7th February 2022

In February 2021, we welcomed Amy Foster to the Creative Scene team as a Weston Jerwood Fellow – and we’re delighted that she’s now joined the team full-time as Participation Producer.

A Batley girl, and passionate about arts and culture in our local area, Amy graduated into the pandemic and struggled to find a pathway to the career that she wanted.

Over the past year, Amy has been working alongside the Creative Scene team, gaining valuable insight and hands-on experience in the arts and culture sector in Kirklees. Amy has also been mentored by members of our team and board and developed her own projects with Creative Scene which has enabled her to learn, grow and thrive in her Fellowship year.

Reflecting on where she was a year ago, Amy said: “A year ago I felt lost, overwhelmed by the crumbling world around me as I emerged from university into the working world. Today, I feel as though I possess all the tools I need to succeed at anything I set my sights on and yet there is so much more I need to learn.”

“As I look to the future, my hope for the coming year is to use all that I have learned and all that I will learn in the future to support the movement of making art accessible to people from all backgrounds. I wish to utilise the opportunity I have been given, to support my fellow emerging artists and practitioners by developing new creative opportunities for the residents of Kirklees.”

As well as congratulating Amy for all her hard work, tenacity and creativity, we’d also like to thank Weston Jerwood who selected us to host a Weston Jerwood fellow and have supported Amy and the Creative Scene team over the past year.

The Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries is a national programme that supports 50 salaried jobs in arts and cultural organisations across the UK – and is dedicated to supporting outstanding early-career artists, curators, producers and creatives, who come from backgrounds that are under-represented in the arts, to thrive.

The programme seeks to interrogate and remove barriers to entry and enable those on the programme – the ‘Fellows’ – to build careers in the arts with confidence and support.

Becoming a host organisation is an incredibly competitive process, and has allowed the Creative Scene team and partnership group to be part of an exciting cohort of national arts organisations who are all committed to opening up opportunities in the creative sector and levelling the playing field.