Meet Abebi, ITV Creates participant

In March 2020, we worked with our professional visual artist, Amy Leung, and young carers from Hillingdon, Kingston and Lambeth to create a new ITV ident. The ident ran on the channel from 10 – 16 August.

Abebi (10) is one of the young carers who took part in our ITV Creates project. Here, she tells us about her experience.

“It was like no other experience; you couldn’t do anything like that in a normal art class.”

Young Carer Abebi

“Me and my younger sister care for our mum who has trouble walking and taking her medication. I started helping out giving mum her medication and doing jobs around the house when I was six years old.

“Being creative with other people was really fun. I don’t really get the chance to do extra activities at school, so it is fun doing art. You make new friends and we all helped each other with the artwork and talked about it. Doing creative projects with Create shows you that you’re not the only carer and that there are other people caring for their parents. It’s very good when you come together and combine your ideas with everyone else.

“We were making an ident. It’s what they put in the corner of the TV screen when they’re showing adverts. We were using colourful boxes to create the sculpture in the ITV shape, making art and sticking that to the boxes.

“I really like Harry Potter, so I put Gryffindor colours all around the things I drew. And then I drew over the picture myself and stuck it onto a small canvas. It was messy because I got paint all over my hands, but my drawing was really neat. I liked sticking up my artwork. I really liked the work I did. It was really fun. It was like no other experience; you couldn’t do anything like that in a normal art class. The day really inspired me because you got to draw, to paint, to be with other people and not just by yourself. Everyone helped each other and made new friends.

“At first it was a bit weird being in the ITV studio, but you get used to everything around you like the lights and the cameras. Then it felt normal. Amy is really nice and a very kind person. I think anyone would want to be friends with her. I’ve learnt that I can be really creative if I set my mind to it. If you’re not creative, it can be really boring because you don’t have anything to do.

“The project made me be more creative. If there’s not much to do I’m really, really creative and I make good pieces of art.”

See the final ident, and read more about the project, here.