Melanie Abrahams – Mentor
The mentors on the scheme were Sarah Ellis, Pete Kalu, Melanie Abrahams and Emma Hewett. They are all people with a great track record in this field, and this has shown in the quality of the mentoring experience they have been able to pass on to people.
For example, a mentor in an early session described her mentee as ‘wonderfully talented and creative’ and needing to work on self belief to realise her goals. This was a common thread in the feedback from peoples’ work together and this has been the case on all the schemes NALD has coordinated in the past.
The mentoring has been tailored to the very different experiences of the mentees this year, and has covered areas such as work/life balance, how to build up skills for the sector and future work prospects, confidence issues and setting realistic goals for the future. The mentees come from a journalism background, marketing, publishing, writing and working in libraries. All of them are interested in developing both their literature sector experience and their own writing and creative work.
For example, in one session a mentor and mentee looked at preferred methods of mentoring, a modelling exercise on three people the mentee wished to emulate and followed this up by the suggestion of doing a ‘values exercise’ by telephone to gain clarity about what the mentor thought was her set of values in her work.
We have also managed to attract a great range of tutors for the seminars, and included other NALD members as participants for the first time in the scheme’s history. This has meant that the work gone into planning the seminars has had a wider benefit for the membership and allowed people a chance to network with each other on a face to face basis.
Here is a sample of some comments from the mentors who have been part of the scheme:
'Mentoring has given me a real sense of 'giving back', it not only keeps me on my toes at those times I'm expected to have answers or information, it's also been a way to pass on what I've learnt or discovered over the years and along the way.' Melanie Abrahams
‘One of the most exciting things has been watching the development of the mentees over the past months and seeing them answer the questions they asked themselves at the beginning of the project’ Sarah Ellis
‘I’ve really enjoyed being a part of Spread Your Wings. It’s given me the opportunity to learn new things about my own style of mentoring and reflect on different ways of mentoring in the future.’ Emma Hewett