Don’t sit down. Stand up. By @gnomeegnome
By Naomi Taylor
Don’t sit down. Stand up.
I still wake up and think that SCA was a dream, dramatic right?
This sort of thing doesn’t happen to a foster kid.
I didn’t get here by chance.
I was awarded a scholarship and I asked for money.
I went on and on, until adland replied.
There was no easy way to get to SCA, not for someone like me.
It’s difficult to break people’s perceptions of what we are.
How do you defy the odds when it becomes so heavily stuck to you that you are not worthy?
You’re expected to sit on your ass and claim benefits, with 5 kids by 21.
Many of those who I grew up with in care are either addicts, in prison or dead. As expected.
Fuck expectations.
I’m proud to be a foster kid, I see things differently to you.
I know how much these four words matter: ‘I believe in you’.
I can get into the mindset of someone your average ad man would struggle to.
Unfortunately I can recite the Miranda rights. Can you?
I nearly went to prison. Did you?
I’m not proud of my past, but I won’t pretend it didn’t mould me.
I am who I am, and my history has made me.
Welcome to the other side.
Okay, you can put the violins away.
But I do wonder what paths the foster kids I once knew could have been on, if they had been given the same support as me. Could one of them now be an artist, a care worker or a coder?
I know they were capable of something good. I am and they could have been too.
But…
I know who I want to follow.
I know what I want to change.
We talk about getting more women and ethnic minorities into advertising.
I’m adding foster kids to that list.
The thing is, I won’t just talk about it.
*This SCAB is for the legends and the one of a kind people at SCA. The ones that backed me before I even started. The ones that sponsored me to be able to attend the school. Thank you, because without you I probably would be conforming to those fucking expectations.