Lewisham Education Arts Network is reflecting on on our flagship Creative Careers programme Army of Creatives: Empowering Lewisham’s Artists of Tomorrow which ran from March to June this year. Read our full evaluation report here.
Posted: 09/12/2024
For a second year running, we were able to secure funding from Arts Council England and D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust to support over 60 in-school workshops delivered by a wide range of Lewisham Creatives.
School Workshops
This initiative aims to encourage students to explore the vast array of roles in creative industries through taster workshops led by local artists.
In March-May 2025, we brought talented Lewisham-based artists to secondary educational settings across the borough to share their inspiring career journeys. They also devised hands on workshops that sought to ignite students’ imaginations and unlock their potential. Over the course of the two months, these workshops took place in nearly twenty schools, benefiting over four hundred Year 8 and Year 9 students, as they prepare for their GCSE options.
AoC 2025 Cohort
This year we have recruited an army of 25 local creatives from diverse disciplines. Nearly 70% of the local creatives were from a Global Majority background, in response to previous feedback from young people that: “I haven’t seen anyone who is local, that looks and sounds like me coming to talk to us about a creative job.”
Visit Army of Creative 2025 Artist Profiles for details.
Work Experience Week
In partnership with The Albany & Cockpit Deptford, forty Year 10 students discovered the worlds of both the Theatre and Visual Arts & Craft industries in an intensive week of taster experiences. Enjoying a range of taster activities and professional talks, the young people worked in small groups on a live industry brief and presented their plans to panel of industry experts at the end
The young people found it enjoyable if hard work and challenging at time, Nearly all reported significant increase in their confidence and communication skills . One participant stated, “I’m not gonna lie, I really had a great week. I normally don’t really talk to people, but after this week I feel able to”.
Visit our project page to learn more.
This was a unique new model for work experience which enabled a number of small arts organisations to work together to accommodate placements for a larger group of students – something they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do
View short film about our work experience week 2025 here.
We hope this will encourage other arts organisations to run group work experience programmes, and that this collaborative model that can be more widely adopted in Lewisham
Find out more about the project and see short artist videos here Army of Creatives 2024 – LEAN
