Meet josh, a young carer
In April 2022, young carers from Ealing and Hounslow took part in a three-day creative writing project with Create writer Bryony Littlefair.
The project enabled a group of young carers to take a break from their caring responsibilities, have fun, learn new skills, build relationships and express themselves. The project was delivered in partnership with Brentford FC Community Sports Trust as part of our inspired:arts programme.
We spoke to young carer Josh (10) about his time on the project.
“projects like this help young carers because they can express their feelings in writing. So they can talk about it, they have a free space to talk.”
Josh, a Young Carer
“I care for my brother because he’s disabled. He finds it hard to walk and whenever he falls over I help him up. I’ve been caring for him my whole life.
“I know a lot of kids at my school, all my friends, don’t have anything like this in their lives. So I can definitely tell a difference between us because they tell me about their life at school and it’s quite different.
“Maybe I’m a bit more protective than other people because I have someone to protect, I have someone to look after, and in other people’s lives they don’t really have that. Sometimes my schoolwork is affected a little bit because I mostly worry about him, wondering if he’s doing okay at his school. We go to separate schools.”
Exposing your feelings
“On the first day of the project we did free-writing, which is when you write whatever comes to your mind. So when you get stuck you just keep writing “I don’t know I don’t know blah blah blah” and then something will eventually come to your mind. I’ve learnt that it doesn’t really have to make sense, what you write. You can write whatever you want.
“I felt quite impressed with myself because I’ve written a few poems at school but nothing like the sort of poem I wrote here. Obviously, Bryony [Create artist] is a professional poet and she helped me on the first two days with the poetry of the subject. It was really good working with the rest of the group. It was fun.
“It felt good to get out of the house and work my brain over the holidays. I’ve learnt that I can express myself with writing rather than something else.
“I think projects like this help young carers because they can express their feelings in writing. So they can talk about it, they have a free space to talk. At our school you don’t have that much space to talk. Or you can’t really express that in your writing because in English lessons you have a task that you have to do, whereas on these sorts of projects you can write whatever you want and you can express yourself in different ways and expose your feelings.”
This project was funded by The Feathers Association and The Mercers’ Company.