Anjalee: It’s genuinely hard to boil down my favourite part of mentoring because all our conversations were so riveting and a lot of them changed the way I think about big issues - how to analyse and talk through them.
Nicholas: It’s been so rewarding seeing Anjalee's confidence and curiosity grow — our meetings have often been the most insightful conversations I’ve had that week.
A highlight was helping her with her successful Cambridge application — a genuine opportunity to witness someone work towards, and win, what they deserve. Having mentored for two years through Arts Emergency, the whole experience has given me hope the myriad of access issues we know exist are all paper tigers compared to the determination of a properly-supported young person. It’s not a matter of giving teenagers permission to have ambition; it’s gently reminding them that they don’t need permission.
Anjalee: Politics definitely felt out of reach for me before joining Arts Emergency. Getting into political writing, academia, journalism or any field in politics seemed more like a dream rather than an attainable goal. The arts don’t necessarily have a direct way of entering certain industries. I needed a better understanding of the field I was getting into and what I actually wanted to do, and after a year of mentoring I definitely have a better sense of direction.
Nicholas was really brilliant in helping me with interviews over Zoom (a skill I had to spend a lot of time cultivating) and was overall great in supporting me throughout the UCAS application process when I wasn’t in school. We also worked on several writing projects I was doing and he helped me to expound my arguments.
It’s not a matter of giving teenagers permission to have ambition; it’s gently reminding them that they don’t need permission.
Nicholas
Anjalee: I never hesitate in recommending Arts Emergency to anyone interested in the arts. The one to one mentoring is really second to none and the insight that mentors have is unparalleled. There are several barriers to people entering the creative sphere, but Arts Emergency succeeds at tackling them. My experience with mentoring was both empowering in terms of challenging my own sense of limitation and in making the political field feel a lot more accessible.
Nicholas: To anyone thinking of becoming a mentor, if you believe that the way things are is not the way things have to be, this is the way to do something about it.