Jodie Marsh-Hoffman a.k.a Junk Jodie

Jodie Marsh-Hoffman was born and raised in Basingstoke, England. She studied for a national diploma in Art and Design at Basingstoke College of Technology and also a diploma in Performing Arts at Queen Mary’s College. Jodie later trained at East 15 acting School in London. With her love of Art and Design Jodie started a cushion making business called “Love of Clash” drawing on her love of colourful art which inspired her on a visit to South Africa where she witnesses some incredible, colourful art made from recycled materials.

Jodie was soon noticed and was approached by a company called “Proteus” to organise and run arts and crafts workshops for primary schools. Jodie visited many scrap stores to source materials for these workshops and loved it! It was during this time that Jodie realised how much “usable” junk there was and that being creative with these materials could be such fun! All you needed was a little imagination! Furthermore not only was it limitless and cheap it was also good for our planet! Jodie’s imagination was bouncing off the walls! She had so many ideas and materials to play with this is when she earned the title “Junk Jodie”.

Jodie now runs workshops at Festivals and works within the local community for the underprivileged – one of her favourite projects was making a giant tree from recycled materials.

Performing is still a huge part of her life and over the past couple of years she has performed on cruise ships within their entertainment teams, toured in theatre productions all over England, and starred in a YouTube children’s TV series that helps and guides very young children to overcome worries that they may be experiencing. Jodie was also once a trapeze artist and has run classes for beginners to learn the basic skills of static trapeze.

Jodie has voiced a number of episodes of Sylvanian Families and recently has started a new Junk Jodie series in India.

During the recent self-isolation period we have all experienced, Jodie wondered how she could continue to involve young people in low-cost creativity during this time of face to face community events being cancelled. It was during this time that Junk Jodie hit a YouTube channel; Junk Jodie Arts and Crafts was offered to children as a fun and exciting way to learn arts and crafts using materials that everyone can find – JUNK! Who would have thought?!