by Leigh Education

Taking a more academic approach to improving lives, uplifting people, and building communities through art and creativity.
Colourful notebook with lots of tabs sticking out
Notebook from my PgCert in Academic Practice for Art, Design & Communication course at UAL

Quite by accident my art started evolving into a teaching practice. Eventually, this led to an actual academic teaching practice.

Looking back I can see now that this started a long time ago, I just didn’t realise it at the time.

I must have been in my late teens when I led a group of retirees in a 7-week programme at their church. They signed up to decorate the church weekly. I made sure that every week I challenged them to try something new and compared their artistic explorations to the explorations they might try in their ‘new’ lives as retirees.

Those ladies had a blast and I felt better seeing them come to life during our sessions. This was in direct contrast to three recent deaths in the church – all people who had recently retired and seemed to just fade away once they had “nothing to do”. My mum and grandmother went to that church, I had to try something!

Fast forward to now and I am still obsessed with using art and creativity as vehicles to improve lives, uplift people, and unite communities. Except now I conduct research, create art education programmes, and currently I’m in the midst of a massive social change initiative. Journey with me!