Our latest graduate

Nikki

Nikki came to us 2 years ago at the age of 17, she had not been in mainstream education for 4 years. When she arrived with us she wouldn’t make eye contact or talk to anyone, she just sat with paper and pencil and produced drawing after drawing, usually of imagined dragon type beasts.

After four or five days of gently encouraging her to try various drawing techniques and enabling her to express herself with more confidence, all the time engaging with her, making her feel part of the inclusive team rather than a student Nikki slowly started to ask questions about the various possibilities for her time with us and her artwork, she began to thrive. We introduced her to clay both in sculpture and in throwing a pot on a wheel, she became hungry for new creative experiences which we duly supplied. At times we were rendered speechless at her ability to grasp a material or technique that she had never even heard of and become competent with it.

Nikki lives with an extreme form of autism called ‘Anthropophobia’ which means she fears people and sees them as a threat to her, because of this she had very little social interaction with anyone other than her close family and a few key workers, also she hadn’t been to a shop or hair dressers or engaged with any activity that most teenagers do without thinking.

Nikki's social difficulties aside and within the safe environment of the studio we found her to be highly intelligent and articulate with a really great, dark, dry sense of humour. Once she started to talk and felt safe enough to express herself with us there was no stopping her so we channelled this into creative writing, some of her stories were incredibly profound and spoke of her autism and depression but also the joy she now felt at being student at the ‘Be Creative’ studio.

Our ethos is very simple, ‘No Wrong Answers’ , there is never a silly question or a daft idea, we use creativity as a conduit for self-expression and creative exploration to build confidence and self-esteem. The day, week, term is driven by the student and their creative ambitions, we can accommodate their need for visual art both 2D and 3D, creative writing, Film making, singing and performance art. Some experiences can be more challenging than others, When Nikki expressed an interest in Taxidermy we were temporarily stumped, until she revealed that she had spent the past four years reading everything she could about it and watching youtube videos on the subject. During the next term she collected ‘road kill’ (usually rabbits) and with our help purchasing the correct chemicals and safety equipment she expertly prepared the pieces and when properly cured she combined the taxidermy animals with her sculpture, which was visually stunning.

We were all so blown away by Nikki's creative ability that we put her forward for two Creativity awards* for teenage talent, one for her creative writing and another for her visual art… She won Both!  Not only was there an awards ceremony but the prize award was £2000.

Over the 2 years that Nikki had been with us at ‘Be Creative’ we had taken her from a non-verbal, unconnected and quite dysfunctional individual to a young lady who could get up on stage, not once but twice to receive her awards in front of a large audience and then during the after party hold conversations with members of the press and people wanting to congratulate her.

Nikki is now at Plymouth University studying fine art.

·  The awards Nikita won were The Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall Young and Talented creative awards for creative writing and visual art