What is your connection to the arts?
My connection to the arts has always been personal passion and professional curiosity. Coming from a background in music performance and education, the arts have shaped not only how I express myself, but how I engage with the world around me.
If you could describe St Martins in three words, what would they be?
Diversity, Loving, Youth-agency
As a young person working mostly in the music industry, how do you find working in performing arts? What are the similarities? What are the differences?
There are a lot of shared foundations between music and the theatre performing arts, such as collaboration, improvisation, and creative risk taking. Working in a theatre performing arts, especially in a youth focused organisation like St Martins, has introduced me to a new layer of artistic development. There is a stronger emphasis on youth agencies and multidisciplinary collaborations.
How has your experience at St Martins helped shape your career aspirations and growth in the arts industry?
Working closely with managers across different departments at St Martins, my placement has shown me a complex yet rewarding experience of arts and cultural management in the realm of youth arts. It allowed me to consolidate technical skills and get to know how organisational values drive decision-making in the real world. My placement experience at St Martins has inevitably reaffirmed my interests in the domain and raised my awareness of how each small component, such as inclusivity, strategy, and creativity pieces together to make significant arts and cultural impacts in the local community and the wider society.
What has been inspiring you recently?
Outside of the placement, one of the very inspiring moments comes from working with a student who is studying music therapy. Her perspective on the power of sound and music has really stayed with me. She brought a unique sensitivity to how music can support expression and uses it as a tool for healing and connection. It challenged me to think more about the deeper purpose behind arts practice: to connect, to support, and to create meaningful changes in people’s lives.
