Everything's Changing

Since my last blog which expressed my joyous feelings about moving to Cornwall I am devastated to announce that this journey will no longer be happening. Sadly, the sale on my house down there fell through, which means I am staying put in my hometown of Bicester. Whilst this is not what I wanted, I am happy to be staying in Bicester for a while as it means I can continue to have close friendships with people here. Unfortunately, I have sacrificed my job with OYAP Trust as they hired my replacement, shortly after my advisory that I would be moving away. There is now no funding for me to stay on. Another truly saddening event. 

OYAP has been my place of work for 8 months and with each day I have grown to love the work they do as a charity and I do for them more and more. It has been a dream job working with creative people, being able to use the creative side of my brain to develop and coordinate exciting activities for young people to get involved in. Even the meetings were inspiring and brilliant to be a part of and left me feeling motivated and full of ideas for not just the activities I coordinate, but also crafts, teaching tips and my career. Having the opportunity to work with a variety of wonderful people, each skilled in many different art forms, has been amazing. I am constantly inspired in their presence and wanting to do more for OYAP and their participants day after day. My favourite moments with OYAP include putting together a youth action team in Banbury and watching the young people succeed in planning and coordinating their own creative acts of kindness for their community. A significant project which will stay with me is when the young people designed and created cushions for elderly people and we all delivered the cushions into a care home. This particular project was featured in the Banbury Cake Newspaper. 

Another favourite moment was watching the success of the first project I coordinated in its entirety - UnFrozen. A theatre and set design project based on Disney's popular Frozen, which ran over October half term 2014. It was a huge sell out and the performance created in just 2 days was enough to bring the proud parents to tears! It was a wonderful celebration of theatre, singing, dancing and indeed the Frozen soundtrack. 

Finally, working with Heyford Park Free School has to be up their with the top favourites. Another project completely coordinated by me! After getting in touch with the school I successfully recruited artists to join me each week in providing lunchtime art activities for the students. These ranged from puppetry to animation, photography to sculpting! We have successfully seen the students through their Arts Awards too, which has been a very rewarding process for both them and OYAP. I will miss going into the school each week and working with such talented children.