Lessons from my Gap Decade

Lessons from my Gap Decade

Presented by Elinor Henry (BR 2010-12)

Elinor left King’s in 2012 to go to Australia on her gap year, and only returned to the UK in mid 2020. Instead of taking her place to study English literature at Newcastle, she realised she wanted to pursue a more visually creative career, starting in Sydney. Elinor was in Australia for 6 years, living in Sydney for the majority of that time but also Byron Bay and the Gold Coast. She then moved to Singapore to accept a position with Google where she lived for a year and half before returning to London.

Elinor worked and studied her way through events, marketing, branding, UX/UI design and workplace culture. Her varied career has involved being creative lead on the Australia-wide music tours of Ja Rule, Ashanti, Eve, and Tyga. She’s led teams working with festivals, events and musicians such as Shaun Kingston, Noir Music and Your Paradise Fiji. She also designed for clients in health, FinTech, consumer goods, B2B offerings, and Saas products all the way from start-ups to established businesses before moving to Singapore in late 2018. Elinor then spent almost 3 years with Google working on programmes for workplace culture such as onboarding, inclusion and wellbeing. During the pandemic, she became a board member for charity Artist Relief Tree, a relief fund set up for artists affected by covid cancellations. Last year, she left Google to pursue a career and further education as a visual artist in London which led to practising from an artist studio during 2022.