Louisa Cox: Safe Soulmates, The Great Gatsby and Website Content Creation

As part of my work as a ‘New Creative’ for Jumped Up Theatre (2024–25), I received a bursary for my involvement in the artist selection process. As a young person in the Peterborough area, I am passionate about arts and inclusion for young people. I have chosen to split the money between three projects which I believe will enhance opportunities for young people in Peterborough.

I currently volunteer for Safe Soulmates, a Peterborough and Cambridgeshire-based organisation that combats loneliness and isolation for neurodivergent and disabled adults. I am in the process of creating an online Zoom Creative Writing group for this community. Therefore, the first project I will fund is the development of this group. I anticipate using some of the bursary for future group activities, such as creative exercises or potential guest speakers. As a university student studying Psychosocial Studies, I am deeply committed to inclusion and accessibility. I’m excited to use part of the bursary in collaboration with Safe Soulmates to provide disabled and neurodivergent adults with access to creative writing workshops.

Furthermore, I plan to use part of the bursary to attend The Great Gatsby musical in London this spring. I currently review various theatre productions in Peterborough and East Anglia for Harry’s Theatre Life, and I hope to continue creating social content, blogs, and articles for events I attend. While I write for Harry’s Theatre Life, I am also working on launching my own website to showcase my portfolio. After attending The Great Gatsby, I aim to publish my first independent review and begin regularly updating my own theatre and arts content site. I believe The Great Gatsby is the perfect production to launch my blog, and I look forward to experiencing the show with peers—other young people in Peterborough who rarely get to attend theatre due to financial barriers. This bursary allows us to share the experience and generate meaningful creative content around it.

I am grateful to have received this bursary. Splitting it between Safe Soulmates and my personal projects allows me to support a range of initiatives that benefit different people across Peterborough. I look forward to launching the writing group, attending The Great Gatsby, and building my theatre portfolio and website. I also hope to collaborate with other young creatives in Peterborough, giving them the opportunity to volunteer their skills, enhance their creativity, and contribute to my content creation journey.

Thank you to Jumped Up Theatre for the opportunity to be a ‘New Creative’. This experience has given me the confidence, skills, and support to bring these three projects to life.

Chiara Hamilton: Jumped-Up Theatre, New Creatives and the funding that I received.

I applied and got accepted in the New Creatives programme, Jumped-up theatre last year (2024) in October. New Creatives is a creative programme for 16-25 year olds. The arty theatre programme includes workshops, masterclasses and trips related to art, performance and comedy with the themed topic of 'Climate Change'.

From October to now, we have participated in many workshops and comedy sessions. In these, we have learnt about improvisation, acting, comedy and storytelling. As well as learning the impacts of climate change; from the climate change cycle to litter picking, fossil fuels, renewable energy and wild weather. As a group, we have learnt about a diverse range of climate change topics as well as learning the facts, details and specifics of it also.

In April 2025 the New Creatives group are going to do a day of activities relating to the theme of climate change to secondary school children. Such as picking up litter, doing a dance of the climate change cycle and a quiz game show. We hope to make it fun for children but also that they can get something out of it and learn something from the day.

The new creatives were also given funding to help with our art endeavours. With the small pot of money, I decided to use it for art books to help aid my progression and improvement as well as growth in the creative arts. This funding I used specifically for a number of stylized colourful illustration books. I found these books online on an art website called 3dtotal shop which has a number of different bespoke art books from well known and well respected illustrators and digital artists. The books are varied and have different topics in each of them. At the end of this page are the images of the cover, inside and some details as well as a review of the art books that I got.

One of the books that I purchased is called sketch every day, Simone Grunewald. This book has many 'how to draw' pages and sketches on step by step processes on how to draw character design, for example. Another book, is titled 'How to become a children's illustrator'. This has detailed biographies on illustrators and how they got to where they are now, (as a child's illustrator), detailing the steps that got them there. This includes being self taught or taught in art illustration techniques, the world of illustration from style of book covers to target audience of children and suitability for different age ranges covers of books. I found this book in particular fascinating because I can learn so much, absorb a lot and use the book for creative advice and motivation in illustration.

The funding I received has helped me with my finances for art supplies and art resources. I could buy books and put the money to one side to fund art materials. Having this funding to buy creative things has made me realise how much I can invest in art and how much I need to invest. As well as, learning about costs, quality of materials, quantity of substances and finding the creative resources. Purchasing and having art books that cover fantasy, drawing from the imagination and mythical creatures has helped me get excited about reading and learning about different artists and artworks. It has allowed myself as an artist, to have the possibility of growing in my arts knowledge and skills but also to have a growth mindset and to keep going and finding new possibilities, opportunities and creative resources for my creative journey.

Below, are some images of the art book covers, titles and the insides of them of the books that I purchased as well. This funding, has been a good fortune towards my art journey and career and I cannot wait to read more of these books and go further with the new creatives art project with more events and activities with Jumped-Up theatre.