Inventing Your Future – The Art of Creative Pivoting: apply now for our new course
With business as usual out the window for so many in the creative sector, we need to be thinking more than ever about what comes next. About what business ‘not as usual’ might look like. About how we might change our game, switch careers. About where the new possibilities are, which the right ones are for us, and how we might make them a reality.
For creatives, what we do for a living is often how we define ourselves. And yet, for some of us what we do professionally is changing, or has changed, beyond all recognition. Navigating these career transitions can be traumatic without a roadmap (ahem!), so how can we turn fear about our futures into curiosity about our careers and companies?
Perfect for those of you who need to re-imagine your business or career in light of the pandemic, this course will help you get unstuck and work out which things to stick at. Course leader Julia Payne will help you identify your passions, skills and experience, and find a path that gives you energy, confidence and motivation.
Here’s what to expect and what you’ll learn
Over 2 x 3-hour modules, Julia will share a host of useful insights, resources, tips and tricks and real-life examples. Playful and creative but designed to make a real difference, there’ll also be an emphasis on small group work, peer learning and sharing collective experiences. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- It’s all about me: identifying your vision and values, and what you are for
- Developing a growth mindset, and how that can help at times like this
- Some ways to unlock innovation & why some innovations fail
- How to decide which new ideas to focus on
- Superheroes in disguise – strengths, weaknesses and making a change
- What do you have in your resilience ‘toolbox’?
- The power of the problem when making a change
- Are you with me? The power of your tribe
- What’s your story?
- Sorting the coulds from the should, and making smart decisions
- Plotting and designing, rather than planning – creative business planning
- Making the money bit work
About your course leader
This new course will be led by the hub’s Director, Julia Payne. Known for being curious and generous, she’s worked with hundreds of artists, creative freelancers and entrepreneurs to help them build their careers and businesses and identify what ‘good growth’ looks like for them.
When and where?
The course will take place on 12 and 26 April (10am-1pm), and we’ll include a couple of breaks in each session for you to top up on fresh air and coffee. Please note, to be eligible to take part you need to be able to attend on both dates, and also do a small amount of prep work before each session.
Did we mention, it’s FREE?!
The training is free thanks to National Lottery funding through Arts Council England and our partnership with the Creative Industries Federation. All we ask is that you commit to taking part in both sessions.
How do I apply?
If you’ve just done a double-take (practically half a pivot already) and have found yourself saying, ‘I’m in, sign me up’, you can APPLY HERE.
The application form should hopefully be simple to complete, and take about 10-15mins to complete. The deadline to apply is 31st March, and we’ll aim to get back to you by 2nd April to let you know if you have got a place on the course. In the meantime, we suggest you pencil the course dates in your calendar, just to make sure you can definitely make it. We wouldn’t want you to miss out!
More about our wider Balance programme
Inventing Your Future is part of our Balance programme, which aims to help artists and creative freelancers and entrepreneurs to balance their minds and their books.
To date, Balance has consisted of a series of friendly and interactive monthly talks for artists, covering everything from coping with burnout to embracing change and staying creative, which you can watch on our Youtube channel.
We continue to deliver these monthly talks, and this training is connected to other courses – Taking Care of Your Mind and Taking Care of Business – along with a new Balance toolkit, packed with resources to help you balance your mind and your books.
We’re delivering Balance in partnership with the Creative Industries Federation and Mindapples, and with National Lottery funding through Arts Council England, and are very grateful to them all for their support. We couldn’t do any of this without them!
To make sure you hear about all of these, click HERE to join our Community of the Curious and the Generous.
