Eventually, I found my way back to it. I returned to education as an adult, studying criminology and forensic science before graduating with a BSc (Hons) in Forensic Investigation — while raising a family, working part-time and volunteering with a children's charity. I've worked with and supported children and young people at various points in my life, but becoming a parent gave me a different perspective on education.
Today, I flexischool my own children, making space for learning and experiences beyond the conventional classroom. I've seen first-hand that meaningful learning doesn't have to look one particular way, and that sometimes a different environment can reveal interests and abilities that might otherwise go unnoticed. My own experiences have taught me that too. Being capable doesn't necessarily mean fitting neatly into the environments or expectations around you. It's only now, in my thirties, that I've stopped trying so hard to work out which box I belong in and started honouring the way I actually think, learn and work.
After spending so much of my own life trying to fit into boxes, I wanted to create an alternative to them — somewhere curiosity has room to lead, questions are encouraged and young people can learn through investigating, discovering and working things out for themselves. They don't need to fit a particular mould or already have an interest in forensics.
They just need the freedom to explore.
In many ways, The Evidence Academy brings my own story full circle.
I can't know what the young people who come through our doors might discover, where their curiosity might take them, or which experiences they'll still remember twenty years from now.
But I know what one opportunity did for me.
Meet Karina
Founder of The Evidence Academy
I've always asked questions.
As a child — and still very much as an adult — I've always wanted to know what, where, when, why and how. I didn't want to just be told an answer; I wanted to understand it. I wanted to look closer, work things out and figure out how all the pieces fitted together.
I loved learning, did exceptionally well academically and could become completely absorbed in anything that gave my brain something to solve. Some of my favourite books were seek-and-find books, and I would spend hours poring over the pages, searching for hidden objects, solving riddles and spotting the tiny details that were easy to miss.
Looking back now, it almost feels as though I was built to investigate. I just didn't know it yet.
Then, as a teenager, I was selected to attend a gifted and talented summer school, where one of the activities introduced us to crime scene investigation.
By today's Evidence Academy standards, it was wonderfully simple: a stray piece of wool on a laboratory table, a particularly obvious fingermark and a handful of clues to examine. But to me, it was fascinating. Something clicked. Here was something that brought together so many of the things my brain already loved doing: looking closely, asking questions, finding things, solving problems and piecing information together to work out what had happened.
And I was good at it. The people running the programme noticed that too. They made a point of telling me — and my mum — that I had done particularly well. They couldn't possibly have known how much that experience would stay with me. But it did.
After that, I wanted to be a detective. And it wasn't just a passing childhood ambition. I researched the job, the hours and what being on call would mean; I looked through college prospectuses and started planning how I could make it my future. That little taste of crime scene investigation had given a name and direction to something that, looking back, had probably been there all along.
But life had other ideas. Things weren't always easy and, somewhere along the way, I lost sight of the future I'd imagined for myself. I stopped believing I could achieve it and began putting myself into boxes — shaping my choices around what I thought I could or should be, rather than what I actually wanted. I carried that into adulthood. The curiosity never disappeared, though. Neither did the questions. Life moved on, and I became a mum. That part of me that wanted to investigate, understand and piece things together was still there.
