We spoke with Lillie-Mae, a former member of the Coleg Sir Gâr Art&Design Saturday Club in South Wales from 2020 to 2022. Having recently completed her A-levels, she has now applied to university to study nursing, with a focus on mental health. During our conversation, she shared how her time at the Club has influenced her career path and highlighted the importance of using art as a form of therapy.
Why did you want to join the Art&Design Saturday Club?
I found out about the Club through my GCSE art teacher who told us that there was a local Club at the college near us that was completely free, happened every Saturday, and would help us build our media and art skills. I ended up joining with a couple of my friends; we just signed up on the spot and ended up staying for two years because we loved it so much.
What creative skills did you learn during your time at the Club?
It was my first-time doing things like papier-mâché and building sculptures using metal wires to make heads and faces. I’ve never done anything of the sort, I was very traditional as I would only draw on paper with pencils. I’m very much a perfectionist, and even though I am, the Club experience is like falling over hurdles and trying again – you realise art is so subjective.
We did a lot of work with paper and I remember finding it so challenging because it was weaving paper into things that I didn’t think paper could do. We made very complex things like stars and sculptures. We were twisting paper, and you think it’s going to break, but it withstands so much force. We also worked with different textiles, so things like oil paint or pastels, things I’ve never had the opportunity to work with before because we didn’t have it in school.
Besides creative skills, do you feel that the National Saturday Club has helped you develop any other technical or life skills? If so, how?
Just prior to COVID, I was 14 years old and very introverted. I didn’t like speaking to people, especially when it came to my art, it seemed so personal and I didn’t like sharing it even though I’ve been told in the past that I should put my work out there. I wasn’t confident at all but when I joined, it was a massive step for me, just like applying and joining in a group of people I don’t know, in a place I don’t know, with a media that I wasn’t particularly confident in either.
In my first year, the Club was partially online, and even so, just joining a group of people and talking to them about a shared passion was just so confidence building. Then when I went back in 2021, my artwork was displayed on social media and in an actual physical exhibition, seeing that and being able to go “that’s my work and people are going to see that” just built my confidence so much. Now, when I’m doing my A-levels, I’m confident in myself and my abilities because I’ve seen my abilities be displayed and got that reinforcement that I’m doing well.
How has attending the Club influenced your current career choices?
It led me to go into nursing – the passion and the confidence to make people happier. That’s why I’m doing mental health, because art makes people feel so many different emotions and it can help people who are struggling with their mental health. I’ve had familial experiences with difficult mental health, but for myself, art was a form of therapy, it helped work through very complex emotions. People communicate their emotions through art because at the end of the day, whether it is your hobby or your profession, people do it because they love it and they want to express themselves and show a picture of their emotions or tell a story. Showing that helps people, whether they know it or not.
How was it attending the Club during lockdown?
I really enjoyed it because I had something to look forward to every week. Before the Saturday Club, my weeks were filled with nothing; I would do schoolwork and then I would just sit there. The National Saturday Club announced they were back and going online, they also sent art supplies to our house. We did a Masterclass online with a Vogue editor which was amazing. We were such a small Club but the National Saturday Club worked so hard to get us the same experience we would have had in person, and it really did pay off.
Do you have any special stand-out memories from your time at the Club?
During my second year, we had just come back from COVID and spent several weeks building the metal head sculptures out of papier-mâché, mine was pink and green. I made a nose that took me so long and we ended up working with light and taking photos from different angles. It was special because I remember everyone working so hard and nobody would put anyone down. It also felt like a little family moment because most of us had come back for another year so we could get the in-person experience again. We’d been together doing art for so long that we all knew how we wanted our art to look like. It was just incredible.
When you joined the Club, did you feel like there was a sense of community or did you create new friendships with people that went?
I was very young when I started, I was 14 and most of us were the same age from different schools, but we had this one shared passion. I think that sense of community started during COVID because we were all online and were the only people we would see outside of our own family. You see the same group of people every week and knew we were going to sit down and do art together – it was like the one moment of peace you got.
If you had to say one thing to someone who was thinking about joining a Saturday Club, what would you say?
Absolutely do it! Even if you haven’t got the confidence in your art skills, you don’t have to be good at art to do art. It’s about whether you enjoy it and whether you will enjoy putting your passion out there. You get so much recognition for your work. 100% do it if you are on the fence, I think you’ll enjoy it.
Coleg Sir Gâr Art&Design Saturday Club, 2020 to 2022
Interview conducted and edited by Suprina Thapa