Emily wins her battle
Published at 09:41, Friday, 03 September 2010
GAZING around the newly-opened workshop of Corbridge entrepreneur, Emily Pitkethly, leaves a lasting impression on what the 24-year-old has achieved.
For her fledgling enterprise, Emily’s Ark, through which she designs, sews and sells handmade original stuffed animals, has gone from strength to strength in recent months, allowing her to take on staff for the first time.
But, as an articulate and charming interviewee, the scale of what she has accomplished can only be fully appreciated when she begins speaking openly and frankly about her battle with a debilitating mental health condition which threatened to put and end to her promising creative career.
While struggling with two attempts at moving away from home to university to embark on a degree course, Emily began suffering from bouts of depression and her health began to deteriorate.
She was eventually persuaded by sister Lucy to seek some medical help and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Emily explained: “It really was a very scary time for me. I literally felt like I’d lost the plot and was suffering delusions so often that I couldn’t distinguish between what was reality, and what wasn’t.”
However, determined to put her talents and love of art to good use, Emily plunged her heart and soul into her creations.
And it wasn’t long before the venture became therapeutic, aiding Emily’s recovery ever since.
But Emily is no stranger to overcoming obstacles.
Born in Guildford, she was educated in the South before moving to Northumberland with her family around six years ago. Despite impressive academic grades, she admits she never found school easy.
“I never really enjoyed school all that much, although I did do quite well.
“I’m dyslexic, but that wasn’t picked up until I was 15 or 16 and in the thick of studying for my GCSEs, so that made things quite difficult to deal with at times.”
With talents in both art and the sciences, Emily remained undecided on her career choice, and kept her options open by taking on an impressive five A-levels.
She said: “I have always been the kind of person who is driven by being told that I can’t do something. So after the problems I’d had with finding out I had dyslexia and teachers telling me I might be taking on too much, I really just relished the challenge of proving people wrong.
“I can be very persuasive when I want to and managed to talk my teachers into letting me study art, history, chemistry, biology and psychology – which wasn’t easy but I managed it!”
After passing with flying colours, a gap year beckoned for Emily, with an opportunity to volunteer in a hospital in Ghana, West Africa.
“As you can imagine, being out there for four months was like being in a completely different world,” said Emily.
“The hospital facilities they have are nowhere near as advanced as what we have here, so you really did feel like you could make a difference.”
The experience thrust Emily and her fellow nine volunteers into the heart of one of West Africa’s most impoverished communities where they learned first hand what it was like to be in a minority.
“My complexion is extremely pale at the best of times but in Africa I really did stick out like a sore thumb and you would find people would just stand and stare at you in amazement because they had never seen a white person before,” said Emily.
“I remember one of the other girls who was volunteering came in one day really upset because a young child had seen her walk by and literally screamed and ran away from her completely horrified!”
But as if time spent volunteering in the hospital’s dentistry department – where patients often couldn’t afford anaesthetic – wasn’t gruelling enough, Emily was struck down with life-threatening disease malaria.
She said: “It was about six weeks into my trip and I just thought I was getting a cold, but the symptoms just got worse.”
Emily herself ended up spending almost two weeks in a local hospital and needed follow-up treatment when she returned home.
Having secured a place at Southampton University’s Winchester School of Art, Emily returned to her studies aged 19 when she moved away from home to study fine art.
“I was living with girls who were mainly studying textiles,” said Emily.
“And that’s when I first started looking at some of their work and the fabrics lying around the house and thinking that textiles are something I’d never really considered, but would quite like to try.
“I’d spent so much time toying with whether I wanted to go down the art route at all, because it is thought of as such an unstable career.”
Just a few months into her first year, Emily became unwell and after receiving her bipolar diagnosis, was forced to leave her course behind and return home to be with her parents.
“I wasn’t in a good way at all and was referred to the Fairnington Centre in Hexham for treatment and prescribed medication to keep the episodes I was having under control,” Emily said.
And after some time out, determined to give university another try, Emily began a textiles course at Edinburgh University – but barely made it through her first term before her illness took over again.
She said: “I just couldn’t seem to cope with being away from home and suffered quite a severe relapse.
“By this point, lots of my friends were graduating from university and getting engaged, and I could barely get through my first term.”
Beginning to doubt whether she would ever be able to down a normal job because of her condition, Emily was given a glimmer of hope when Tynedale artist Sue Moffitt, offered her part-time work at her Newton-based Fifiefofum gallery.
Emily said: “Sue was fantastic.
“She taught me, not just about art, but all about running a small business, and became like a mentor to me.
“And she was really understanding about my illness, so when there were periods when I just couldn’t go to work, I would go back when I was feeling better and my job would still be there for me.”
A huge turning point for Emily came when she visited a Christmas craft fair and bought a kit to make a teddy bear as a gift for her sister.
“I looked at it and thought I could make my own pattern like that,” said Emily.
Not content with just teddy bears, Emily soon found herself designing and creating everything from aardvarks to hares out of traditional materials such as mohair and cashmere.
Realising the cost of sourcing the expensive materials couldn’t be covered by selling to family and friends alone, Emily embarked on doing the rounds at local craft fairs and at her first one – Hexham Christmas Market – completely sold out.
From there, Emily’s Ark was born, and with one full-time and one part-time member of staff now working for Emily at her recently-opened workshop in Gateshead, the business is hoping to turnover £30,000 this year.
Emily said: “Something about making the animals just clicked and I found it very easy to think in 3D.
“I’d love to think one day we could become the English Steiff as all our animals are jointed and have glass eyes just the same.”
Her success to date has earned her recognition as the winner of this year’s Hexham Courant “If we can, you can” challenge and earned her the title of the “face of North East entrepreneurship” for 2011.
She has also been short-listed in the top 100 candidates across the country for this year’s Barclays “Trading Places” awards, the winner of which will be announced in October.
She added: “I’m loving running my own business and have been totally blown away by the response I’ve had.
“If I can run my own business, anyone can.”
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk
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