RARE  RISINGSTARS 2010 The UK’s Top 10 Black Students
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No. 2

 

Annabel Sowemimo

University College London
Medicine
Creative arts
Annabel Sowemimo
From the operating theatre to the drama theatre, Annabel Sowemimo has found the perfect way to stage a career in medicine and the dramatic arts.

Before being accepted to study Medicine at University College London, Annabel was already a budding thespian who joined the National Youth Theatre at the age of 16, and was promoted to Course Assistant just one year later � a position usually reserved for those in their twenties.

RRS2011: Replayed - UCL medic, and 2011's second-placed Rare Rising Star, Annabel Sowemimo, tells us how teenage illness and her love of both drama and directing drove her to create Drama Jam, an outreach programme for local school children.


In 2008, Annabel co-established Drama Jam, a revolutionary outreach project, which encourages university students to take theatre and the dramatic arts to audiences who are least likely to have access to it.

By 2010, Annabel was Drama Jam's sole Project Leader and she secured over £1,000 of university funding for her project. With this relatively small sum, she was able to develop the project into a mentoring scheme for children in several London schools and the success of Drama Jam contributed to the Drama Society receiving the UCL Arts Society of the Year Award. Annabel received personal recognition for her longstanding contributions with the UCL Arts Centenary Award. She is also the editor of Perspective, a medical publication focusing on international health issues.

Annabel has been able to maintain an intensely active lifestyle despite suffering from scoliosis, a medical condition affecting the spine. Having recovered from dangerous surgery herself in 2004, she mentored a girl who also suffered from the disease.

"Although scoliosis is not something that I chose to have, I wouldn't change it because it has made me a stronger person."

She spent the summer completing an international health internship in Nigeria and looks forward to continuing to give back to the local and global communities through medicine and drama.