I have been very lucky to have always experienced a world in which I was free to create whatever I wanted to, whenever I wanted to, in a supportive and caring environment, backed wholeheartedly by family, friends and teachers. I believed arts and culture were accessible to everybody- if I could access them, what was stopping everybody else?
It was only when I hit 18 and went to university that I realised how fortunate I was, I gradually became aware of all of the barriers young people face to access arts and culture; Expense, time, curriculum and discrimination are just some of the challenges that young people must overcome, in order to get the arts provisions they want, need and deserve.
These challenges were some of the reasons that as soon as I saw an advert for the CHANGEMAKER programme, I jumped at the chance- after all, somebody has to use their voice on behalf of all young people. Coming in to the programme from a dance background, with interest in events management, I jumped into the chance to work as part of the operations team on the ‘Creating the Future’ event- a task that at times has been a steep learning curve, but one that I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to grips with.
At first 16 weeks seemed like a very tight time constraint to create and deliver an event, but as the weeks have rolled on and the changemakers have pulled everything together, I feel pretty confident in saying that I believe we have supported each other to create an event that I think is going to be thought provoking and fun in equal measure!
Now all that is left for us to do is to neaten up the edges of our event and then deliver it- the most daunting task we have faced so far!
