As you might know, there is some funding available through your role on the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries programme to cover a fee for a mentor of your choice.
Arts Emergency Handbook
We have put together a Mentoring Handbook in collaboration with our partners, Arts Emergency. They are a brilliant organisation with a lot of knowledge in this area! As well as the Handbook, you can find more resources on their website.
Whether you have lots of experience with mentors or you’ll be working with one for the first time, we hope their tools and resources will help you work out what you need from a mentor right now, and some ways to get the most out of your time with them.
The Mentoring Handbook is available as a PDF or as an audio recording. If you would like this to be made available in a different format, please get in touch with Sarah on [email protected].
Choosing Your Mentor
There’s no rush to choose your mentor, and it’s up to you to decide the right time.
You might want to wait until towards the end of your Fellowship before making a decision, and that’s fine. Some Fellows in the past have found the ongoing support helpful throughout the year, but others have even found that extending the sessions beyond the end of their time on the programme has been helpful. Whatever approach you’d like to take, it is a good idea to start thinking about this soon so you can consider your options.
The mentor can be anybody who you think will support you to think about your next steps during and beyond the programme. The mentor could be an artist, somebody in a role you aspire to in the future, somebody whose values and ethos you admire, or one of your peers. They might be somebody you already know, or someone who feels out of reach right now. It’s all about what type of support you feel will help you to grow in your work and career in a way that’s important to you.
Your mentor might help you to develop skills which relate to your role in your organisation or they might be more aligned with your wider artistic practice and interests.
Mentor One-to-Ones
Thinking about what you need from a mentor can be a bit overwhelming. Even if you know who you’d like to talk to, it can sometimes be difficult to know how to ask.
If you feel like you’d benefit from a sounding board, you are welcome to book in a one-to-one conversation with Sarah. We can talk to about how you are feeling about mentoring, how to be strategic about making connections, any particular jobs you’d like to know more about, or to explore the kind of conversations you’d like to have with your mentor.
Don’t worry if you don’t have any specific ideas yet. Sometimes it can be helpful just to organise your thoughts and talk through options. Sarah could also offer some research and recommendations of mentors from Jerwood Arts’ networks if that feels helpful.
We’ve sent some information about the mentoring out to your organisations as well. Your line manager will be able to provide support or suggestions if you need them.
If you’d like to arrange a conversation about this, you’re welcome to message Sarah in Slack or email on [email protected]
Funding and Logistics
There is £225 available, based on 3 sessions at a rate of £75 per session.
The fee is for your mentor, and they should invoice Jerwood Arts directly.
You should try to arrange your mentoring sessions during your working day in your organisation if you can.
If you do need to arrange the sessions outside of working hours, consider booking some time back out of your working day to cover this.
The time you spend on the mentoring should be part of your experience on the programme and shouldn’t take up your personal time if it can be avoided.
If you already know who you want to be your mentor and you have a way of reaching out to them, please go ahead. Once you’ve made contact with your mentor, please give me their email address so I can send them some more info and instructions on how to invoice.