Last year I was part of a CPD programme for socially engaged artists called The Making of Us, which was a brilliant experience because it gave me lots of useful tools and put me in a setting with another artist to run a live project with young people. My partner (Jamie-Lee Wainman) and I worked in a special school and faced lots of challenges which taught us lots of useful things to take forwards in our work. Since then I’ve run two independent projects which involved facilitating workshops – this is something I was terrified of a year ago so it’s definitely a huge amount of progress.

I’m lucky to be one of three prior Making of Us artists to have been selected to take part in another project which aims to build on the last. A New Exchange is slightly different in structure – it involves three of my MoU cohort and three new artists. We will be paired up and once again will be running real projects with young people in partner settings. There is a strong emphasis on peer support and knowledge exchange and the whole thing is really exciting to be part of. Once again it’s taking place at the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh, and it’s being run by FS Creative, who also ran the Making of Us.

So far we’ve had two sessions and last week we held a peer exchange workshop where the three returning artists each ran a mini workshop which aimed to prompt conversation between the group. Jamie ran a Lego Serious Play session where we created structures which represented aspects of ourselves in five minutes and then talked other people through our designs. I did something on photo elicitation and using photos as conversation starters. And Andee ran some drawing exercises which aimed to loosen us up and stop us being so precious about the final product. All very useful and the other people’s sessions gave me some ideas for future sessions.

The next stage of the programme will see us being put into pairs and start thinking about our projects, which will kick off after Christmas.