Activate has recently welcomed Maisy Hicks to the team as our Projects Assistant, through Artswork’s Breakthrough Programme, which provides entry routes into the creative industry for 18-25 year olds who are struggling to find meaningful employment.
Maisy is a recent French and Russian graduate and former EFL teacher. She will work with Activate from September 2026-March 2027. Here, she explains why she applied for this opportunity and what she’s most looking forward to.
“My reasons for applying for Activate are plentiful, the crux of many of them being that I have, like many, always had a deep love of the Arts. As a child in primary school, I performed in school plays, as a teenager I wrote them, as an adult I worked behind-the-scenes to help produce passion projects at university. I love to draw, to write, and to watch. However, after graduating from university having studied French and Russian, and with no professional arts experiences, I was unsure how to get my foot in the door. I had plenty of experience working, having done so in coffee shops, pubs, even a hospital, but none itched the creative scratch like I wanted and I had found it difficult to find opportunities that would pay enough to keep me going at university.
I went to teach in Taiwan for a year to see a part of the world I hadn’t yet, travelling as much as I could, but always with the intention to come home and try to pursue a creative career. So, I arrived back in the UK in late-July, and my friend told me about this position at Activate Performing Arts as a Projects Assistant through the Breakthrough Programme with Artswork. It was exactly the kind of thing I had wanted to do and all on my doorstep as a Dorset native, helping to bring amazing events to the landscape I was raised in.
I am looking forward to getting immersed in what it takes to produce large-scale creative events and to be able to better understand the functioning of an industry that has felt, at times, quite elusive to me. I’m hoping, in particular, to train in theatre/event production as well as get stuck in with the marketing side of the work too. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be in such close proximity to great contemporary art and carry the inspiration I take from this work into my future endeavours as well as my own creative practices.”
This opportunity is supported by Jane Rigler, Michael Noonan and Artswork.