Creative Support Sessions
Artsadmin offers free one‑to‑one micro‑mentoring for UK‑based artists, producers and creatives working in contemporary performance, socially engaged and live art practice at any career stage.
What happens in a Creative Support Session?
Creative Support Sessions are friendly, one-to-one conversations with an Artsadmin producer where you can explore your ideas, develop projects, and talk through any professional questions. They are informal, confidential, and tailored to your needs. Each artist can access one free session per year.
You can use a session to:
- Get feedback on ideas and projects
- Plan next steps in your creative practice
- Discuss professional development, funding or networks
- Reflect on challenges and opportunities
- Review CVs and applications
Sessions usually last 45–60 minutes.
Before booking, please take a moment to read What to expect from your Creative Support Session.
How are the sessions delivered?
Sessions can be delivered:
- Online via Microsoft Teams
- In person at Toynbee Studios in East London (subject to staff availability)
We can provide closed captions for online sessions. We aim to make these sessions as accessible as possible. Let us know your access requirements when booking, and we will work with you to support your needs.
Creative Support Plus
If you would like further support beyond your free session, you can continue working with us through Creative Support Plus, our multi‑session mentoring service, with the option to book individual sessions.
Creative Support Plus offers artists, creatives, and cultural workers the opportunity to book up to six one‑to‑one sessions with an Artsadmin Creative Support mentor.
All income from Creative Support Plus is reinvested into our Artist Support and Development Programme, helping us create more opportunities for creatives.
Book a free session with one of our team
Our team’s experience is in contemporary performance, theatre, interdisciplinary practice, dance and socially engaged practice.
We recommend reading about the person you’d like to meet with before booking, as each member of the team brings different experience and expertise.
I have worked across the arts and charity sectors for over fifteen years, on everything from local community festivals to large-scale international ones, for big public venues and with artists staging works in car parks, swimming pools and in warehouses. I’ve also worked as a consultant and trainer for charities working in asylum and homeless support, supporting them with strategic development, fundraising and co-creation.
My background is largely operational, thinking about how we practically make things happen in ways that are accessible and sustainable for artists, creatives and audiences. I can also support you with bigger strategic pieces including company set-up, governance, and how to navigate legal structures in ways that still feel true to your values.
I will be most helpful if you can come to me with a specific need or question and will help push you to consider different angles and apply some rigour to decision-making and planning.
I’ve spent most of the last 25+ years working in the subsidised arts sector in and around London, in general management, operations and finance, including multiple strategic leadership roles. My motivation has always been the artistic work these sorts of roles exist to support and enhance, and connecting as many people as possible with that work.
I care about arts organisations and projects making the most of the resources they’ve got, and approaching work with care, clarity, safety and support, at the right pace for everyone involved. So I’m really interested in how people work together, and in policies, systems and tools that enable everyone to do their best work rather than getting in the way.
I’m comfortable digging into the numbers and the data, and enjoy helping people build confidence around budgets, reports and systems – I’m a trained accountant, but don’t hold that against me!
For this kind of mentoring session, I think I can be of most value to you in helping you think through a question or issue, feel more confident about next steps, or helping you to demystify a spreadsheet.
Jialin is a Producer: Projects & Touring (Maternity Cover) at Artsadmin, where she oversees the delivery of international touring projects: The Making of Pinocchio, Benched, and Thirst Trap. She has collaborated with a range of UK-based arts and cultural organisations, including Screen South, Queer East Festival, D-Fuse, ESEA Music, and Green Lions, and has contributed to commissions supported by the British Council, Arts Council England, and Innovate UK. Her work spans community events, exhibitions, screenings, workshops, audiovisual installations, and live performances. Through a decolonial approach, she aims to make invisible voices visible, centring accessibility, sustainability and care.
Jialin is also an artist-filmmaker and curator. Her video work Dependent Origination has been presented at Nature 2024 at CICA Museum, South Korea (2024); the IV Chinese Female Video Artists Festival across cinemas in Mexico (2023); tell the stories or it goes at MATCA Artspace, Romania (2023); and BLACKOUT at The Holy Art Gallery, UK (2023). She holds an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Before working in the arts, she was a marketing specialist in the music industry, working with labels including 88rising and Gramophone Media Inc.
Kamari is a Queer Artist and Creative Producer from London. He graduated from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama with a distinction in Creative Producing. He has facilitated and produced projects, working across theatre, cabaret, dance, film, and multidisciplinary performance both in subsidised and commercial sectors.
Kamari’s producing specialisms involve: Site Specific Events, Project Management, Creative Brainstorming, Strategic Fundraising, Artist Welfare, Intersectional Accessibility & Supporting The Wellbeing of Queer, Trans and Disabled and Racialised Artists.
Credits: Somerset House, Bloomberg Philanthropies, East London Dance, Live Art Development Agency (LADA), Unlimited & Vice News.
I’m an experienced producer with over sixteen years of working in the arts sector, predominantly in cross-arts, interdisciplinary and socially engaged practice. The work I’ve produced has appeared in all sorts of places and contexts like theatres, festivals, found spaces, vacant shops, parks and playgrounds and has toured Nationally and Internationally.
I have a particular interest in co-creation and place-based practices and approaches and have produced a range of work with, for and by children and young people. I love cross sector partnership working and have a strong background and experience in arts and health initiatives.
I have previously worked with organisations such as the Barbican Centre and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and most recently as the Programme Director for Fevered Sleep. I also work as an independent producer for artists and organisations such as Akshay Sharma, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, Victor Esses, Micro Rainbow and Wookey Works. I’m a Trauma-Informed Yoga Practitioner, a graduate of the Clore Leadership Short Course, and have been a Trustee for Entelechy Arts since 2017.
I’ve been doing this (being a cultural producer/programmer/facilitator/ creative director) for quite a few years, across slightly different roles in the publicly-funded arts sector, so my advice and support might lean towards the strategic/big picture (Why are you doing this? Who is it for? What do you think will change or happen as a result?) and this can be quite confronting if you’re simply looking for a kind ear to listen.
I will ask you what you’re needing/wanting at the start of a session, before getting stuck in. I really enjoy throwing around ideas that place people (as participants and audiences) at the centre of a project, or could help you think about your idea from this angle. I’ve also produced work with/for/by lots of different types of communities and can help bring some rigour to any thinking about work that wants to engage specific groups.
I LOVE a budget, and am very happy to spend all the time with this as a starting point if helpful. I also like a bit of governance, organisational structure.
One small request, is that you use our time together to make good use of my experience to get what you need, not to pitch an idea or project to Artsadmin. There are other/better ways to do that which help keep these slots available for artists who need them for support. Thank you, and I can’t wait to connect!
I am an experienced cultural producer, curator and interdisciplinary artist. I am also currently completing a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London, in Decolonial approaches to curating contemporary art exhibitions and am a Stuart Hall Foundation Fellow. Previous organisations I have worked with include Paul Mellon Centre, CVAN Southeast, Marlborough Productions and the University of London. Most recently, I was the Head of Programme at ONCA Gallery. As a mentor, I can support people with building inclusive community arts programmes, navigating cultural leadership roles, integrating intersectional approaches into their creative or academic work, and strengthening funding applications. Drawing on my experience in arts programming, activist research, and interdisciplinary collaboration, I aim to help others confidently bring radical, justice-focused ideas into institutional and grassroots spaces.
Request a paid session with one of our team
If you’ve already had a session within the last year, be sure to read the pricing information on this page, and request a paid session.
