It’s been a busy and exciting time for The Mighty Creatives. From the appointment of our new Chair of Trustees, the development of our fast-growing Creative Mentoring service to our Youth Voice advocacy work… we have lots of news to share!
You’ll also notice a refreshed visual brand identity and updated website. While staying true to the rebrand we launched back in April 2020, we knew it needed a little reimagining to support our new national focus and ambitious plans for growth. That’s why we commissioned the help of our expert brand and website agency partner, Stream. Over the past few months, we’ve worked with Stream to help bring our new mighty vision and mission to life. The outcome? A fun, bold, playful TMC identity that will help us reach some of the most unheard children and young people in society, including those who are care-experienced, facing adversity, challenges, or disadvantage.
Of course, we’re delighted to announce that we welcomed Christine White as our new Chair of Trustees in April 2023, following the end of Felicity Woolf’s six-year term in the role who we express our sincerest gratitude for her knowledge, insight, support, and unwavering commitment to our charity.
Reacting to her appointment, Christine shares:
“TMC is a fantastic organisation with the mission of supporting individuals through the use of creative arts and enabling each person’s appetite for their own creative activities. I have worked in the creative arts throughout my career both as a designer and as an educator and I am proud to fight for the human right of access to creative and artistic practices, as part of education and as part of a rich life experience wherever you are in the world.
It’s an exciting time for the charity as TMC can begin to forge new channels of activity over the next five years and this may well widen access and relationships for the impact of the creative programmes that are already so successful.”
I hope to support TMC with its work and purpose, consolidating what it does and reaching more individuals with life-changing transformations that can shape the rights and lives of the people TMC meets.
Following news in November 2022 that our application to become an Arts Council England (ACE) National Portfolio Organisation was unsuccessful, our Senior Leadership Team has been working hard to develop our move to a new business model. When the cost-of-living crisis erupted, the demand for our Creative Mentoring service rose dramatically by 700%. Spiralling costs disrupted the social care system that children and young people relied on, while also impacting their wellbeing and preventing access to the opportunities they deserved. We knew these young people needed us more than ever; we were listening, and we were ready to be mighty.
With record numbers of children and young people in care and 54% of foster carers saying they had considered, or were resigning, due to the cost-of-living crisis, the system was, and remains, under severe strain; facing spiralling costs, staffing shortages, and colossal underinvestment.
Referrals grew, as did the geographical landscape. The cost-of-living crisis exacerbated residential home and foster care placement shortages, forcing young people to relocate miles away from their home area. The impact on services and on children and young people’s wellbeing, opportunities, relationships, and engagement is a combination that fuelled our need to focus on the service.
Creative Mentoring is now our core service, providing one-to-one support that empowers the most unheard young people in our society to discover their sense of self, belonging, and a world of possibilities. But Creative Mentoring isn’t just for those who are care-experienced – we support children and young people and 5-25 across various definitions of need, including those who are facing adversity, challenges and disadvantage.
If you want to find out how creative mentoring can support your young people, find out more here and get in touch if you’d like to have a conversation with our mighty team.
Our mighty Youth Board of five inspiring young people aged 16-25 have played a key role in shaping our future focus. They get involved in all areas of TMC, including recruitment, service development, creative workshops, exhibitions, our youth voice network – and we’re very excited to see them launch their upcoming youth voice podcast series.
We’re mighty proud of their spoken word film, launched this week, which shares their voices and their own experiences. Why not explore all of our Youth Voice services and advocacy work and watch their video on our dedicated Youth Voice page?
