Creativity Works: Winter Lights

The Creativity Works programme aims to help young people into creative industries, offering skills and experience in a broad variety of fields. The young people are not currently in education or training and come from very diverse educational backgrounds, with school leavers and graduates included, and many with additional needs.

Supported by the Mayor’s Fund for London, participants gain experience in many areas within the Arts, including customer service, stewarding, marketing, performance, design, technical support and community engagement. There are opportunities to learn and to teach. The programme also provides maintained support from a mentor with the Berkeley foundation.

2015’s Creativity Works focused on the Winter Lights parade in Hounslow, a large scale live arts event. Participants played a key role in developing and delivering this project working with Same Sky, the largest community arts charity in the South East. As part of this, participants were taught how to make lanterns and went on to deliver and lead workshops in schools and youth-clubs.

Creativity Works participants also work on popular events hosted at Watermans including Dinosaur Week for little-ones and the technology focused Digital Performance Weekender. For example, they supported artists delivering virtual reality experiences, participated in workshops to develop exhibitions and ushered busy events.

The Creativity Works programme is flexible with opportunities tailored to what participant’s goals are. For example, valuable experiences are presented for young actors including a performance with Periplum (a ground-breaking site-responsive and outdoor theatre performance company) and work with the Watermans’ youth drama course, the Hunt Academy for Young Actors (HAYA). Others focus on different roles entirely with opportunities for designers, writers, photographers and many more.

2014’s Creativity Works saw two participants take on a full time job in the creative industries and a third taken on in the Customer Relations Team at Watermans.

Here is some feedback from 2015 participants:

“I joined Creativity Works so I could be part of a creative industry. As a musician, I lacked the communication and customer management skills, as well as the overall confidence, needed within a workplace. Creativity Works has given me valuable work experience and has introduced me to many new and interesting people.” Mason Moroney

“Joining the creativity works programme enabled me to meet and work with a wide variety of people of all ages. As a theatre and performance graduate, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed assisting with the active youth theatre, HAYA, and learning how to work with children to enable them to function as professional actors in the working world. I’ve been lucky enough to be taken on as a part time assistant and will continue working with the youth theatre from January onwards.” – Georgina Ezuanyamike

“As a graduate, working with different companies from creative industries has given me a variety of tangible skills and productive experience.” Amardeep Pannu