EXPERIENCE & SKILLS

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I have been pivotal in implementing many community projects, mainly in rural/ low demographic communities during the past 11 years. Including & involving isolated people with creative community activity via diverse environments, parks/ community centres/ farms/ town centre shops/ pubs/ museums/churches/ industry and many more.

With transferable skills from my textile industry/ operational managerial roles as well as from community associations, project boards, councils & steering groups I currently sit on, which I bring into my professional practice within arts engagement. This includes leasing, negotiation, creation of event specs, risk analysis, new project set up, funding procurement, presenting ideas & concepts, project management, through to hands on delivery.

During my career in textile design I secured million pound plus contracts at board level with companies such as Marks & Spencer, Bhs, Mothercare, Nike, Reebok, Umbro. I am accustomed to using shared protocols, both within the creative industries & social engagement situations & I understand how to support people through processes supplied alongside those transferable skills I already use. My arts engagement practice involves planning and developing with partners to create roles for people within the project, taking lead on the planning of the projects and sharing and involving external partners to the benefit of service users and the initial stakeholders.

I consistently bring in projects on time and on budget with creative outcomes which encourage service users to take on responsibilities and grow as a person, gaining self-respect and self-motivation, during the process learning methodologies which can increase their life opportunities. Working within the communities of east Ayrshire, I helped to set up a programme where we recruited volunteers from all sections of the community and gave them opportunities in administration, warehouse work, planning, driving and other roles. My responsibility was to find these volunteers, through working with various community groups & gaining access to communities via social housing groups, council contacts, & doctor’s surgeries. Assessing & identifying needs, then matching the volunteers with the jobs available, increasing capacity to match volunteer numbers, finding new initiatives to match the needs of the volunteers and aiming to increase motivation & self-esteem, all within a calm & safe environment the volunteers would return to. This was a tremendously rewarding and successful project.

I work with people in recovery, on community service, with autism, with mental health issues, with physical disabilities, with isolation issues, long term unemployed & also with people who are newly retired & simply want to feel useful again. The majority of the roles I have had in the community have included developing programmes to advance personal development, following on from this, my master’s degree was based on creating safe and calming spaces through design & creative processes & methodologies to aid personal development, positive mental health, and ideally as a preparation to employability through volunteering.

I have just started working within my local community centre on just this, as they need to develop programmes to increase volunteer / centre user input and retain the volunteers/ centre users. I am also currently part of a project in which our main goal is to increase the creative opportunities for volunteers by creating culture & art experiences for them. This project has been very successful, with volunteers now in employment, who felt they could not be a part of mainstream employment when we started working together.

I am confident in funding acquirement & following through to ensure the funders’ needs are subsequently met. I feel I have personally developed an understanding of barriers into volunteering/ work/ social situations. And as previously mentioned, I have processes and methodologies to break down these barriers though creative process.

I have been commended on how I can motivate and support groups and individuals, actively meeting with partners, producing & presenting information. I actively use analysis and discussion to support needs and tailor support to gain outcomes required. Within current roles I gather information on future partners and opportunities & monitor and assess projects consistently, providing review documents which include figures, facts & recommendations. Feeling it is something tangible to look back on, learn from and use as evidence for future projects. I am used to attending training and relevant events, these are times I enjoy as it’s an opportunity to also network and catch up and find out how others are working and utilising processes & methodologies. I find it beneficial to have project meetings, I see them as conduits to exchange best practice. Key to a successful project is having a forum where experiences, good and bad can be shared and when a problem arises it is worked through in a calm & safe environment, with no prejudice, as you create many different ways of creatively dealing with it.