Swathmore Education Centre's Creative Communities.

I was privileged to attend Swathmore Education Centre's Creative Communities project in Beeston. This was a project funded by the National Lottery that ran over 2 years with blocks of weekly sessions. These sessions were led by local artists in community centres across Leeds. These sessions allowed people to get to know each other and build connections, sharing what they liked best about their local area through different media. As well as attending these workshops, I was then chosen as a volunteer to help curate the exhibition held on 20th June 2025 at Leeds City Museum. This creative communities project was a fantastic opportunity for me as someone new to Leeds to get to know some of the people in my local area, a chance to develop my skills as an artist and work on my wellbeing as well as an opportunity to use my knowledge from my university degrees in a real life scenario. Special thanks must go out to Penny Lewis, who coordinated this project and all the artists who were involved in this project. The artists for my area were Rozi Fuller, Poppy Davis, Abbey Mooney, Fateme Noorie, Marc Parrett, Boris Cruse, Joanna Jowett, Charlotte Whitmore, Kayleigh Davis, and Verity Dolan. Thank you also to Honor Jeavons, my manager involved in coordinating the exhibition. To find out more about this project please visit https://www.swarthmore.org.uk/projects/creative-communities-project.