When you give oxygen to our creativity, we burn so bright.

I've spent the last week cocooned in the support bubble of the Immersive Arts UK Tech Lab, delivered by Crossover Labs. And I'll be honest, I walked in with my guard up.

I've been part of initiatives that commission artists at scale with genuinely good intentions. But when you need to transfer knowledge to twenty-plus people at once, the approach tends to flatten. You become a prospector, hunting for the golden nuggets that justify taking time away from the work.

This was not that!

Yes, there was shared learning and common ground. But then came something rarer, dedicated time and space to apply that learning to your own work, with a structured check-in with a mentor at every stage. Not one mentor. Four. Each one a supportive disruptor in your creative process.

I'm making Good Enough, a piece that lives in the tension between light and shadow, and ultimately asks its audience, many of whom are LGBTQ+, to step fully into the light and be seen. For a lot of people, that's a terrifying act.

One mentor stopped me mid-conversation and said simply: "You have something special that's not been done in this way."

That sentence has stayed with me all week.

The space Immersive Arts and Crossover Labs created was devoid of ego or agenda. Instead it was four days of having your work validated, your instincts trusted, your thinking stretched. I've been a joyful sponge. The glint in a mentor's eye when your idea lands. Another artist saying your work resonates. A producer flagging a reference you hadn't found yet. It's in those moments that the whole thing earns itself.

Which brings me to the thing I can't stop thinking about.

This kind of support is almost always an afterthought, an add-on, or the first line cut when the budget gets squeezed for the sake of making the work. Immersive Arts are doing something genuinely countercultural: holding the line on tailored, experimental, artist-centred training even when it's hard to fund and harder to trust, because we're so conditioned to expect less.

We should be talking about how rare this is. And how bright we can burn when the conditions are finally right.

Thank you to Immersive Arts, Crossover Labs and our IA Producers. An even bigger thank you to my four fabulous mentors — Emma Roberts, Maf’j Alvarez', Toby Coffey and Zaiba Jabbar — your belief in the work means more than you know.