AH: Hello and welcome to the latest podcast. I’m joined today by Jenny Young, director and founder of Blue Cabin, a charity based in the North East of England that exists to strengthen relationships between care experienced individuals and the people in their lives. They do this through trauma informed creative activities, including a number of music projects such as their ‘This is the Place’ early years music project. It’s an important project which helps build relationships and attachments at a really critical point in the child’s development. So welcome Jenny, it’s really lovely to have you on the show.
JY: Good morning. Lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me along.
AH: Oh, thanks for coming on. So I guess my first question is, how did you end up where you are today, and why is this area of work so important to you personally?
JY: I think it’s a great question, and often in the work we do at Blue Cabin, and what we’re asking of other people as well is, what’s their story, I suppose, and my story, in terms of my connection with care experienced children and young people began back in 2004. And at that time I found, I suppose, one of my first jobs after leaving uni, and I began work at a local authority in County Durham. And at that time my role was to support care experienced young people in years 10 and years 11, broadly with their education. And for those who know local authorities and know the different departments and teams, it was what became a virtual school. At the time, virtual schools weren’t a thing. We were an education team but slowly, the statutory obligations of local authorities changed, and in a very short space of time, I went from supporting a caseload, for want of a better word, of young people in years 10 and 11, broadly with their education, to managing a team of five people, and we supported those in care from ages zero up to 18 through the virtual school. That time, that was really key for me, because it was the first time I was working alongside care experienced children and young people. I got a really fast understanding of their experiences and what might have led them into being in care. And what was really unique about that for me was, whenever possible, we tried to support them to connect with creative activities that providers in the area were offering, and connected them through drawing down external funding. And I think at that time, we were able to see, ‘Wow, this is really interesting’. What is happening when our children and young people are connected to engage in specifically creative activities, and it felt like their engagement was quite different during those activities. And now looking back, what I know is that the key ingredients of a high-quality trauma informed creative space can actually support people to move beyond and process and recover from traumatic experiences. And I think I was witnessing that at that time in a way, but didn’t have the language for it at that time, and I was really, really interested in, ‘Well, what does this look like if this knowledge and information is taken to the creative sector?’. Because I noticed that whilst the artists and musicians and practitioners at that time, back in 2004 were fantastic and brilliant and very, very skilled, what I thought was a gap was their knowledge of trauma, recovery, attachment, adverse childhood experiences. And I thought, because there was that gap, the activities weren’t being as safely held, perhaps, as they could have been. And I found that really interesting, and managed to begin work in a creative organisation then called Sage Gateshead, now called Glass House, in Gateshead, and I was there for a number of years working on a national programme with a wonderful team and ended up in a specific area of Sing Up, which was supporting a national programme in partnership with the National Children’s Bureau, bringing together creative organisations and local authorities to support primary aged care experienced children to sing every day. And key to that was the learning that I generated and had happened in the local authority, and I then been able to help influence that national piece of work. And what was interesting about that and the work that followed was I had a perspective then from the creative sector of, ‘Wow, it’s quite hard to work with local authorities’. They are fantastic, wonderful, committed, brilliant people, and the turnover of staff is quite high. Departments are massive. Who do I contact in them if I don’t necessarily have a key contact, and how best can I, as a creative organisation really support the local authority staff? And in about 2014 I felt that there was a massive gap for a small not-for-profit, to be able to have that understanding of both the local authority and the creative sectors with a real, grounded understanding of trauma, adverse childhood experiences and care experienced people and so I left my job, and through some seed funding from Arts Council England, I set up our first project in Darlington, which is almost 10 years ago, and Blue Cabin was born.
AH: That’s fantastic, and it links to so many conversations I’ve had with people in the arts who are facing exactly those problems that you describe, although things have changed a lot, so there’s a lot of good practice now. And I guess it’s possibly from a ripple effect of a number of initiatives, like the one in Sage Gateshead, like Sing Up and like Changing Tracks in Hertfordshire, which had a whole programme where it was helping music services and music hubs to understand trauma informed practice and develop programmes for young people experiencing trauma. So that ripple effect, you know, I’ve been seeing it happen for the last possibly 10 years. But it takes a long time, doesn’t? It grow slowly? And …
JY: Yeah, I completely agree, and I think that we have learned through support from the wonderful professor, Richard Rose, who is founder of Therapeutic Life Story Work International and other organisations working in this space, like the incredible Consumer Arts based in London, we have developed and strengthened our understanding of trauma and trauma impacted environments and organisations as well as generations. And I suppose what we could say is that in some instances, local authorities are trauma impacted spaces, and therefore our role as a creative organisation, a charity, working alongside them, being mindful of a trauma impacted, but also the institution itself. And therefore for us, we have to build our projects and programmes and our work, being mindful of that, but also trying not to ourselves become trauma impacted, and I’m thinking of the words of Richard Rose, we need to be consistent, predictable and repetitive in our offer, in who we are, in order for that trust and that relationship with the institution of the local authority or the independent fostering provider to be to for that trust to be built. And that takes a lot of work, and we’ve got to be in it for the long haul. And I was really keen in setting up Blue Cabin. Yes, we can work with all communities as an organisation if we choose, but actually, we made a purposeful decision. We will specifically focus on those with care experience. Other organisations are doing amazing work with all communities, and therefore we feel our spaces, specifically with those with care, experience so and being mindful of how best we can be as an organisation. With that in mind, it takes, it takes a lot of time and energy for everybody.
AH: That’s really interesting, this consistent, predictable and repetitive thing. I’d never heard that before. I’m particularly interested in that because it sort of applies to communications across the board. But obviously that comes from some therapeutic theory. Is that, right?
JY: Yeah, and Professor Richard Rose if you, if people haven’t heard of him, I’d definitely recommend looking into Therapeutic Life Story Work International. We met Professor Richard Rose in 2018 and he’s been such an ally and generous spirit and has really supported our organisational and people understanding of how best can safe spaces be held, specifically around life story work, which is a statutory responsibility for local authorities to support care experienced people to have an understanding of their past, the now and the future. But if we think about those principles of consistency, predictability and repetition, they can apply to all of our work with care experienced people. And I think it’s about ensuring that as a creative organisation, where there can be flex and change and new ideas, new initiatives, changes in funding, like any organisation and charity. How can we hold all of that really safely so that our practice, our organisational way of working, is calm and consistent and considered, whilst enabling spaces for creativity and risk taking? And I think what I noticed about the practice many years ago, of creative practitioners who hadn’t experienced the training and understanding, perhaps of trauma and attachment, was that almost the risk taking creatively was becoming a little bit unsafe for the children and young people we were supporting. And it was, it was moving them from their learning zone, if we think of social pedagogy, from their learning zone too much into their panic zone. And as a result of that, the activities weren’t landing for those children, young people as good as they could be. And if we fast forward to now, creative practitioners and associate artists we work with have had that training, and they flourish in that space. They are doing the most incredible work, and it’s because of the holding safe and the holding steady of the space, and that involves the consistency, the predictability and the repetition in their practice. But also, we therefore have to create that environment for the wonderful associate artists and creative people that we’re supporting. Because if there’s that tension between the organisational offer for the people and what’s needed in terms of the creative practice that the associate artists are delivering, if there’s a tension there, resilient levels for the people doing the work are just going to drop because they’re not getting what they’re modelling in their sessions. So we’ve had to really think about that as an organisation over the last 10 years.
AH: That’s so interesting. And I wasn’t going to kind of talk about training and CPD, but I wonder if you could just really briefly describe your practice and how you train practitioners, so anything you feel that you can pass on to other people who are considering, you know, how they train their practitioners.
JY: We’ve really learned a lot over the years, and we always are learning. And so we’re in a position of having, I suppose, an approach and a model that’s being devised and developed with the support of many people and many supported organisations. I suppose what’s important to also state is we can always learn more, so we’re always in a position of refining all the time. I think from the very beginning, the entire team felt that it was really essential that our team are supported to process the emotional labour of the work that they do, and being very explicit about the fact that through the work that we are asking them to facilitate, they will experience and hold emotional labour, and that is the carrying of what they’ve heard and what they’ve observed in sessions and some of the stories they might have been privy to. And the reason why they’re holding that emotional labour is the work we ask them to do is relational, and in giving of the self, in sharing of the professional and the personal, we are asking them to develop strong relationships with individuals who have experienced traumatic events in their lives. And therefore we have to go into this intentionally thinking, well, how can we support our team to process that emotional labour? Very early on, we found the most amazing therapeutic practitioner called Matt Stalker. He is our therapeutic supervisor. He works alongside a second person, Louise Wicks, with us to guide our work, to think about how we can ensure we’re providing that safe space for our team. And what that looks like now is that in the organisation, we offer trained opportunities to learn about social pedagogy, to learn about trauma, attachment and recovery. We pay the team to attend therapeutic supervision. They have paid reflection time, if the work has led to them needing one-to-one therapy, we have a budget for that. And also there is a real sensitive, and with love and care at the heart approach to checking in with people before sessions, checking out with people after sessions, to ensure that we are supporting a workforce to be resilient. Now that’s also going to need to flex, so every individual needs something very, very different. I think we support, our team now is eight employees and about 25-26 freelancers, and everybody’s needs are different. Everybody requires almost like a bespoke support package, and therefore we’ve got to be really intentional about that, and that takes time and capacity. And our board are amazing in that they have signed off as investing our core budget in the support for the team, because if we don’t, the work won’t be safely held, it won’t be trauma informed. We won’t have a resilient workforce, and ultimately, that will impact, perhaps on care experience people and we can’t be another cause of inconsistency, lack of predictability and lack of repetition in their lives. They have had enough of that, so we have to kind of model the opposite of that through our work, but be intentional about how we support our team to hold those spaces really safely.
AH: Oh, that’s so good to hear Jenny, and it’s really important. I think there’s been a lot of discussion in Music Education and Community Music about supervision, and often it doesn’t happen because the funding isn’t there. So I suppose it takes me on to the other questions about you organisationally, and where your funding comes from, and how you’ve grown, because I think a lot of smaller organisations just really struggle with building the capacity of their organisation and that core funding in order to be able to do that sort of really, really good work supporting practitioners. So could you tell me a little bit about how Blue Cabin started as an organisation, I guess, and how it’s grown financially and organisationally?
JY: So back in 2015, 2016 when we secured our initial funding from Arts Council England, I secured that as a freelancer, and that was an one year long project in Darlington, my hometown, and running parallel to that, I was supported by the School of Social Entrepreneurs and got a grant as an individual. And as a result of those two pieces of grant funding, the result of that was Blue Cabin could be established. And at that time, Blue Cabin was established as a Community Interest Company. I think key to this, and key to the story of Blue Cabin is the people who have been part of Blue Cabin from the very beginning, and they’re all still part of Blue Cabin now, 10 years later, and Blue Cabin is very much an environment where people make up who we are and what we do. And so at that time, it was a very small team. We were seeking grant funding and local authority funding, and we started really, really small, very purposeful, very intentional. A lot of our work was in Darlington, because we had some fantastic partnerships that are still there to this day, with the likes of Calvin Kipling, the head of the virtual school, with Martin Webster, the head of workforce development there, who saw that we were responding to a need, that our intention was really trauma informed, and we weren’t going anywhere. And as a result of, I suppose, some seed funding from local authorities, we were able to deliver more work. And slowly but surely, the Community Interest Company began working with more local authorities, and we were able to draw down more trust foundation funding. Your point there around the therapeutic supervision and how best can that be funded? I think is a really, really excellent one, and I have never had pushback from any funder that we have applied and secured funding from to say, ‘Why is this budget line in there? Why are you asking for paid therapeutic supervision for your team? Why are you paying freelancers for reflection time?’. We have never, ever in the 10 years that we’ve sought funding, had that question asked. I think it’s a fear that if you put that in, you might not get that funded. But we have never had that fear realised because certainly the trust and foundations who have funded our work over the years, the wonderful Leathersellers Foundation, Segelman Trust, Garfield Western, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, to name a few, and understand the environment and the context that we’re working in, and therefore they see that as a strength of our funding application. We certainly saw a huge growth in the organisation in 2020 as COVID arrived. And the reason for that, I think, is because the needs of all people grew, specifically those with care experience, and therefore more funding was available to organisations like ours, and at that time, within the space of about 12 months, we secured a phenomenal amount of grant funding to ensure that we could be present and predictable and repetitive and consistent for care experienced people in the North East of England. And as a result of that, we felt it really important to transition the organisation from a Community Interest Company to a Charity Incorporated Organisation. And there are a number of reasons for that. I think we were growing the model of a Community Interest Company, and the rationale for setting Blue Cabin up as a Community Interest Company was almost being challenged, because we were never going to be able to offer what we do with a trading arm and sustain our work entirely through trading. We were in a position whereby the constitution of Blue Cabin was stifling our growth, and so through the support of our accountants, Ribchesters, and support of advice and guidance we moved Blue Cabin from a Community Interest Company to a Charity Incorporated Organisation, and that happened in 2021. That then meant absolutely that we needed to ensure that we had a board of trustees, and that was again intentional, because we wanted to ensure the safe holding of our charity, bringing in expertise that we didn’t have, ensuring that there was that strategic oversight and governance that replicated that trauma informed approach. And so since 2021 the organisation has really grown, but steadily we have more employees now, we work with more freelancers. We are working with more local authorities and other charities and organisations, but we try and do that in a trauma informed way, which isn’t too fast, that isn’t going to be a tipping point of chaos, I suppose, or unsteadiness. And our board and our entire team are really they’re just the most amazing people and do everything with a sense of love and care and kindness. And so yeah, we’re now in a position where it will be 10 years old next year, and our sources of funding are trust and foundations, and that’s core funding. And we’ve been significantly supported by the wonderful fundraiser, Lucy Stone, who we have as a freelance fundraiser for a number of days a year, and she has helped with the support of our fantastic trustee, Catherine Hearn, was really think about how we can generate income for the charity. What does those income streams look like? How can we secure multi-year core funding? How can we ensure we have strong relationships with funders and communicate what we do in a really clear and asset-based way, and also, how can we ensure that we are here for the long term? And it’s, I’m sure lots of people listening on the never ending search for core funding, but it has really put us in a position of strength as an organisation to be really intentional and purposeful about that.
AH: And what’s the balance between commissions and grants from trusts and foundations?
JY: I’d say right now, it’s probably about 80% trusts and foundations, 20% commissions. And that’s definitely something that we’re wanting to diversify in the years to come. We have to do that real ethical decision for us, to ensure that we are diversifying those income streams, because the reliance on trust and foundations is there. We’re really, really grateful for the support they give, we wouldn’t ever operate without their support. I don’t think we were always going to be in that space, but we also need to ensure that we are thinking more diverse around our income generation. I think what we are also mindful of is we’re working with local authorities on the whole, not completely, but whose budgets are being cut, some of whom we know nationally are going bankrupt. And therefore we are really aware of, well, what is our expectation to be commissioned by local authorities, to be brought on board and paid for by them? And what’s working right now is that partnership is fundamental to our practice. We have to work in partnership with local authorities and independent fostering associations, because they are the corporate parent of the children and young people we’re supporting, and they hold the expertise in their case files and in their care plan. And what is the ask of them as partners? And what we ask of them is time, expertise, care and kindness. They recruit participants to our sessions. They are leads with us for safeguarding, but also we ask them to bring in some match funding, so that when we go to a trust and foundation, there is a level of match funding and in kind time that they’re bringing to the table. And again, they always do, no matter how small that is, it’s still significant to the funders to see that level of match from the local authority.
AH: There was a sort of thought bubbling away as you’ve been talking throughout our chat, and when you mentioned income generation, I kind of matched the two things. I wonder if you’re planning on growing beyond your geographical area, or not necessarily to deliver, but maybe to share your practice with other organisations across the UK. Is there any thought of doing that sort of a training development programme, any consultancy work, that type of thing?
JY: I suppose part of our story is where we’re based, which is the North East of England, and that is where our heart is. It has the highest number of care experienced people in the population in anywhere in England. That is growing and therefore the need is great. And currently we’re working in partnership with a number of independent fostering agencies and regional adoption agencies and local authorities, but we’re not even covering the whole of the North East of England at the moment. That is certainly our hope and intention in the years to come. And we also know that the learning and the sector support and the training and the reflection spaces is we have a responsibility as an organisation to also be in that space and offer that so we already, brilliantly are part of a fantastic learning network through Esmee Fairburn Foundation as one of their grantees and the Leaving Care Learning Programme. And we regularly come together with wonderful organisations working in lots of different spaces, with specifically care leavers to share practice and to hear from others and to learn and to be supportive of one another. We were funded by Arts Council England to run a national programme last year and the year before, called Artful Alliance, and that was supporting creative organisations to work with their local authority partners and strengthen their practice. And that was a really brilliant learning opportunity for us. And those organisations are doing and still do amazing work. And we also have set up a strand of work called Creative Life Story Work and through that, we have a separate website, and that is an income stream from us, but also we’re stepping into a space there where there is another gap we felt, which is, how best can we support people to do life story work better? And therefore there’s lots of training, lots of resources, lots of sharing of learning nationally and internationally through that strand of work, because we do see it as an ethical duty to share learning, to inform practice, hopefully people and organisations, but also policy as well nationally, the hope is.
AH: That’s really interesting. So I’m thinking of organisations that I work with a lot, which are music services and music education organisations, community music organisations. If they were working with care experienced individuals and just wanting to develop their practice, find out from others. Would there be the possibility of working with you?
JY: Yeah, absolutely. We are always open for a cuppa and a chat first and foremost. So we would encourage anybody just to get in touch and say ‘hello’. Brilliantly, organisations outside of the North East of England have been in touch with us to say, we would like you to come and deliver with us, with our care experience people. Nottinghamshire did that recently. We always ask ourselves the question, do we have the capacity to do this? Can we still ensure quality if it’s outside of the region? What’s the landscape in that area, and how best can we ensure that we’re not duplicating something that might already be there? Through that work we’re hopefully got more of a longer arm reach to that area, but we can still offer something of value for those care experienced people. And certainly, if there’s any organisations out there that just want to say hello, we would love to speak with you. If there is a need that you have that we might be able to help with. We would always be up for that conversation as well. That is from the point of view of learning just as much from that interaction ourselves and not being ego driven. We don’t know everything we’re still learning all the time. So yeah, we’re very much open to having those conversations.
AH: Oh, brilliant. So I hope some listeners get in touch with you and have some really useful conversations from that. So one of my final questions is about evidencing impact, always a tricky thing for all of us. We’re always struggling with this, particularly evidencing impact in the way that specific commissioners are used to. You’ve obviously been successful in evidencing and communicating your impact. And can you tell me a little bit about how you’ve done that.
JY: I think there is that challenge in evidencing impact in a way that is trauma informed and meaningful and not tokenistic. And everybody listening will, I’m sure, be experiencing that challenge and have really creative ways of changing the approach to gathering stories and gathering evidence. I think, for people with care experience, we know that they are in spaces often with adults around them ask lots of questions about their lives, and which may be delving into the private as well as the personal. And a lot of those spaces are very much set up intentionally to ensure that they’re supported. And also can be that the child or young person may not necessarily find them wonderful spaces to be in, to be asked all of those questions, and we also know that there are questions of ensuring anonymity, to ensuring that we don’t share details of individuals with care experience publicly, and to ensure that the safeguarding is at the heart. So with all of that at play, we have brought on board the wonderful organisation called tialt. There is an alternative through some Esmee Fairburn funding, plus money a number of years ago to help us best understand what impact is Blue Cabin having from the evidence we currently gather. How can we ensure that evidence gathering is trauma informed? How can you present back to us and mirror back to us what you see happening? And how can we strengthen our approach to story gathering, evidence gathering? How can that be exciting for the participants and not another way to gather data about them, and also, how can we assure that that data gathering, that evidence gathering, is possible within a session which might only be three hours long, and we might never see that individual again. And so they’ve really helped us over the years, and we’re working with them in partnership, still to walk alongside us and support us with that. I suppose, what does that look like in practice? That looks like we have a better understanding now of how many people we reach and how many engagements we have with people that we support. We know that our work leads to impacts for children, young people and adults, but also supporting adults in their lives, like foster carers, like residential workers, like parents who have adopted. We know that they experience growth in confidence, in a sense of self, in skill. And key to all of this is they strengthen relationships with people around them, which is everything that we’re about as an organisation. And therefore our impact reports better represent the work we do, and we need to be able to communicate that in a way that is appropriate, is asset based, and also is based upon our values. So we work with tialt and also our amazing designer at Supanaught, and our PR and comms lead, Emma Pybus, and together as a team, we can think very much through, ‘How best can we communicate what we’re doing that to ensure that it’s very much Blue Cabin?’. And all of those elements, I think, combine into how we share our impact. It’s not just about gathering evidence. It’s not just about telling our story publicly. It’s not just about design. It all has to be interwoven together. And I think very crucially, the asset based approach. We know that we are working with individuals who have experienced adverse childhood experiences, and if you look at the data, the outcomes can be very scary for those individuals. And actually it’s our role as an organisation to be very mindful of that when we’re applying for funding and when we’re communicating impact, to not repeat that story back to them, and what we want them to see in the work that we do is strength and hope and love and positivity. And we have to be really mindful that in our comms, and Emma Pybus, as our comms lead, is just really wonderful in thinking about that, and also key to this is how we communicate that to our funders, our prospective funders, with the support of Lucy Stone as well. So it’s a huge team effort, and we’ve recently brought on board a small team of care experienced consultants, and that was a huge process for us, which was, How best can we ethically ensure lived experiences at the heart of our organisation, without mining their private lives. But through their lived experience and through asking them to share professionally their expertise with us, it’s almost shifting the power there, and the power is with them and not with us, taking their story from them, as can happen really frequently for those with care experience and already, those individuals who are incredible and they are employees, they’re paid for their time, they have started to influence our ethical fundraising strategy, our impact report, our tone and design and our creative life story work website and really influencing already the work we do. And then the team around them are doing such a wonderful job, and we’re learning a great deal through that process as well.
AH: Oh, that’s fascinating. I’d love to ask you more about how that actually works in practice, but I won’t, because we come to the end of the podcast. Actually, I will just ask you, is there anything that you’d like to kind of pass on to other people about your particular evaluation practice? Maybe one way you’re doing something that is maybe different to a lot of practice, or that you is different to the practice you have before you work with tialt.
JY: Perhaps a couple of examples. And I think some people listening will already be doing this very much, so it may not be new to all of your listeners. And as part of our work with tialt and also knowing that there’s a huge level of expertise across the organisation and through the associate artists, we commissioned three of our associate artists to work alongside us to develop some new trauma informed evaluation tools that ultimately are fun and playful are reflective of their creative practice, and can be, therefore embedded across the organisation. And so currently we have three tools that we’re testing out, and that’s been such a fantastic process for us, because ultimately we didn’t want the tool to jar with the space, and we’re hoping to launch them across the organisation from September. They are currently, I’m thinking of the names, the Pizza Spinner, the Quadrant Tool and The Winds, the small winds bunting. Those are the three tools. I think the other way that we are we’re wanting to ensure that we’re influencing systems change is around, how best can the experiences of the people we work with be gifted back to them? So Polaroid cameras in sessions, for example, we’re not keeping those Polaroid images. We’re gifting them to the people so that they can take them away. But also, how can that influence their files, their case files? And we know that their case files will show the challenges, the reasons why they’ve been brought into care. That is absolutely essential. But how can our team influence the narrative on the case files? And the wonderful Dr Lisa Cherry has really helped us to think about this, which is, how can you influence that and think about the adult the child will become. So we’re in the process of supporting our musicians to write letters to the children who take part in their activity so that can be added to the case files. We’re working with Darlington local authority and the fantastic Joseph Rob where we’re thinking about, how can the songs in sessions where there is music making be added to their case files? And so for us, we’re trying to influence those systems as well as influencing our understanding of the impact that we’re having as well.
AH: Oh, that’s amazing to have such an deep benefit for the people involved. Is there anything you’re particularly proud of or that has been a really meaningful piece of evidence for you?
JY: There’s so much it’s hard to it’s really hard to pinpoint and choose. If I could probably briefly choose two – one is we’ve been supported by Groundswell Arts from London to pilot Sing our Story, which is a wonderful project. We’re piloting that with three local authorities in North East of England, and our musicians are co-creating songs with babies and children in care and their foster carers over three sessions. And it’s a wonderful song of celebration about the baby, child or young person that they’re gifted with and that will sit on their files. And the musicians, Carol Katie and Eleanor, led by the project manager Lucy Ridley, are doing the most incredible work, and that individual can can keep that song forever. The foster carer might listen to that song after a child or young person or baby has moved on from their care as a way to remember them. Their biological family, their parents who have adopted them, they listen to that and as a soothing mechanism for that child or young person in their care with them, and if it’s part of their case file, and they listen back to that when they’re older, it starts to shift the narrative. We’re also delivering in Deerbolt prison a wonderful project called Creative Aid, in partnership with NEPACS and the young men who are all care experienced, they are creating the most amazing work, supported by our wonderful team of associate artists. And there is an online exhibition that we have on our website of the work that they are creating. And we will be launching an online exhibition workshop at the end of the year, and hopefully in site specific exhibitions in the years to come, showing their work which is providing a space for their narrative. What does it mean to be me in a prison, creatively working? Who am I and how can I share that with the world?
AH: Oh, it sounds brilliant. Finally, I’d like to invite you to share either three practical pieces of advice or three calls to action for others working in arts for change.
JY: I’ve been thinking a lot about this question, and I suppose what I have in the role that I am in, which is director of Blue Cabin, I need to be really mindful of how best I can be trauma informed in my practice, and how best I can also ensure that I am being resilient, and I’m resilient in the work that I do. So I think specifically for people in those positions in organisations, how best can I take care of me, which is really hard to do when you’re in an organisation, perhaps you’re the founder of the organisation, and a lot of it is about doing and giving and supporting others. And actually, in order for me to hold an organisation and for it not to become trauma impacted, I have to prioritise my own wellbeing, and I now have supervision myself from Matt every six weeks, because I experience stuff as well through the work. I have emotional responses to people and projects, and actually, I am just human, and I need a space to be able to process that as well. So I would, I would really advocate for people in similar positions to me, to also take on board access therapeutic supervision, and also just ensuring that people within the organisation you’re never out of touch from them. I am hopefully connected to and available at all times for everybody, as much as I can there to have a cup of tea, there to have a chat, ensuring that there is space and time for that can be tricky, but it enables a relational practice within the organisation itself.
AH: Oh, those are beautiful pieces of advice, really, practically sensible as well. Thank you, Jenny. So much food for thought. I think listeners might want to listen twice to this podcast, because there’s so much good stuff in there. Thank you again for joining me. It’s been really fascinating, and I wish you all the very best with all that you’re doing. JY: Thank you so much for inviting me and Blue Cabin in, it’s been a lovely opportunity to chat. So thanks so much.