From the archives: Making It Work

The one thing I love about Facebook (sorry that should be ‘Meta’) is the way it regurgitates your photos and posts from, well, since before time began it often seems. These ‘memories’ that it shows you privately; like some personal pick and mix of embarrassing, over enthusiastic, self-pitying, celebratory snapshots of your past that you may or may not be interested in sharing again depending on whether you treat FB like a curated collection of the best moments in your life or as an echo chamber of your crazy, needy, chaotic mind, or somewhere in between. Sometimes (or everytime depending on what kind of person you are, I guess) a gem fights it’s way to the top of the heap.

I found one today, a reminder of a course I ran and part devised during a meeting with Helen Le Broq (then Director of Oxford Youth Arts Partnership) at a Services Café north of Oxford one snowy winter’s afternoon. Helen took away our notes and conversations, and set about turning a concern - a frustration with a broken system into a solution. She sourced partners at Oxford Brookes and other creative freelancers and lo! A new star in Arts training was born ‘Making It Work’ as part of ‘The Stepping It Up — Young Leaders’ project.

https://oyaptrust.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/what-a-year/?fbclid=IwAR1CwpFA3Rh7DfufFniZXEoXrpGo-mXwnXOOQMJL7tuprlvXd_KjeZmc9Mc

‘Stepping It Up’ was created to address the growing rise of graduates in the creative sector who having graduated from college or university and having been working in the Creative sector were floundering, principally because their business skills were not as rigorous as their creative skills. OYAP would offer a handful of creatives; the chance to work with OYAP on devising, setting up, running and delivering a creative project, to be mentored by a matched creative with years of expertise. A core part of this package was a series of day training courses on everything from project management, to self-assessment tax returns and project evaluation. In short, a condensed package of everything a young creative just starting out would need to know in order to run their own freelance business. A toolbox that (and this is where it began) Helen and I felt every University and College should be offering as part of their courses to ALL young people on creative arts courses, in order to equip them to operate in a highly successful, highly competitive, highly lucrative Industry/Sector.

I used to run the ‘unappealing’ training day on Self-Assessment, with a little bit of ‘self-selling’ to make it more bearable. I met some remarkable creatives during the six years it ran. I was privileged to mentor two incredible young women. The best outcome was that the Inland Revenue now makes Tax Returns and Self-Assesment a whole lot easier and simpler accompanied by You Tube videos and less jargon-based worksheets. Not directly becuase of MIW but I like to think our public social media articles and conversations around the challenges of Self-Employment Tax and business skills for young people in non-business environments, helped.

I also, would let people play with my LinkedIn profile by way of demonstrating the whole —” why say that, when you can say this?” and “what’s missing here?” type thing. Which was great until I changed internet provider and lost my password to LinkedIn and had a gobble-de-gook profile for six years which made me giggle and confounded friends looking me up. I still laugh at the cunning musician, who during a lunch break changed my LinkedIn profile to ‘Paper Clip Pusher” on my laptop, it could have been a lot worse. I still think LinkedIn should set up an area for young people starting out, where they can play with setting up their profiles and allowing them to comment on other peoples (in that area), making positive suggestions to help them improve the impact of their profiles on the platform.

And now, here I am many years on and Stepping It Up has evolved, through funding and interest, into something altogether different. I’m still making my way through life, jobs and self-assessment as best I can with those fond memories that thanks to an algorithm have put a smile on my face today.