“You can’t aspire to a future you’ve never seen.”

Where you grow up can shape who you are and what you believe is possible. But what happens when young people never get the chance to see the opportunities available to them?

In this guest opinion piece, Avisa Curtis reflects on poverty of opportunity in Bristol, drawing on her own experiences of growing up in the South West, pursuing a career in fashion and the importance of opening doors to new possibilities for everyone.

You can’t aspire to a future you’ve never seen.

By Avisa Curtis

Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England, opened a landmark report on the “postcode lottery” by saying:

“Every day in England, on average, about 1,600 children are born. After a short time, something defining happens to those children. They leave hospital and travel home. This will be the most important journey of their lives.”

She goes on to explain where you grow up shapes the opportunities you encounter, the people you meet and ultimately what you believe is possible for yourself. 

Growing up in the South West, I’ve found that the divide isn’t necessarily city to city, often, it’s street to street.

If you’ve never had a BBQ with an Aardman animator or gone to a dance class with wildlife photographer’s daughter, chances are you will never have any idea those jobs exist. How can you dream about being a Combat Designer at Larian Studios, when your mum works at the bank and your dad works in the Imperial Park B&Q?

For the average family, stepping outside the familiar feels less like an ambition and more like a risk: “If the successful person you know is the bloke down the road with a nice car who happens to be a scaffolder, then scaffolding can understandably become your picture of success. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a scaffolder. The problem is if that’s one of only a handful of futures you’ve ever been able to see.” (Mark Curtis, AKA my dad) 

Those idealistic standards look very different. Just a few streets away, your neighbour is a museum curator, your mum’s new husband is a Tobacco Factory actor, and your best friend’s dad is a writer at the BBC. You can see people living out these “unpredictable futures” – you’re encouraged, maybe even connected. There’s no fear of wasting 80k on a degree, you’re one step ahead, you know the job exists, and to top it off, there’s someone on the inside, sneaking your CV to the top of the pile. Suddenly being the new David Attenborough doesn’t seem so obscure. These kids will dare to dream, as dreaming doesn’t seem so scary. There’s proof that the dream is possible. 

There are a few lucky kids who break out of this mould. Usually aided through “follow your dreams” type parents. I was lucky enough to be one of them. At seven, I was telling adults that I would move to London or Paris and work in fashion. My neighbours immediately scoffing, “you couldn’t possibly know what you want to do already”. Why not? And even if I didn’t, did that mean I shouldn’t try? 

The same mentalities followed me to secondary school. I managed to wrangle three creative subjects with my GCSE counsellor, who scrambled to convince me I’d have a safer future if I chose another humanities subject or butchered a few more frogs. Luckily my parents never put a doubt in my head, it didn’t matter what I chose if it’s what I wanted to do. 

It never sat right with me that children were expected to think inside the box. I made it my mission to convince my friends not to settle, begging my singing, dancing and painting schoolmates not to give up on what they loved just because their uncle told them it wasn’t a clear career path. It infuriated me. Who convinced these kids that a geography degree was a safer choice than pursuing something they loved?

If I woke up tomorrow and decided I wanted to be a baker, my dad would be on the phone before I could change my mind. He’d call the guy who sold him a pain au chocolat that morning and make me speak to him. Someone is already doing that job, he’d say. So why can’t you? 

I don’t know much of what my dad does day to day but I have no doubt that Boomsatsuma’s students’ graduation to career success has something to do with the same no-plan-B mentality that was instilled in me, now being passed on to any kid who will listen.

Five years into working in the fashion industry in London, and now I’m the pain au chocolat baker Boomsatsuma calls when they have a kid who mentioned off-hand they want a career in fashion. I tell them what it’s like. What routes work, and who else they can reach out to.

That’s what Boomsatsuma is to me: it lets kids into a world they have never had access to before. Real hands-on industry experience. It gives young people tools to build their plan A, rather than encouraging them to abandon it before they’ve even started.

Boom is expanding. More opportunities, new environments, different audience, all with a common purpose: opportunity. 

I told my dad I wanted to write more, he told me to write about opportunity, I prefer to talk about myself so the jokes on him. Anyway thanks for the opportunity, Mark.