Long before there was Visualise in Motion, there was Love and Urban Arts and We Are DOPE (Defining Our Potential & Excellence).

The first part of the programme was an event series called ‘Behind the Scenes’ which gave insight to the inner workings of the fashion industry. Sessions were run by Sara Darling (Fashion Stylist, Editor and Content Creator), Eniola Ogunnaike (Marketing Manager – Lacoste) and Zoe Hodges and Sophie More (Account Managers at BrandFan agency Capitalize at the time). The event had 120 people sign up and 85 people turn up on the day. Sessions were a mixture of keynotes and practical sessions that got attendees thinking about things in a real practical way.

For the O2 Think Bigger funding, I piloted a creative mentoring program in 2014 which started off in fashion called We Are DOPE [DOPE standing for ‘Defining Our Potential & Excellence’]. I paired 4 young people with industry mentors such as Craig Smith (Brand Communication Director, Ted Baker) and Tiffanie Darke (Editor in Chief, Harrods and former Creative Content Director, News UK and Editor of The Sunday Times Style). All mentors worked with their mentees for 6 months to develop creative projects they had submitted at the beginning.

Throughout the program they also had masterclasses with people such as Paul Solomons (Creative Director, British GQ and GQ Style) (photographed the with mentees) and Eniola Ogunnaike (Marketing Manager, Lacoste). I successfully secured in-kind sponsorship from Pasadena, CA based competition/challenge platform Skild who offered the use of their platform to process entries.