We began our amazing and exciting journey by holding our first ever 'Creative Retreats for Careleavers'.  Now in our 10th year!!.

It was a natural development for us to create a safe meaningful space for many of the young people who grew in our projects. Our retreats followed decades of being acutely aware of the huge, often insurmountable challenges faced by young people upon leaving care. 

As an art psychotherapist, with Care experience myself, I had seen time & time again the destructive traumatic impact leaving care often has upon young people's mental and emotional well being; 

This is at a time when most young people remain securely home within their families.  

Rather than making positive choices about their future, making mistakes or taking their 1st steps to becoming independent, care leavers live with severe uncertainty, chaos & loss.

Not only do they face deep isolation & loneliness, there is rarely space to pause or ponder upon ones life.  There is no room on their journey to reflect safely, which we must in order to move forward in life.

Few are held safely or know where to begin to make good choices, knowing their true value and very real capabilities.

 Most care leavers are  simply surviving the torrent of change & challenges. 

Our first Retreats taught us a great deal about the astonishing power of creativity and community working together in harmony. 

 The wonderful Arvon Foundations timeless centres of excellence became our 2nd home.  House in the rural hidden landscapes of Devon and Yorkshire. Once homes to Poet and writer Ted Hughes.

We team up with absolutely brilliant empathic artists creative therapist and Yogo teachers who work closely with us to facilitate a week-long, often life transforming creative retreat.

At our retreats careleaver's young & older can become inspired to explore their creativity, realising it is empowering to write create and speak out about who you are, explore themselves, be themselves, create their own life narratives, whilst discovering it is ok to shed parts of their lives they no longer need, redefining recreating themselves. We have produced and published 4 anthologies of poetry and creative writing, as well as our participants having performed their work on the west end Stage with great success.

Many go on the continue their creative visions, finding and developing this strength and determination is a vital tool, which we all need, to make healthy wonderful fulfilling lives in the future.