NiP Charity: The Origin & Lucy’s Story
As with many charities, it’s a personal story that begins a journey to help so many more people.
The Nipple Innovation Project is no different.
We sat down with our founder Lucy Thompson to hear her story.
A specialist tattoo artist
So Lucy, have you always been tattooing areolas?
I have been a traditional tattoo artist for over ten years now. I started specialising in scar tissue from my third year. I started working with scar tissue as I was very interested in the healing power tattoos had for the people seeking the service.
I’m 2016 I was first asked to do a nipple tattoo, I didn’t know this was a thing at the time, so I spoke to my auntie about it as she had had a mastectomy due to breast cancer.
She told me a devastating story of her experience of having a poorly done hospital nipple tattoo after breast cancer mastectomy surgery that bled heavily, scabbed up and fell away and left her unable to look at her reconstructed breast for ten years!
That is awful, how did you react to this as a traditional tattoo artist?
I just couldn’t comprehend why this had happened so I looked in to it further and found semi permanent nipple tattoos are common place in all hospitals, the thought of such an important tattoo fading away seemed so bizarre to me. So, I sought out training for a more permanent option, I found an artist in the USA offering training for 3D realistic nipple tattoos and scraped my savings together and travelled over on my own to learn this advanced skill.
So how did NiP come about after you had been to the USA?
After returning home and offering this service out for free I was approached by the BBC for a feature.
3D nipple tattoos - helping women after mastectomies - BBC News
[This BBC feature verified Lucy as the UK’s first tattoo artist to offer a 3D realistic and permanent option for areola tattooing]
Once the BBC feature aired I was inundated by people who were living with partially faded hospital nipple tattoos. After my first 50 nipple tattoos I was struggling to manage the workload and the free tattoos were taking over from my normal work, as a single parent running my own tattoo studio I needed something to help with the costs of this service.
I needed a pot of money to be able to cover the costs of the tattoos for these people who needed them, I also had people contacting me from all over England who some didn’t have the luxury of travel. So, I thought it would be great to have a charity that could offer a directory of specially trained artists to make this high quality service possible and also a pot of money to cover the costs for the artists, so we could still continue to offer these tattoos for free and make them more accessible to those who needed them.
A charity was born
And so NiP was created?!
Yes, the U.K’s first mastectomy tattoo charity - The Nipple Innovation Project was created in 2018. I just knew I didn’t want anyone else to feel as low as my auntie did and by having a trusted organisation, one day, the goal was to take over this service from the NHS. Because there were no other charities like this that existed, there were no guidelines to follow or take inspiration from, it took two years of hard work, blood, sweat, tears and commitment by our committee to get registered by the charity commission in 2020 which was a huge milestone for us. a very proud achievement. Creating a registered charity is extremely challenging thing to do.
6 years running a charity is incredibly impressive, how have you found it?
Most charities don’t survive past the 5 year mark. The charity has been run just by myself and a committee of volunteers for nearly 6 years now, i’m so incredibly proud of that. I volunteer around 16 hours a week to run the charity to help more people and help the charity grow. It's extremely hard work running a charity with only volunteers who offer help in their spare time but without my drive behind it, it wouldn't exist and people would have to live with basic nipple tattoos that fade away which negatively affects their self esteem. We can do better than that and that's why I wont give up working hard to make a difference.
With all the challenges, has there been some incredible highs too in the past six years?
There’s been so many!
I attended the Titanic Tattoo Convention in 2019 and tattooed nipples on a wonderful lady who suggested at the last minute we should enter them into a competition,as she felt so empowered by her new artwork! We entered the realism contest and won amongst a bunch of extremely talented international tattoo artists. The bravery of this woman showing the judges her nipple tattoos caught the hearts of everyone in the room, there wasn't a dry eye, it was a beautiful moment and the first time something like this had ever been done.
In 2021 we attended the oncology convention and was asked to give a lecture on the work we do, we were asked to speak twice during the time we were there and we found our talks gained lots and lots of attention, more than others we had seen. We had lots of people come and ask us more questions as we shared data gathered by a survey we completed to shine a light on the psychological impact of this work. Our work was well received and respected amongst medical professionals, which was incredible to see.
After learning how the NHS have specific guidelines in place to outsource this work, I looked into having my own areola pigment set that was of a pharmaceutical grade standard to ensure I was offering a truly safe service to my clients. I used these pigments for 2 years before launching it in 2022. I'm so proud to have my own areola pigment, proud to recommend it to other artists who do this work knowing it is created using safe raw materials with people with compromised immune systems.
And most recently, my areola tattoo training was recently approved by a NHS trust where I taught a medical practitioner advanced skills to uplevel her basic areola training knowledge. We spent a wonderful two days together, historically the NHS have only used two training providers before for their areola training so to be recognised as a training provider by them is a huge huge step and one I believe that will open many doors for a higher standard of education which should help reduce the amount of overworked and fading tattoos currently done in hospitals.
What does the future hold for you and NiP?
The ultimate dream is to take over this service from the NHS. At a medical NHS meeting we recently had, we explained how fading tattoos were a common issue throughout the whole of the UK. We work hard with making connections with the charity and medical professionals, so we can mirror the process and connect with other NHS trusts where we have other skilled artists in the UK and also offer this high quality service within their community.
This isn't about me, its about the bigger picture and how we can work together as a collective and help more people feel confident in their bodies again by using safe, skilled and talented specially trained tattoo and PMU artists to offer a more long lasting service that helps people move on following the trauma that cancer brings. We've worked so hard over the past few years to make these connections for the greater good and its finally coming together.
I'm proud of everything I’ve worked hard to achieve and wont ever stop pushing for a higher quality service for those who need it, my auntie being a huge inspiration for all that I do. I'm so proud of her.
If you’d like to become a NiP artist or you’d like to become a volunteer, then please do get in touch with us!