UK Creative Community Fellows and what it gave me
Earlier in the year, at about five in the morning, I got up and decided to apply for something in the dull light before the day began. My husband had retrained and I realised I had not had any meaningful professional development in years. As a freelancer, development often feels like something you are meant to fund yourself or quietly do without.
UK Creative Community Fellows is a fully funded national leadership programme for people using arts and culture to make change in their communities. It is delivered by Derby Museums, The Bowes Museum and NAS, and brings together artists, cultural workers and creative leaders from across the UK. The programme combines online learning with in person residential time, mentoring and coaching, creating space to think, reflect and build relationships alongside others doing complex community facing work.
You have heard of Clore Leadership. This sits in a similar territory, but without the thousands of pounds price tag. It is free and fully funded. There is no realistic way I could have accessed something like this as a freelancer if it were paid, so that alone felt significant.
I will admit I was sceptical and pretty worn down. When a residential week was mentioned, along with the idea of bringing a fun activity to share, I inwardly cringed. Qi gong in a meadow did not feel like my thing. I told myself I would be there for the learning. I also heard there was a hot tub.
I had met the group online of course, floating heads on Zoom. People doing serious work across the UK. A socially engaged photographer. Artists working with national heritage organisations. Practitioners embedded in justice work. People working in environmental practice, care, publishing, theatre and peace building. Twenty one people, all deeply committed to improving life in their communities.
It took a lot to clear a week’s work and for my husband to look after our four year old on his own. We are both freelancers, so it took months of saving to make the logistics work. I felt slightly less than because I had to come home one evening mid week to do childcare so my husband could work. Driving back into the Yorkshire countryside, I realised how rarely I put myself physically and mentally out of my comfort zone. I knew quietly that this would be good for me.
What I underestimated was the intelligence of the programme design. We were not allowed to present or explain our work until we had spent time together. Instead there were long conversations, walking, and sessions focused on power, theories of change and design led thinking. We talked about family life, exhaustion, favourite things and the small details that make people human. The trust came first.
We were supported by mentors from across the sector. My mentor was Sheina Mason MBE, generous and rigorous in equal measure, and deeply grounded in place based leadership. We had professional coaching during the week. We worked under Chatham House rules and were encouraged to think critically without having to perform certainty.
I drank the CCF Kool Aid and it was good.
Since then, the programme has continued. There is a WhatsApp group that is constantly active with support, signposting and conversation. We have had facilitated online sessions where people bring real questions and unfinished thinking. There was a reunion at the Museum of Making in Derby, where we talked honestly about partnerships and funding and heard from people who are navigating that terrain with care.
This week it ended while I was on a train to London. I dialled in and struggled to articulate what being part of a cohort like this, at this particular moment, has meant to me. I do know that the people who make it happen at NAS, The Bowes Museum and the Museum of Making are some of the best I have encountered. Thoughtful, committed and interested in passing knowledge on.
What stays with me is how rare opportunities like this still are. Programmes like CCF matter because they open doors that are usually closed to working class people, freelancers and those working in the third sector without inherited networks. This was not a shortcut or a favour. It was something people worked to earn and then worked hard within.
That kind of intentional network building does not just change individual careers. It shifts who gets to shape the sector over time.
Thank you.