Our Team

Laura worked for 9 years at the Migrants Resource Centre where she was responsible for the community education and employability service. She also worked for 2 years (finishing in July 2016) at Action for Refugees in Lewisham managing a supplementary school for children aged 4 to 11. She worked at Renaisi as Community Inclusion Service Delivery Manager supporting a team of bilingual parent advisors working in different schools in Islington and Hackney.

She founded Creating Ground CIC in May 2016 with the vision of promoting cross-cultural awareness, learning and sharing across different communities in South East London through arts and educational projects.

Originally from Lagos State, Nigeria, Yewande moved to London in September 2007 to undertake a masters degree in Business & Financial Economics at the University of Greenwich. She met Laura at Action for Refugees in Lewisham (AFRIL), and soon after became a volunteer at Creating Ground in 2016. 

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In her role as a Non-Executive Director, Yewande looks forward to ensuring the success and progress of Creating Ground, providing a balance of skills and experience that is appropriate for the development of the women, organisation and the community. She believes the core strength of Creating Ground is the wonderful relentless hard work of the various talents in the organisation.

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Her favourite creative activity at Creating Ground was t-shirt making and making beaded jewellery. 

Khadidja came from Algeria to the UK in 2012, and her first session with Creating Ground was in March 2018.

As a Non-Executive Director she hopes to make Creating Ground bigger and stronger. Bigger by having more funding and dealing with different subjects to not only give women skills, but to create job opportunities for women. She believes complicity, connection, understanding and feeling about each other, are at the core of Creating Ground. 

She is always happy and excited to learn from others but particularly enjoys sharing her cooking skills and seeing how happy it makes the group makes her feel honoured to be able to provide something useful and that can be repeated.

For the past few years Paulina has been a community organiser in South London, but she started her career in Mexico as a textile designer. She set up an ethical brand and worked with emerging artists and a series of suppliers to bring meaning and ethics to the clothes we wear. However, her desire to make a sharper and more effective difference in the life of those around her led her to Citizens UK, a community organising charity. Through her role as organiser, she came across Creating Ground. For almost two years she worked with the Creating Ground community in identifying the injustices that caused us pain, and the opportunities and leadership potential that lay before us. 

As a Non-Executive Director she is excited to contribute her skills, time and energy to grow and strengthen Creating Ground. She believes that the women that make up Creating Ground and the kindness and ethos of the organisation is Creating Ground's greatest strength. 

She loves painting and how after some quick innocent brushstrokes the whole picture can change and you can go from nothing to everything in just moments.

Anna is a freelance documentary filmmaker and participatory film facilitator. She has worked with Creating Ground to run co-produced film workshops, including teaching camera and interviewing skills and supporting the production of Light The Way, made by members of the Stronger Together Leaders. She is co-author of the online toolkit From Contributors to Co-producers: a guide to participatory production, published by award winning production company, On Our Radar. Anna’s background is in engaged community journalism. She previously oversaw the production of four print local newspapers across London.

Rose has several years experience in the charity sector, both internationally and in the UK. She graduated from the University of Bristol with a BA hons in Drama, where she developed a passion for filmmaking and production, particularly in a global context. This led to travelling to some very remote areas in Asia and Africa to produce some short films as personal projects, as well as to teach English. She has also worked as a global Openings Manager for a restaurant group, where she gained experience managing and training multicultural teams in Kuwait, Dubai, Sweden, New York, and across the UK. Most recently, she was COO at Kelly's Cause Foundation, a charity delivering Mental Health First Aid training to those working in the hospitality industry.

She is an encouraging and inclusive facilitator and trainer whose methods incorporate drama techniques and who is driven by empowering others. 

Lydia recently finished her Masters in Migration and Global Development at Sussex University, where she did a placement with Creating Ground to write her dissertation while facilitating last year’s My Creative Skills sessions. Before that, she studied History at King’s College, assisted with community workshops in London museums and spent a year learning Spanish while travelling across Spain and Peru. She loves working with Creating Ground because every member has such creative ideas to make change happen, and it’s such a positive place to be! Lydia is a skilled workshop facilitator and also experienced in qualitative social research methods. She is particularly interested in creative, participatory projects connected to history, incorporating marginalised narratives and different languages.

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Her favourite creative session with Creating Ground was drawing maps of London, where we all added our own personal touches to how we experience the city and our connections to other places.