I am a Community Artist based in South Wales with over 10 years experience of working in Community Development. After taking redundancy in 2016 I used my knowledge of Community Development and my passion for Art and starting volunteering for local community organisations delivering Art & Craft workshops. I soon realised I could make a living out of this and registered as Self Employed and took the plunge, I continued working part time for Caerphilly Parent Network for a year whilst freelance work was hard to come by.

As time went on, in June of 2017 I gave up my part time job and became fully self employed. By this time I had a number of different streams to my business including working as a Freelance Art Tutor for Arts Organisations, delivering Art workshops in Residential Care Homes and also developing Bottles and Brushes, SE Wales with a friend which delivers social Art workshops in a variety of venues.

Bottles and Brushes now runs monthly workshops in Caerphilly and Llandaff North with a focus on providing quality art experiences in a relaxed and informal environment, we provide our customers with a glass of fizz on arrival and nibbles, all materials and tuition throughout. Our facebook page www.facebook.com/bottlesandbrushessewales show cases our work over the previous 2 years. We would like to expand into Baby Showers, Hen parties and corporate events.

The Residential Care Home work continues with a regular class at Ty Penrhos, Caerphilly and I have developed strong working relationships with two Community Arts Organisations Artis Community and Inside Out Cymru. I am able to fit work in school hours and have the joy of doing the school run every day and taking the majority of school holidays off.

I like to explain myself as ‘The Least Likely Entrepreneur’ having dismissed being self employed when it was first encouraged during my Art Degree. If I can do it….. anyone can!