To showcase artwork, essays and poetry made by Element Young Creatives during COVID-19. To celebrate the creativity of these care leavers.
Element runs creative arts projects with children in care, care leavers, and school students. We explore a variety of artforms, encouraging participants to build up a positive sense of their own identity, strengths and future ambitions. Watch our video about our projects here.
This Spring, we are fundraising for the first time ever. During COVID, Element Young Creatives made tons of art that was imaginative, responsive, relevant, thought-provoking, and straight-up incredible. For a year, COVID has kept us apart. But our creativity has kept us connected.
We reckon you probably used creativity, too, to connect with friends, family, colleagues, peers. It has been a near universal experience. It has also been Element’s bread and butter since we started in 2016. Element Young Creatives have used photography, drawing, and words to reflect on the ways creativity keeps us connected. Now we want to share that work with as wide an audience as possible.
CONTENT: Farah and Alex have collected written submissions from Element Young Creatives, answering prompts such as, “What does creativity mean to me?”
DESIGN: Rose, Ali and Elo came up with the design concept for the zine. Playing with the word “Element”, they have collected pieces or fragments of art and words from Element Young Creatives, which all come together in this publication. We are celebrating the printed form as an interesting alternative to screen scrolling.
CROWDFUNDING: Heaven, Rim, Maeve and Jord-ann have masterminded this fundraising campaign. It takes Rose’s and Ali’s design thinking, and pieces from Element Young Creatives’ submissions, and uses them to build support for our zine project.
The projects we run are commissioned by Local Authorities, and match funded by grants. This zine project is an innovative new idea that is not covered by our project funding model. That is why we are fundraising. We think that the impact of this zine could be significant for four main reasons:
1) It is an opportunity to make a bold case for creativity being a fundamental part of social connection and wellbeing. As we are moving into COVID recovery, shouting about the benefits of creativity is more important than ever.
2) A core aim of Element’s work is to celebrate the creativity of care leavers, something that is not often prioritised. We think that needs to change.
3) We are a small charity with ambitious goals. Sharing this zine with potential clients, funders and supporters could be transformative for our organisation.
4) This zine project is a real-life example of creative collaboration. Element staff members and alumni have worked together at every stage. We are proud that it has been an employment and work experience opportunity for Element alumni.
Making a zine costs money. We need those who like and support our work to help us cover the costs of:
The first 50 donors will get an Element screen-printed tote bag.
Donations can also get you:
We are looking to raise £6k, so every contribution will be majorly appreciated. Thank you for supporting Element’s work and Element Young Creatives.
This project successfully funded on 23rd June 2021