Guest Blog – Junk Jodie

For our next blog we asked our good friend, resident artist and Proteus alumni Jodie Marsh-Hoffman to pen a few lines about following her heart to carve a career as both a performer and visual artist, and what led her to set up a new arts and crafts Youtube channel as Junk Jodie!

Hi I’m Jodie,

I was born and raised in Basingstoke and have ALWAYS loved both art and performing, so when I finished school I took a national diploma in art and design at BCOT.  However, I realised I wanted to be on the stage and at the time started to think of art as more of a hobby than a career. So I finished my course and then started a diploma in performing arts at QMC, a HE college also based in Basingstoke.

My journey with Proteus began when I then did a gap year placement with the company, as both an actor (performing in the community tour of Rapunzel) and Assistant Stage Manager, before heading to East 15 Acting school to do a degree in Physical theatre.

After drama school I spent a good year trying to understand how this industry worked and during this time I started a cushion business in my loft called “Love to Clash”. My art was inspired by all the times I visited South Africa as a child and witnessing some incredible, colourful art made from recycled materials.

What better time than right now to get creative from home using your recycled materials?

I realized that I loved art just as much as performing…that’s when I decided that I shouldn’t have to pick, I could do both! I was approached by Proteus to run arts and craft workshops for primary schools and that was it. I was taken to scrap stores for the first time, to pick whatever I wanted for my workshops, I loved it! I had no idea that scrap stores were full of so much ‘usable’ junk and could be so much fun – you just need a little imagination! Not only that, it’s cheap to do and great for our planet to! My imagination was bouncing of the walls! I had sooo many ideas! This is when I became “Junk Jodie”.

I’ve now been running workshops for Festivals like BLOVE Fest for two years. My pitch is part of the ‘Magical Forest’ – a truly enchanting place to make art with lots of young creatives. I’ve also worked with Community centres for the underprivileged, one of my favourite project was making a giant tree from recycled materials!

Performing is still a huge part of my life too, over the past couple of years I have worked on cruise ships in the entertainment team, played the fairy in Scratch Built’s in-house Christmas Show for under 5’s at the Creation Space and worked as a voice over artist, and starred in a Youtube children’s TV series that helps very young children to understand their feelings. I am also a trapeze artist and have run classes for beginners to learn the basic skill of static trapeze. I love having the best of both worlds!

When we started self-isolation it got me thinking about how I could continue to get young people involved in low-cost creativity, when so many of the face-to-face community events have had to be cancelled.  So I decided to start up a YouTube channel; Junk Jodie arts and crafts, to teach children how to make fun things from junk. My videos are inspired by the 90’s kids TV show Art Attack, my childhood favourite. There is always a ‘hidden’ educational element, including lots of fun facts and I plan to release a new video every fortnight, on a Wednesday.

What better time than right now to get creative from home using your recycled materials? It’s cheap to do and fun to!

You can subscribe to my Youtube channel under Junk Jodie arts and crafts.