Why InterArts Exists.
A lecture on Marcel Duchamp, made me realise art could be anything — an idea, a question, an experience, a challenge, or a way of seeing the world differently.
So every month, I travelled into London for a "Gallery Day" with a list of installation art, performance art and immersive experiences to engage with. I wasn’t interested in standing back and observing from a distance. I wanted to step inside the work.
This fascination with experience and environment eventually led me to study Theatre Design at drama school, where I learned how space, objects, sound, light and movement can be combined to tell stories and shape the way people think and feel.
Theatre taught me something that continues to influence everything I do: creativity rarely happens in isolation. A single production requires writing, spatial design, construction, lighting, costume, fabric, music, movement, audience psychology, project management, budgeting, marketing and leadership. It is one of the most interdisciplinary creative processes imaginable.
Yet throughout my career, I kept noticing the same thing: children and young people rarely experience art in the way creative professionals do. Too often, artistic ability is measured by whether someone is “good at drawing”. But drawing is only one way of thinking, communicating and making meaning.
Artists, designers, engineers, architects, producers and makers don’t work in neat subject boxes. They combine ideas, experiment, collaborate, solve problems and learn through making. InterArts was created to give children that experience. A place where making, thinking, imagining and questioning are valued equally — and where every young person can discover what kind of creative thinker they are becoming.
Meet Sam
"I didn’t set out to run an arts club. I set out to build something that actually reflects how creative professionals think and work — and gives every young person a way in."
Sam is the founder and lead practitioner of InterArts. With a First Class degree in Theatre Design and a Master’s in Art & Design in Education, her practice sits at the intersection of visual art, design thinking, arts education and creative production.
For over twelve years, Sam worked at Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance — one of the UK’s leading drama conservatoires — designing and delivering large-scale creative programmes that engaged more than 3,000 young people annually across schools, communities and cultural organisations.
Her work has always been rooted in a simple conviction: young people are not passive recipients of creativity. Given the right conditions, structures and trust, they become contributors, decision-makers and creative voices in their own right.
Across her career, Sam has designed programmes that connect schools, cultural organisations, artists and industry — including a national lighting design competition for schools (in partnership with the Society of Light and Lighting); cross-curricular literacy projects using theatre design to deepen engagement with texts; as well as creating Live Briefs for FE Students studying BTEC business and tasking them with creating a summer school for 11-14 year olds at a partner cultural venue.
InterArts is the synthesis of everything she has learned — a programme designed from the inside out, by someone who has spent over a decade working with young people in creative spaces and thinking carefully about what they actually need.
Our Approach
The curriculum divides. InterArts connects.
A theatre designer needs mathematics to understand scale and proportion. An architect needs to tell a story through space. A game designer needs psychology, writing, visual art and engineering — often simultaneously. The creative industries are inherently interdisciplinary. They always have been. But our education system rarely reflects that.
InterArts is built on a different premise: that young people learn best when they can see how things connect. When a project requires them to design, build, write, problem-solve and present — all at once — suddenly maths isn’t abstract. Storytelling isn’t just for English. Making isn’t just for art. Everything has a purpose, and everything connects.
Our programmes are project-based and age-appropriate — designed so that every session feels like real work, not school work. Rather than focusing solely on finished products, we help young people develop creative habits of mind: observation, experimentation, reflection, resilience, collaboration and problem-solving.
Safety and Professional Standards
The safety and wellbeing of children and young people is our highest priority. InterArts maintains:
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Enhanced DBS certification
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Safeguarding training
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Comprehensive Safeguarding Policy
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Public Liability Insurance
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First Aid training
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Food Hygiene training
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Appropriate risk assessments for all activities and events