A New Chapter

I'm currently sitting on the train. This is a usual occurrence for me, but this time I'm on my way to a few days of induction at the University of Exeter, before I start my full-time PhD (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under the SWWDTP). It's the beginning of a new and exciting chapter, but - as someone who finds endings difficult - this train journey is not only a chance to start feeling those churnings of nervous excitement, but also to reflect on the previous five years of freelance life since I finished my MA at Central.

I'll be keeping a couple of my jobs on to start with, as the practice feeds into my research (and I might need some pocket money!), before the Big Move to Devon with my wife next year, but certainly my working life of 11 to 13 jobs (on average) is now a thing of the past. This won't be a comprehensive list, but here's a few of the highlights and low-points of my self-employed adventures...

LOW POINTS

• Anyone who knows me well or is linked with me on social media won't find it difficult to guess what I'll put first here. BLOODY TRAINS!!! It might seem like I go on about this a tad too much, but when you are as reliant on public transport as I am and trying to work jobs spread all over London and beyond, you are basically helpless to the gods of the trains and they don't seem to look too kindly on me. My life over the last five years has involved far too much time looking at the live departures and swearing as trains are cancelled, delayed, and generally screwing me over. For example, last week: I was meant to be running a two hour creative writing workshop in Folkestone for young people who are self-harming. I got to St Pancras station for my connection, just as they cancelled the trains for the next two hours. Leaving me to call work and say I couldn't get there, let the young people down, and lose a day's wages. Leaving me in tears, to be honest. I tweeted Southeastern trains, but it's hard to get across the significance of losing money I needed and letting vulnerable young people down in 140 characters. 
• Not getting sick pay. Cue thought-process: "If I can't get out of bed, I will lose £100... Oh, I really can't get out of bed. Shit." 
• Not getting holiday pay. 
• Feeling guilty when you're not working. Something I've been working on. 
• There aren't a lot of other low points, to be honest. Being paid poorly by some organisations. Last minute cancellations. Being offered a zero hours contract and then never receiving any work from them. Having a contract ended by email. Being made to wear a horrid, highly flammable uniform to go into schools (my wife told me I looked like a work experience student; I had flashbacks of trying to buy trousers for school when you're a 5'11'' teenager. No-one was winning). Setting up a project in a prison and going through security clearance and then never getting another reply so never running it. Worrying about the summer holidays, when all the schools work dries up. Worrying about money. Trying to balance it all. 

HIGH POINTS

• Doing a job where I was running one session a month at an addiction recovery service and, over five years, being gradually asked to come in more and more - once every three weeks, once a fortnight, once a week and finally twice a week - at the request of the service users. And when the service went up for tender, I was the only external contractor who was kept on, as the group wanted me to keep coming. One of my proudest professional achievements.
• All the little moments. The other week, from a sixteen year old girl, grudgingly: "That was actually really helpful." From a participant a couple of years ago: "I thought I was going to hate that and I didn't". 
• Laughter and tears. Chances for both. 
• After working at The Living Room, funded by St Albans council, they didn't want my sessions to end, so they fund-raised and paid for me to come back. Parkinson's UK did the same: the funded sessions finished, so they wrote to their local counsellors and got enough for me to come back for another 6 months. Felt really privileged. 
• When it's all going to shit and you have no idea what you're doing and then you have an idea and you pull it out the bag and it falls together like magic, like that's how you always planned it. And you sort of want to punch the air on your way out. 
• Running the Theatre for Change module at St Mary's University and watching the students grow.
• The people. The funny students. The boy who doesn't speak much English but his physical comedy has you rolling on the floor. The addict who quits. The one who always shows up.

OK, mustn't get emotional. The sun has just come back out and we are about to roll into Exeter, so must go. 

Singing David Bowie in my head and going to start the journey towards Dr Kate. Wish me luck!

#WEcount

I’m an identical twin and growing up we found clear ways to differentiate ourselves. I cut my hair short with the kitchen scissors, sitting behind the sofa when I was about four. I wore yellow and my sister wore green. I mostly wore trousers and shorts, and she wore skirts and dresses. I was a “tom boy” (although I think that’s a silly term: I was a girl who wore trousers and climbed trees; but it is a useful short-hand and you’ll all know what I mean by it). At my primary school, the girls wore grey skirts and gingham dresses. I didn’t want to, so I was the first girl at my school to break tradition and my parents had to buy my new, little grey trousers from the “boy’s” section of the shop. Yet, it felt comfortable and natural to me at that age and I didn’t care what the other children or the teachers said. 

Fast forward a few years and by the time I was at secondary school, I was too nervous to wear a skirt, although that wasn’t a feeling I think I would have been able to name, let alone say aloud. There was something about wearing one that made me feel self-conscious, made me feel I’d be looked at. I was extremely tall as a teenager (taller than all the girls, most of the boys and some of the teachers) and it was always a struggle to find a uniform that would fit me, within the strict parameter of my secondary school’s rules. I look back now rather longingly at my skinny long limbs, but at the time - although always proud of my height - I didn’t have the benefit of being popular or cool, so it wasn’t something I would ever have flaunted confidently.

In the summer term of Year 10, when I was 15 years old, I wore a skirt to school for the first time since I was six. I remember feeling self-conscious, like I had a neon sign above my head. And when I got on the school bus at the end of the day, the bus driver pulled me onto his lap, in front of all of the small, shrieking Year 7s, and wouldn’t let me go. I remember I had lots of bags, and the gearstick was pressing into my leg; I couldn’t get off him and I didn’t know what to do. I remember feeling humiliated, but acting like it was funny. One of my male friends came and pulled me off him and made a big show of it, to ‘lighten the mood’, saying “Oi! She’s with me!” and then dragging me to the back of the bus. I remember another friend, a female one, telling me I had it coming, that I shouldn’t have been so friendly. In 2003, I wouldn’t have been familiar with the term “slut shaming”. 

That’s not the end of that story. That’s not the end of the messages I was given around it. Another few years later, at a house-party, that same teenage boy climbed on top of me when I was lying down upstairs, horribly drunk, and said “I really hope you don’t remember this tomorrow”. I remember rolling to face the wall, in the hope that it would form some protection. Fortunately, a couple of female friends came upstairs at that moment and shouted at him and got him off me. Although not before they’d taken pictures, which one girl posted online. That’s not the end of that story either. That’s not the end of the messages I was given around it. That’s also not the worst thing that happened to me as a teenager. 

So when I see the recent articles in the media about school skirts, it doesn’t bring back the best of memories. And what makes me livid, is that for a new generation those memories are being created right now. Right this second. And we haven’t stopped it yet. 

So, I’m trying to stop it. I know I can’t do it on my own. I’m standing as a candidate for the Women’s Equality Party (WE) because I want to end violence against women and girls. I want to end violence against everyone actually. I want young men to stop killing themselves, because we live in a world that sees courage as weakness. I want teenagers to be taught what consent is (which is why that’s one of my day jobs). I don’t want any part of the body to be used as a weapon to inflict pain, or be a source of shame. I want to see an end to the systemic gender inequality that underpins almost every single thing. I’m trying to end it. But I can’t do it on my own and WE can’t do it on our own. WE need your votes. WE need your confidence. WE need your bravery. 

Vote WE on May 5th. Because #WEcount.

Equality is better for everyone

On May 5th, London is being given a new choice: the chance to vote for a party that is committed to doing politics differently. I'm not a career politician, and although I've always thought of myself as political, the jeering-sneering performance of politics has never appealed. I just don't think the route to social justice is lined with posh men in suits shouting at each other. It's dialogue, communication, empathy - it's human connections that make my world go round. So I've thrown myself into a career (in the arts and education) which celebrates them and tries to carve creative paths to a slightly better world for a few people at a time. But I've unexpectedly, and so naturally I almost didn't know notice it happening, become a politician; I've found a possible home for that political passion in the Women's Equality Party. And on May 5th, registered voters in London have the chance to make the city a lot better for a lot of people. For everyone, actually. Because equality is.

The Women's Equality Party (#WE) is a new, non-partisan political party, formed last year and growing with astonishing speed, which is putting gender equality at the top of the political agenda for the benefit of us all. It has six core-objectives:

'WE are pushing for equal representation in politics, business, industry and throughout working life. WE are pressing for equal pay and an equal opportunity to thrive. WE are campaigning for equal parenting and caregiving and shared responsibilities at home to give everyone equal opportunities both in family life and in the workplace. WE urge an education system that creates opportunities for all children and an understanding of why this matters. WE strive for equal treatment of women by and in the media. WE seek an end to violence against women.'

I'm standing as a candidate on the London-wide list for the Greater London Assembly (the orange ballot paper), alongside 9 other inspirational women and Sophie Walker, our leader and mayoral candidate. #WE are also standing in Scotland and Wales.

#WE have a vision for London that would make the city safer and fairer for everyone. #WE have specific, costed policies which would create:

• A transport system that is accessible for parents with buggies and wheel-chair users, where women and girls can travel safely, without the fear of sexual harassment
• An end to the 23% pay gap between men and women, in a city where women can realise their full economic potential (and add £70 billion to the economy!)
• A comprehensive solution to the housing crisis, by making housing more affordable and promoting inclusive design
• Protection for women and children escaping domestic abuse, with ring-fenced funding for refuges and safe housing 
• A system of child-care for all children from the end of paid parental leave at 9 months, and a pan-London approach to meet the demand for care for older and disabled people 
• Compulsory, quality Sex and Relationship Education and PSHE, so that the next generation are taught to respect and protect one another
• A thriving and brilliant work-force, which celebrates and awards the achievements of everyone, and gives them fair access to work - #WE will create work that works.

And LOADS more. Just read our manifesto.

In a political system stacked against new-comers our voice cannot be heard as loudly as the old parties. #WE are fighting to be seen and heard and it can be heart-breakingly, back-breakingly hard. One of the biggest barriers, I think, to us winning as many votes as we could on May 5th is the completely forgivable lack of understanding by the electorate of the super complicated systems by which each of the different votes are counted and awarded. London Elects explains it nice and clearly here. 

So if you are reading this and thinking "I'm super down with the whole equality thing, but I don't want to 'waste my vote' on a new party and risk a big, old party I hate getting in" then FEAR NOT. And then tell all your friends. The orange ballot paper, the London-wide list for the Greater London Assembly, is elected using a form of proportional representation (the Modified d'Hondt Formula, for those for whom that means something), and #WE have enough support that we can and will win seats on it. If enough Londoners know a) about us, and b) that we can win. A vote for equality will not be a wasted vote.

So TELL EVERYONE. And VOTE!  

Kate for Mayor!

2016 has got off to a rather exciting start. For the last week I've been uttering a sentence which if you had told me I would be saying this time last year, I simply would not have believed you. "I've been shortlisted to the final five to run for Mayor of London for the Women's Equality Party". One of the reasons that sentence would have been so alien in January 2015 is that the Women's Equality Party (#WE) didn't exist; it was an idea yet to be formed. People responded to its emergence so swiftly and with such passion, it's hard to believe last year it wasn't A Thing. Like a song you hear on the radio and can start singing straight away, thinking I know this song, it speaks to me. #WE is that song. The Party is the party. 2015 didn't just bring us the spiralizer.

From its conception at WOW by Catherine Mayer, joining forces with Sandi Toksvig, in March 2015, it is now a proper party (which is a crazily hard thing to become in a political system stacked against new-comers) and a real contender in the next elections. #WE has more than 45,000 members and supporters and over 70 local branches (some of which I helped set up when I started volunteering for the party last spring). And now we are standing candidates for the London Assembly and London Mayoral elections. And I'm lucky enough to have been short-listed as a candidate! Bloody hell, January!

Hustings are tomorrow night and voting (internal, for party members in London) closes on Thursday. So if you want to vote for me to stand for either mayor or the London Assembly, crack on and join the party! If you want to know why I'm standing and why I believe I'd be a credible candidate, here are my reasons:

• My professional life is hugely varied - if you've read my other blogs you'll know I work with people with Parkinsons, people who are HIV+, mental health service users, recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, young migrants; I run creative arts and education projects; I facilitate interfaith dialogue; I teach sex and relationship education; I go into schools as a Role Model to combat homophobic bullying. I keep myself busy! This has given me insight not only into the needs of these different groups - who come from a vast array of backgrounds - but also into the local provision for different communities. Most importantly it means I am experienced in working with people,  discussing their needs and concerns, and supporting them to take positive action. I get on with people and I care about their lives.
• I’ve been involved with the party since the second meeting, firstly as a volunteer ‘Branch Maker’, supporting the set-up of the local branches across the UK, and also spoke at the first meeting of the Youth Branch. I planned and delivered a pilot workshop about #WE at Nonsuch High School, and have been invited to join the education group leading on school speaking materials.
• I care passionately about the fight for equality and believe gender inequality is a crazy anachronism in today’s society. From every-day sexism, to the gendering of emotions, the pay gap, to the threat of violence to women and girls - I see the impact of gender inequality all around me and I cannot sit back and let it continue. Only last week, an article in the Sunday Times suggested female doctors are causing the NHS to fail. Gahhh!!!! The issues behind this are systemic. But that means they can be systematically tackled (see #WE's 6 core objectives).
• I am a lively and confident person, who enjoys leading from the front, back and side, responding to the needs of the people I’m working with. I have strong values but am never evangelical; I always want to understand all the different sides of a debate and form a considered opinion, and I’m not too proud to change my mind.
• I strive to be authentic and a positive role model. When I regularly taught at a school in Lewisham, I decided to be honest about my sexuality when asked questions by the students, as I think it is crucial that young people have a normalized and human view of difference (and this also led to considerably reduced homophobic language in my classroom). In the workplace, I’m not afraid to be honest about my feelings and communicate them appropriately.
• The political arena could seriously do with some normal people, who aren't career politicians, who know the world outside Westminster. I am authentic. I'm nice. I'm not another man in a suit. 

VOTE KATE!!!!