To mark the 30th anniversary of World AIDS Day, we welcomed poet, speaker and trainer Bakita Kasadha into the agency to challenge static perceptions and assumptions around being HIV+.

Bakita, who has performed poetry and delivered talks internationally, including at TEDxCoventGarden and the Houses of Parliament, spoke to W+K about the challenges and stigma of living with HIV and how the rapid advancement of medication has changed the landscape for those affected.

It was a real privilege to hear Bakita speak with candour, intelligence and humour on a potentially tough topic – big thanks to her and the W+Ked team for organising.

Welcome to the first in a series of monthly blogs from The Kennedys, a five-month creative incubator programme which sees seven young people from non-traditional backgrounds undertake a crash course in advertising:

Last month marked the start of The Kennedys 2018, where we were plucked from diverse backgrounds such as architecture, radio production, creative writing and videography to join W+K London’s creative accelerator program. Immediately, we were encouraged to step out of our comfort zone and explore creativity beyond our skillset.

We walked into the office on the first day, each having flashbacks to the daunting experience of the assessment day and wondering how in the world we all got here. Did they mistake Sammy for someone else? Is Aleah secretly a distant cousin to one of the ECDs? Was it Renaldo’s evil twin that turned up 20 minutes late to the assessment day? We’ll never know, but we’ve signed the contracts and spent a month here so now it’s too late to let us go.

Having completed over a month of The Kennedys, we can only describe this experience as a more entertaining and less condescending version of The Apprentice. Guiding us along the way has been Account Manager Preety Mudhar and Creative Director Ray Shaughnessy.

In this short amount of time we have been on a creative crash course in multiple lanes, such as designing our very own Kennedyism posters, art directing a photography shoot in the studio, trying to go viral and most recently writing and producing spooky stories for Halloween podcasts.

In addition to this, we’ve been involved on a couple of live briefs thanks to Creative Directors Flo Heiss and Darren Simpson, bringing fresh and unique perspectives to the table. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that our thoughts and opinions were equally as valuable as any other member of the W+K family.

In any spare time we had, we spent it trying to find inspiration, this included trips to the V&A and Design Museum as well as most recently experiencing the insane and explosive live action in Chekov’s First Play.

The process has been a testing one, having to adapt from creating for ourselves to creating for others, but there’s been a bunch of  fun stuff in between.

From left to right, Donya, Aleah, Sammy, Abbey, Richie, Ren and Lynn