Colette joined the school whilst still working as a face painter and a PT librarian in a school of psychotherapy. Previously she had been the PA of a French African refugee organisation in Southwark (as a full time volunteer) before working on two research projects, one at the Refugee Council and one at the Royal Anthropological Institute following her studies in Social Anthropology at Goldsmith University. Before that she had been a hat maker and earlier on a potter.