CASE STUDY Camden Art Centre: Journeys in Creative Confidence

The case study details two Camden Art Centre projects during the first year of its three-year Mildred Fund programme. 

Aimed at nurturing creative confidence and establishing youth voice, A Gap in the Fence and Sidings Open Art Project involved students and young people from Camden using art forms such as photography, film, and mapmaking to explore their environments, expand their horizons, and express themselves. 

The work focused on process-led art sessions that fostered creativity using a wide range of playful mediums that were collectively created by the participants. 

The research highlights the importance of collaboration along with the use of non-representational and accessible art forms to overcome artistic and personal inhibitions. It gives focus to the ways in which carefully selected artistic interventions can usefully navigate perceived and real barriers and reveals how the creation of a highly supportive environment based on trust helps value young people’s voices. These various strands woven together ultimately lead to increased creative confidence and engagement.

Using widely available and playful artistic techniques | Making work collaboratively at a large scale | Mapping internal and external worlds | Understanding group dynamics | Balancing the known and the new | Flexibility and adaptiveness | Positive disruption within supported frameworks.