About Young Watermans
Young Watermans is a bespoke employability project that supports up to 10 young people who are not in employment, education or training to progress into further education and paid job roles. It aims to build on previous projects with young people and test a new model which embeds young people in the organisation.
The project provides:
- First-hand work experience of the core activities involved in delivery of arts and cultural programmes
- Employability training, including CV writing, presentation skills, interview technique, and workshops to prepare for the work placement activities
- Arts Award bronze or silver qualification
- Individual development plans and interview preparation
- Individual assessments for entry to West Thames College
Sid’s Story: Young Watermans 2015
Sid had recently completed a BTEC in Creative Media and like many young people was struggling to work out what to do next. A family friend told Sid about the programme and Sid decided to give it a go. “I didn’t really have an idea of what to expect, it was just something to do instead of being at home doing nothing productive and being in a rut”.
With Young Watermans, Sid received career mentoring and took part in a back stage tour of the National Theatre and other arts organisations, and was part of outdoor arts events like the People’s Tower, an outdoor Arts event at Bell Square in Hounslow.. The main focus though was Urban Ambush, Watermans’ summer programme of week-long creative projects for young people. As a workshop assistant Sid worked closely with the artists leading the workshops and experienced their different art forms and approaches to delivering workshops first hand. These two events led to an unexpected discovery for Sid. He takes up the story:
“For the People’s Tower we spent a lot of time in the studio workshops working with the artists and local residents who dropped in to help, preparing all of the pieces which were sent to Bell Square where everybody joined in to assemble the tower. I thought it was really interesting and brought in my camera, as I had recently bought a new lens and wanted to learn how to use it better. Before then I rarely used my camera and was even considering selling it and just using the camera on my iPhone.
Vikki Moorhouse, the Young Watermans co-ordinator, saw the photographs I took for the Peoples Tower and encouraged me to photograph the Urban Ambush workshops. This was really motivating and I used the opportunity to develop as a photographer, to think more about and image composition, to use the ‘manual’ settings on the camera for creative control, learned how to edit high resolution images using professional editing tools, and so on. I really began to enjoy my photography and consider it as a possible career, especially when my photographs were presented professionally as part of the Urban Ambush exhibition in the main Watermans gallery. This whole experience enabled me to build up a portfolio, make connections, and think about what I do as a business.
Since finishing the programme, Watermans has hired me to photograph some events, and I have completed shoots for friends, one on a film set and another to prepare a portfolio for a friend who was applying to a modelling agency (she got in!). I’m continuing to progress by posting to Instagram daily and I’m working on my own website to show my portfolio.
Young Watermans has proved to be a big opportunity for me, and it’s scary to think that if I hadn’t got involved I’d probably be just as aimless today as I was at the beginning of the year. It makes me wonder what other big opportunities I’ve missed over time simply because I couldn’t be bothered to take them up.
I’ve read that “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. If I had never bought that lens and never brought the camera in for the People’s Tower, I probably would never have been asked to document Urban Ambush and moved forward in terms of photography. Everything fell into place and I feel very lucky and fortunate for it.”
http://instagram.com/SidBrunskill