Looking at Roles and Responsibilities
I started my role as a copywriter with Never Such Innocence, a creative charity that gives young people a platform to express their views on war, conflict, and peace through multiple creative formats. I officially began on September 30th, working on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. This placement will run all the way till June, with the Tuesdays and Fridays allowing for pursuit of shadowing other creatives/companies and working on my personal website and upcoming shop.
Responsibilities
Facilitating Workshops: One of my key tasks is helping facilitate workshops in London hotels with refugee children. There most likely will be a language barri
Creating Art Resources: I’ve also begun working on creating educational resources focusing on different art styles. In particular, I’m drawing attention to the works of war artists and how themes like destruction and fragmentation are portrayed—taking inspiration from the fractured, tear-through technique we’ve seen in some of the children’s artwork. These comparisons include artists like Banksy or Harvey Dunn, where destruction becomes part of the creation.
Social Media: On a weekly basis, I’ll be curating content for social media posts (posted on a Mondays). This will help promote the charity’s events and encourage more engagement from young participants. Week 1 and 3 will be snippets of the blog and week 2 and 4 will be an announcement for the blog post.
Planning the February Roadshow: The charity has a major February Roadshow in Liverpool, and we’ll start to lay the groundwork for it in early November. This event will be an opportunity to showcase the children’s artwork and raise awareness of the charity’s mission.
Current Project: A Bi-Weekly Blog and Related Social Media
One of the bigger projects I’m primarily creating is a bi-weekly blog. This blog will explore various themes from the competition brief and provide participants with inspiration for their submissions. It’s a fun way to guide them as they delve into the complex themes surrounding conflict and peace. The content is focused around the children’s pieces from their competition archives and how they can mimic themes from famous artworks. This way kids who want to submit work can access the resources and get inspiration on how to critically look at art to effectively reflect the competition theme in their work. The social media posts are also tied into the blog to publicise them.
An Inspiring Encounter: Meeting Natasha Kumar
I also had the pleasure of meeting one of the judges, Natasha Kumar, an artist and advocate for cultural expression. Natasha was not only incredibly lovely but also enthusiastic about collaborating on branding changes for the charity. It’s exciting to think about how we can evolve the charity’s identity together to make an even greater impact. She’s offering to redesign the logo and my supervisors Katie & Will were also mentioning how they should change the logo to update the charity’s initial visual impact to reflect their change in focus from a centenary charity to one that supports children of soldiers and kids affected by all sorts of modern conflict.
Looking Ahead
I’ve already summarised the upcoming blogs and have begun work on at least 4 of the upcoming 12 blog posts for NSI. This DPS blog will carried out every 2 weeks so that I have a bigger discussion about my placement and I feel more comfortable discussing in longer form.
Stay tuned for more updates!
