Just before Christmas our sister Sophie passed away aged 37.

Sophie was brave, funny and insightful. But above anything else, Sophie was an artist. Throughout her life she was dedicated to pursuing as many artistic avenues as she had time to. She studied at prestigious art universities Goldsmiths and St Martins, gaining a place on the merit of her excellent portfolios and evident passion and recently completing an MA in Public Sculpture. She did this despite living with schizophrenia, an illness that is both traumatic and isolating. Sophie remained incredibly focused on what she wanted to achieve, always trying a new technique, a new course or a new project. 

Over the last ten years, Sophie has been a member of Core Arts in Hackney, London. a mental health creative education centre. Core Arts had a hugely positive impact on Sophie’s life and wellbeing. As an organisation it provided her with a place where she could hone her artistic talent, make friends and develop a bigger community in London. Though the focus of the centre is artistic pursuits they also provided regular physical activities such as boxing and ping pong which Sophie fully embraced, becoming three time female ping pong champion!

Seeing Sophie's list of activities and friends grow and grow over recent years has been wonderful. It was an honour to meet many of the members of Core at the funeral, including many who’ve been painted by Sophie over the years!

In recent years Sophie had become a Trustee of Core and was giving back towards the community. She had recently gathered a group of members of Core to pursue a 'Moving On' project, aiming to help members to move beyond mental health settings.She was determined not to be defined by her mental health and wanted to empower and enable others to do the same. This project will still be run by Core.

In memory of Sophie and because running is something I do to help with my own mental health and at terrible times like this, I will be running the Kilimanjaro half marathon on the 1st of March. All proceeds will be put towards Core Arts, so that other people who experience mental health difficulties can know that they are valued, they are not alone and that they can achieve great things.

Tom