Culture Whisper meets Camila Batmanghelidjh

Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company , sits like a swami in her study at the charity's headquarters on Blackfriars Road. She is a kaleidoscope of colour, swathed in a psychedelic sari and wearing her trademark turban, some tartan wrist-warmers and red plastic oblong glasses. Her feet are petite with toenails varnished in a delicious crimson lacquer. Her legs are tucked up beside her, in a pose more readily struck by a child, the yellow crocs tossed under the table. She doesn’t get up.

‘Some people imagine I am chaotic,’ she says, ‘but actually I am very organised.’ Don’t doubt it. How else could someone build up quite such an impressive empire, with 600 paid staff, an annual turnover of £23m, a volunteering base worth a further £10m, and a relationship with the media and Britain’s highest-earning artists that money can’t buy. BBC’s Women’s Hour recently named her one of the 100 most influential women in Britain. 

Welcome to Planet Camila, where the candles are lit and the windows to the outside world are encased in Islamic-style scalloped frames. She has just finished a meeting with a senior police officer; next up is a lord.

I first met Camila 17 years ago, when she was raising £361,000 to open her original centre under the railway arches in Southwark. Before long, Prince Charles was on board: Camila has a real talent for inspiring the great and the good – and the not so good – which continues to this day. Last week Damien Hirst’s spot painting of Mickey Mouse was auctioned at Christie's, which resulted in £850,000 going to Kid’s Company. 

Camila was recently awarded a CBE. Being a refugee, she couldn’t receive the honour from the Queen. Instead she had to go to a little side office with some tea and cheap biscuits. Did she care? Of course not. In fact, she took along some of ‘her’ children and made sure they received the award.  Camila has learning difficulties as a result of being born premature. This means she can’t write down the answers to the immigration test. The authorities recently changed the rules so that people in her situation can dictate their answers, but she hasn’t found the time to mug up on what she needs to know. It’s not a high priority. She is concerned with more important questions.

Over the years, Kids Company has got bigger and bigger. A good metaphor for this is the bus. Central to her work has always been to use art to unlock disturbed children’s inner worlds. Back in the early days, the resulting art was housed in a small broken down bus that she found on a farm. The first exhibition, back in 1997, was entitled ‘ Behind Closed Doors ’. I remember a poem by Joe, aged nine, which pleaded: “Violence will not stop anything. Why don’t you stop whipping?...Stop, stop, stop! It’s ENOUGH.”

Now Camila is going for ‘a big lorry with a big lorry driver’ and is going to head off round the country. Expect to see the lorry this summer, parked up at Glastonbury and other festivals, outside London galleries and shopping centres, perhaps even in the Royal Parks. She won’t advertise her itinerary. It’s more of a pop-up. ‘I like the idea of the general public thinking: “Oh what’s this?” because that’s so powerful. I like the idea of the general public contributing to the experience, writing comments, and finding out what other children think and what the children in those adults think.’

Camila has fostered a relationship with London’s established art spaces. Over the last ten years, she has become ‘best friends’’ with the Royal Academy - in her view the most daring of them all. Contemporary artists such as the Chapman Brothers, Anthony Gormley and Grayson Perry are impressed by the children’s work. 

If you would like see some of the art ahead of the lorry’s exhibition, you can make an appointment to go to Kids Company’s headquarters and see their permanent exhibition. The ‘Shoe Box Living’ exhibit, which was shown at the Tate, is on view. Camila asked children to recreate a room in their house in an upturned shoebox. One young boy depicted a pub. One in six of the children’s shoeboxes disclosed child protection issues. Camila made a second tower block out of the shoeboxes done by famous artists, which were auctioned off for more than £200,00. Hirst was impressed: ‘I get emails saying: “We’re (auctioning off) artists’ underpants, artists’ shoes and artists’ shirt and artists’ mugs,” but to do something like that – making a tower block, keeping it simple – it’s a great idea.’

Camila says she is very spiritual; she says she has a strong sense of her own ‘insignificance’. She is quieter than I remember, perhaps because deep down she is ‘peaceful’. With good reason, I can’t help thinking. For here is someone who will, undoubtedly, leave the world a better place and, in the best possible way, doesn’t take herself seriously. As I depart, she declares: ‘I am as infantile as the day I was born.’