughly recommend working with you to other organisations looking to involve their beneficiaries in the creative arts.
This project was supported by Arts Council England using public funding from the National Lottery.
Read an interview with photographer Alejandra on her experience of running a Create Live! workshop.
CREATE PARTNERS WITH HONEYPOT TO EMPOWER YOUNG CARERS DURING LOCKDOWN
We have formed a partnership with The Honeypot Children’s Charity to reach out to increasing numbers of young carers who have been isolated during the coronavirus pandemic.
Starting this week, Carers Week, we have joined forces to bring online creative projects to dozens of young carers from England and Wales. Four projects have been planned initially over the next four weeks: photography, dance, music and drama. The workshops, which are being run by our professional artists, will give the young carers respite from their everyday lives, boost their self-esteem and creativity, and give them a chance to connect with other young carers.
There are an estimated 800,000 young carers in the UK, and more than one third of them report that they suffer from mental health problems. A recent study found that children and young people are likely to experience high rates of depression and anxiety during lockdown and long after it ends. Young carers are particularly vulnerable, and creativity can provide them with a vital lifeline: a chance to express themselves, build skills and enhance self-esteem, aiding wellbeing.
Honeypot provides a long-established and wide-reaching network of thousands of engaged young carers through much-loved respite breaks, digital inclusion outreach services and fun face-to-face outreach days. During its 24-year history, more than 20,000 young carers have benefited from Honeypot’s support services to date.
In 2019/20 our professional artists delivered creative projects with 410 young carers across the UK, providing them with a creative and social outlet away from their caring responsibilities. We were recognised with the prestigious Children & Young People Now’s Young Carers Award for this vital work. We were extending the programme in 2020 when the coronavirus struck, forcing all our workshops to be postponed.
Just 14 days later, following rigorous planning, consultation and trial runs, we launched a new delivery method – Create Live! – through which we are now delivering our programmes virtually. Workshops in photography, visual art, drama, music, dance and other artforms are now being rolled out to young carers and other vulnerable children and adults across the UK, reducing their sense of isolation during the pandemic. This is the first time we have partnered with Honeypot.
Our Chief Executive Nicky Goulder said: “We are so excited about working with Honeypot to reach new groups of young carers with the power of the creative arts. We have adapted quickly to the pandemic, and our online workshops are proving incredibly successful at empowering, upskilling and bringing the joy of creativity to some of the most isolated people in our society during lockdown. Young carers need us now more than ever, and we are delighted to be extending the reach of our work through this important new collaboration with Honeypot, which will bring young carers together at a time when they need this most.”
Honeypot CEO Simmi Woodwal said: “Always aware of the need to maximise the impact that contributions from voluntary donations will have on improving the lives of young carers, Honeypot seeks to avoid duplicating expenditure, by partnering with organisations who have the expertise to deliver engaging, life enhancing services. In Create, I am confident that Honeypot has found an excellent new partner. Our two organisations harmoniously share goals and objectives of boosting the social and emotional resilience of young carers through life enhancing engagement in activities that develop the children’s confidence and self-esteem while reducing their anxiety and stress levels. I look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with Nicky Goulder and her marvellous team at Create.”
Photographs taken by young carers on a Honeypot/Create photography project.
This week is Carers Week, and we are eager to add our voice to help raise awareness of the amazing, often unheralded work done by young and adult carers across the UK.
We are committed to empowering carers across the UK – both during the pandemic and beyond – with creative arts projects that reduce isolation, build skills and confidence, provide a break from caring and enhance wellbeing.
THE STATISTICS
Before the pandemic, there were an estimated 9.1 million unpaid carers in the UK – and the coronavirus has added an extra 4.5 million people to this figure, all of whom are caring for older, disabled or seriously ill relatives or friends during the pandemic. Before this crisis, the economic value of carers’ contribution was an enormous £132 billion per year, and more than a third – 35% – of unpaid adult carers say they are often or always lonely. Can you imagine the effect that lockdown has had on all of these people?
Of these carers, an estimated 800,000 are classed as “young carers” under the age of 18, more than a third of whom report that they suffer from mental health problems. A recent study found that children and young people are likely to experience high rates of depression and anxiety during lockdown and long after it ends. Young carers are particularly vulnerable, and creativity can provide them with a vital lifeline: a chance to express themselves, build skills and enhance self-esteem, aiding wellbeing.
OUR WORK WITH CARERS
A landscape sculpture from one of our online workshops with young carers
In 2019/20 our professional artists delivered face-to-face creative projects with 410 young carers across the UK, providing them with a creative and social outlet away from their caring responsibilities. Create was recognised with the Children & Young People Now Young Carers Award in November 2019 for this vital work.
Our projects with adult carers, meanwhile, helped them to explore their creativity while taking a break from their caring responsibilities, building trusting relationships with other carers who understand their situation, and building confidence and new skills, such as music or collage.
We were working to extend our projects with carers in 2020 when the coronavirus lockdown forced us to postpone all of our workshops.
Just 14 days later, following rigorous planning, consultation and trial runs, we launched a new delivery method – Create Live! – through which we are now delivering our programmes virtually. We are in the process of rolling out photography, visual art, drama, music and dance projects with young and adult carers and other vulnerable children and adults across the UK, reducing their sense of isolation during the pandemic.
Our Chief Executive, Nicky Goulder, explained: “We were devastated when the pandemic forced us to postpone our workshops, and knew we had to adapt as quickly as possible. There was no alternative. We exist to bring people together to reduce isolation, develop creativity and enhance wellbeing. Thanks to the flexibility and dedication of our artists, staff, funders and partners, Create Live! came together incredibly quickly, and we are seeing impressive results. Being able to empower, upskill and bring together our participants to enjoy creative self-expression and meet new people has never been more important.”
Krista Cartlidge, Executive Director at MYTime Young Carers, which is a new partnership that has been established since lockdown happened, commented: “We loved working with Create to deliver an online photography project with our young carers in Dorset. It was a resounding success. The participants were encouraged to create incredible, thoughtful photographs, and it was fantastic to see them so proud of their work and listening to each other. It is absolutely crucial that young carers are given the opportunity to take a break and connect with one another at this time and the Create project was a brilliant way to do this.”
One of the parents reflected: “The creativity and ideas produced in ONLY three days, without specialist photography equipment and all far apart, was just AMAZING! I think all the children will feel now that they have had a very special collaboration with others. The photos were all so clever, interesting, beautiful. The photo where everyone reached out to another person was quite moving. It was a joy to see my daughter so enthusiastically running around finding objects and then showing us her work.”
Following the successful launch of Create Live!, we will be using this mechanism to deliver our programmes until it is safe once again to bring our participants together into the same physical space for workshops. In this way, we will continue to reach young and adult carers during the pandemic and beyond.
James Baldwin is a professional theatre maker/writer and Create artist. As our new project concept Create Live! came together we worked with James to develop a creative online radio drama project for young carers in Ealing/Hounslow.
Create Live! is Create’s online, interactive project initiative developed to reach participants during the lockdown, offering a creative lifeline to the most vulnerable children and adults in isolation.
“Keeping the work rooted in the principles of face-to-face workshop is central to developing a workshop for Create Live! delivery. The key is flexibility and being able to think on the spot. You need to have more than enough material, which is a potential difficulty when you’re working online. You can generate 100 hours’ worth of games and activities but how many of those games will work when all you have is a small screen? Drama games are often about improvisation and being able to read people’s body language, so adapting drama games to work online took some ingenuity.
“It’s about being able to embrace the technology to achieve your aim: to have fun and make the participants feel valued.”
James Baldwin
“When technology becomes a faff you have to prioritise the workshop goals and keeping it all fun. Throughout the planning of the workshop I was asking myself “why are we doing that game?” and “what are we trying to achieve?”. Making a group connection is tricky when you’re disconnected physically. So, it’s important to prioritise things that might seem small but make the participants feel comfortable. For example, letting them know that their name is on the screen and making sure they have it displayed how they want it. It’s about being able to embrace the technology to achieve your aim: to have fun and make the participants feel valued.
James Baldwin leading one of the workshops
“What does translate really well from face-to-face to online, is making yourself the example. If you want people to be a bit daft you have to demonstrate that by being super daft. And if you want people to be serious, you demonstrate that by being more serious.
“The young people were interested in so many things: COVID-19, power dynamics, global warming, magic. Being able to harness all these ideas as a facilitator and enabling the young people to write a script about the things that matter to them, but also offers an element of escapism, is important.
“So this script took the idea of global warming and it took the idea of COVID-19 but it used the idea of wizardry and sorcery to take these ideas into a magic realm. The young people are able to express what they want about the pandemic and all the things that are important to their lives, but with an element of escapism because you’ve changed the rules of that world to incorporate magic and wizardry and witchcraft.”
