Phoebe Boswell is a visual artist and animator based in London. Last year she won Sky Arts Ignition: Futures Fund and received one of the five £30,000 bursaries to help emerging artists, aged between 18 and 30, develop their creative practice.

Below Phoebe explains what the fund has meant to her.

In addition to the financial backing Sky provides I am lucky enough to receive mentoring by a group of Sky directors. We first met at the start of my project 6 months ago, and I have now just met with them all again. In between my group mentoring sessions I’ve received one on one mentoring from a Sky Director and an Arts Producer/ curator. 

It is incredible to think that such busy people can take days out of their schedules to consider our practices and help us work out the logistics of realising our goals, both within the framework of Sky Arts Ignition: Futures Fund and beyond. 

In the first session with the Sky Directors, we introduced our work then we split into two groups and got down to the nitty gritty of budgets and timescales, and they explained the ins and outs of putting the work into the world and getting it seen. The emphasis was on having confidence, and, as it was the very beginning of the process, Daisy and I couldn't have been more grateful for the advice. It set us up to move forward and believe wholeheartedly in our work and our visions for it.

At this initial session, we had the lucky opportunity to choose who we wanted to be our individual Sky mentor for the duration of the fund. Each director was so knowledgeable and so of course it was a tough choice, but Simon Buglione, Creative Director of Sky News, said something to me that stood out. He said, "The business side of course is important, but don't let it interfere with the chaos of the creative process". He was, at the time, working on a multimedia exhibition called Fronline at Somerset House, and seemed to me a perfect fit.

As I thought, he's been incredible. Our first meeting was at Sky, and I arranged to have lunch with Freya Murray who runs the fund as I thought he'd be able to give me an hour and that would be it. Six hours later, I had missed our lunch but met the most interesting, helpful people from his team, who I was able to tell my visions to and talk through ways of making them work technologically. David Aldhouse from his team even took me to Sky Creative to introduce me to everyone there, with the view that they could help me move forward as my ideas became more technologically ambitious.

For an artist keen to try out new methodologies, this support was invaluable. Simon has since been to my studio in Bermondsey and has been such an important ear, not only when trying to figure out logistical things but also in helping me to decipher what he quite rightly said at the beginning was the 'chaos of the creative process'. Ten months into the fund, our projects have evolved and with that comes very real problems to solve and decisions to make, and so it was brilliant to be able to regroup with all the directors, show them how our work has become tangible, and gain from the practical know how that will enable us to really take our work to the next level.