Supporting our Artistic Community

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a lot of uncertainty for our freelance workforce.  At Kazzum we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without our committed team, so it has been vital to support them during this time. 

Artist Hangouts

Since lockdown began we have been hosting bi-weekly 'artist hangouts' offering an opportunity for our artists come together, check in, voice their concerns, share news and have fun.  It's been a really important space for people to feel engaged and build relationships to each other and the company.  We will continue to do this, to ensure that our community feels welcome, supported and in contact with Kazzum. 

Arts Council Emergency Funding

Earlier this month we received the news that we were successful in our bid for emergency funding from Arts Council England. This vital support will enable us to continue to create spaces for our artists to develop their professional skills, enabling our network to thrive and ensure that we are able to meet the needs of our participants in our online workshops.  Thank you to Arts Council England and players of the National Lottery who contributed to the £160 million worth of funding which has been distributed to the arts and cultural sector during this time. 

We have allocated our funding to support the following activities:

GameJams

It is important for us to ensure that we are developing our characteristic, engaging and creative approach when using online platforms with our groups.  We have been hosting a series of 'GameJams' - professional development sessions for our artists who are currently delivering our programmes remotely. 

This activity has focussed upon the safe and effective planning and delivery of conversations, games, improvisation, storytelling, movement, visual arts and wellbeing activities.  Together we are co-creating an illustrated guide for online facilitation, which will share our approach and support practitioners to remain inventive and resourceful when facilitating from their homes.  

How to Kazzum

Covid 19 has become a significant event in the lives of young people.  Many will have experienced extreme adversity during this time, and face uncertain futures.  It is vital that we enable the skills and capacities of our workforce, to deepen our trauma-informed approach to support young people who are most in need.  

Artist Training

We are currently in the planning stages of a series of online training opportunities to support our artists.  These sessions will focus upon our ability to respond to young people’s experiences when our activities resume, including developing key relational skills, emotional literacy and supporting young people's ability to self-regulate when faced with stressful situations or feelings of overwhelm, anxiety and grief. 

Free training sessions will also be offered to artist practitioners outside of our current team, to encourage trauma-informed approaches, increase wellbeing and offer early-career arts facilitators the opportunity to engage in a supportive and inclusive community.  If you are interested in finding out more about these sessions, please sign up to our mailing list, or join us on social media to receive the latest updates on our progress.

Resources

We are producing a series of creative, trauma-informed resources that will support practitioners to engage with the challenges of childhood adversity.  These educational resources will outline evidence-based approaches which will encoourage artists to reflect, engage and learn about the key principles behind our trauma-informed approach.

Reflective Practice

We will be working with an Arts Psychotherapist during this time, offering free online Reflective Practice opportunities to groups of our freelancers and our Trustees.  This activity will develop the psychological insight of the company, and mitigate against the risk of secondary stress and burnout that we face when working with young people in trauma impacted environments.  This complements the current provision of group and individual reflective practice that we currently offer to our core staff team and selected freelancers who are working within our Build and Pathways programmes.

It is our hope that this activity will support the wellbeing of Kazzum Arts and those that work with us, so that we can continue to meet the needs of our participants and partners with our distinctive and creative approach.  We are looking forward to sharing the outcomes of these activities with you as the year unfolds.