creativesocietyblog-blog

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Commitments

All lives have commitments that our jobs don’t necessarily make sense alongside. Lives can be messy, full of complicated family situations, stress in or out of the home, emotional commitments and difficult unexpected intrusions. These things can often come up out of the blue, unexpectedly arising at important moments. Thankfully, for those out there contractually committed to an organisation, there is help out there to protect us when these things happen.

Paternal leave, sick pay, and time off for dependents are just some of the things on offer to contracted employees. But as a freelancer, working on the side, these working benefits aren’t a reality.

Jade’s Story

Jade Lewis is a theatre-practitioner, organiser, director, mentor, and a new mum. In fact, when we meet up to chat in Somerset House, she brings her little one along, carrying him in a papoose while he naps lying on her chest. She’s a member of Step Up and in a way, seeing her and hearing her talk about her work, it’s difficult to work out why she’s interested in a programme that is driven by mentoring and support.

As a theatre practitioner, she has toured shows, taken programmes to other countries with the British Council, engaged in collaborative writing, worked with peers, and set about creating a platform of theatre that is supportive and understanding at all levels.

“I’m interested in creating new works, new experiences, about making theatre accessible, it’s about using the platforms there are to start conversations, to start dialogues, to make an impact, and for people to see things in a different way and in a different light,” says Jade.

Within five minutes I’m dumbfounded by how inspiring her whole ethos is. She talks as if is she meditating. Thinking clearly and thoroughly before answering any questions I ask her. She sounds knowledgeable, supportive, understanding, as well as pertinent and self-aware.

“Whatever opportunity you’re given you have got to utilise it. I wouldn’t be where I am without the opportunity to access those opportunities.” Jade is also careful not to rely on them too much. “I feel like I’ve been training for years, but at the same time now, being a mum, how do you propel yourself to stand up, and make something, make your own platform without those access points.”

Much of what she says, feel like life lessons. Just like good codes of conduct to stick to, meditations and thoughts on creativity that are illuminating and inspiring. But as the conversation unwinds, she reveals a little about why she’s chosen to be part of the Step Up scheme.

“At one point you’re in the emerging bracket, but how long are you emerging for. And the thing is to get that next opportunity, you’ve had to direct a three-week run, and the big question is how do you do that.”

Becoming a mum left her full of lots of thoughts about where it would leave her career. Having just spent the last ten years training, Jade began thinking about the role a child would have in her development.

“When I was pregnant, I knew the child was going to come, but I was worried about my career. There are these societal pressures, it becomes a thing of questioning how you’re going to direct with a child, worrying whether you’ll be discriminated against. I was always asking myself whether I should tell them whether I’ve had a child. I realised regardless, life is going to change.”

Keeping a positive outlook has been an important part of her disposition as a mother working in the creative industries, informing her choices about the work she becomes involved in. “I try to have a positive outlook, I always ask what a rejection letter tells me – whether it’s telling me to do my own thing, to spend enough time with my boy as I can,” says Jade.

It turned out that having a child has played an important part in developing her creative work. “I have this idea of doing a show with your child, about motherhood. And thinking about how I can help other mothers, arts and culture, community, and people.”

In a way, Jade’s story shows how having the commitment to something else, totally outside of her work has been the biggest challenge of her life. But in other ways, it’s been her grounding force. Her work is inspired by her child, her working practice developing through it. Having someone to look after, has allowed her to think about her artistic practice, and how those in theatre, struggling with similar situations, could get support.

Jade has this great ability to universalise experience. At a fundamental level, we are all human, we’re all prone to down periods and difficult moments. We all get ill. We all have commitments far beyond just our own lives. Understanding that, and being a pragmatic part of changing the dialogue around it in her industry, she offers a powerful vision of what a reflexive vision of the arts sector could look like. “It’s about being the change, you know?” she says.

“My most recent show, ‘Quarter Life Crisis’, you know it’s a tongue and cheek, humour thing. But people in our industry are going through this; people under 30 are going through this. But it’s a millennial experience, and it’s only us that could write that story because it’s our story to be told. It creates a dialogue, a certain demographic of ourselves, but we don’t see these things that we think about and that we question.”

While rehearsing the show, Jade set up a system, whereby time would be spent working between the hours she could get childcare. Between 12 – 5 the company would rehearse thoroughly. This limiting of time meant the company had to be efficient. But the pragmatism it offered made it all the more powerful.

I ask her about how having a child has changed her relationships at work. “Everything has to have a purpose – worth me not being with my child. I got to that question, and wondered whether I might be able to get a little help for whatever I want to do,” says Jade.

What’s amazing is Jade’s optimism about where things could go in the future.

“Every generation will have different experiences. I think because of our narrative we’re in quite a unique position – more than before – because this is what you do. You know those nuclear ideas of things don’t exist in quite the same way.”

It’s this important understanding, this reflexive understanding of work in practice, commitments, and being able to engage with as a freelance theatre director, writer, and generally, someone who is self-employed, that is fundamental to looking at how we could think and implement more support to those who don’t work under contract.

With someone like Jade, I’m optimistic about how people are developing their own methods. But more could be done at a structural level to help people like Jade.

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Breaking The Cycle

Over the last few years, Hiba has tried to establish herself as a professional writer and community organizer, all while raising her seven-year-old daughter. But after months of rejections, last month she landed a full-time job working with women from disadvantaged backgrounds to help them to work.

Hiba’s Story

Hiba is a perfect example of someone who stays true to herself. When I first meet her, in a little cafe in Somerset House, she seems dejected, she is waiting to hear back from of several job applications but feels little hope in where these opportunities might take her.

Over the last few months, this has been a familiar cycle for Hiba. This cycle sees her going from application to interview, waiting on edge for a week whilst also starting to contemplate how the job might affect her life, before having to move on, and apply for another round of jobs. It’s a disheartening and underwhelming cycle and one that Hiba is getting tired of.

“I’ve been getting an interview a week for every six weeks for content writing, which is pretty dope. But every single one hasn’t panned out for some reason or another and each application is a commitment within itself. You have to understand the process of looking for a job is not only really tiring and really draining, but it’s emotional.”

Often getting to the final stages of applications, pulling together essays, presentations and all manner of extra pieces of work, she had been really unlucky not to find something. Hiba has an impressive portfolio, a publication she self-made with three of her colleagues, and years of graft and knowledge behind her.

“I think the biggest part of it is the emotional process you attach to it, thinking this is it, I’m finally going to break the cycle, and then you don’t. And you have to pick yourself up again Sunday night, to start again on Monday – because you can’t afford to not look for work.”

Luckily, things have changed for Hiba, and after months of feeling dejected finally, she has something to be elated about.

“You know it’s interesting how things always work out when you’re close to giving up, I think you just let go and then things start to happen,” Hiba says over email.

For the first time in years, Hiba has found creative and exciting work that inspires her. Hiba’s new role in the social care and employment charity, Community Links,  sees her helping minority and ethnic women into work.

Over the course of the last few months, Hiba has been posting her journey to finding work on her Instagram. Tracking her feelings and thoughts online publicly, Hiba’s aim is to demystify the process of finding work.

“I’ve found some of the employers in this sector are taking advantage of the fact that you just want to work. I feel like that’s something important to share because offering £30 a day for you to go to work with them, it’s just not even pay. There are loads of other people that can get exploited like me, or fall vulnerable and take that role. Working three months like a dog, and then not even get a job in the end. It’s important to share that.”

Many of her posts have been about encouraging others to talk about their in work struggles. But the support she has garnered from putting these experiences online has been helpful.

“I didn’t want it to be a pity party. But I just believe that, if you’re going to convey a message, it’s better to do it through personal experience of narrative, than through telling people what to do. It’s so much more engaging, more thoughtful and honest when it’s some kind of narrative.”

Hiba had been getting phone calls and messages from old friends, things she hadn’t expected from just posting on Instagram. She talks about how the experience of using this online space to talk personally and openly, has changed her perception of looking at the media.

“Thank god for the internet because that’s where the audience is anyway. I don’t have to be an editor of a publication like Dazed to validate my skills.”

It’s this same ethos that pushed Hiba to create Taming Lions, the publication that she made with a friend and colleague.

“I had a friend who was on the floor at the department store with me, and there’s another who’s an illustrator. And it’s like guys, we’re going mad. Let’s do something together.”

Using DIY methods, the team gathered together to make one-off publication and print magazine to reflect on experiences and to draw together their skills.

“We were looking for artists who were struggling/are struggling and wanted to gain insight into things. It was difficult to get because we got people who are in the thick of things. It can be difficult to talk about when you’re in it. Taming Lions for me became soul enriching. I’d get up at 5 in the morning and work on it, before the school run. Then after about a year, I gave up my job, I went to Dubai for six weeks and hung out with another publication there. And they let me use their space to finish the publication while I was there. It took 2 months to take it to print.”

Hiba’s experiences working DIY have been powerful, reversing her ideas around the roles of who has the power to contribute, and who should have a voice.

Hiba uses this energy in her new role in helping women to find work.

“There’s nothing more life destroying, soul destroying, than having to do something that doesn’t serve your mind, or fulfil your mind.”

Working with community interest is where Hiba wants to be. Having spent a number of years supporting homelessness services before moving into the creative field, she’s now finally in a job that meets these two crafts of social action and creative thinking together. It’s her level of understanding of the experiences of being out of work, and of finding gratifying that ensures she’ll be brilliant in the role. Using her knowledge to help others change their lives, and break the cycle.

If you’re looking for help, structure, and support. Information about how to get involved with Community Links can be found through community-links.org

You can read Hiba’s publication ‘Taming Lions’ here

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Looking out for each other

Finding a bit of space between job applications, temporary contracts, and creative urges can be exhausting but learning to look after ourselves properly is the most important lesson to learn when making a living.

The last year of my life has been the most exhausting one I have ever experienced. I’ve had to learn huge life lessons when it comes to sacrificing my time and energy. There have been lessons I expected to learn like the difficulty of finding work, and lessons I perhaps hadn’t anticipated, lessons about my mental health.

It’s felt unrelenting in lots of ways, with so much pressure coming from so many different directions. I have fears about how I am seen by people, a feeling that seems to inflate after receiving a rejection letter from a job application. I also worry endlessly about whether I’m making the right choices in whatever pathway I am following at any one moment.

Amongst the Step Up participants, a lot of these feelings are shared too. 

“There’s this shame around feeling down, or not having the easiest time and not being honest about it,” says Hiba, a writer and community organiser providing support and opportunities to BAME women. 

“There’s a part of me thinks that I’m 26 and that I haven’t got a career yet. There’s pressure from myself, but pressure from society, to have a career, even if it isn’t a job that you want,” says Martha, a designer and theatre practitioner, who’s in the search for more long-term work. 

In this mind state, every day can feel like an existential crisis, but pushing through, and finding ways of separating the frustration about work, has proved a vital lifeline for me.

With social media waking us up to the idea that we could be at work 24/7, even if that work is our own projects, we can forget where we actually stand in our own lives. Taking time to sit, to be idle, to separate work and play, is one of the biggest learning curves in trying to find a balance between switching off and switching on.

Mental health campaigns in the UK have started to open up awareness around this issue. The work of the Royal Foundation and the Heads Together campaign has brought high-profile media attention to conversations around mental health. But as the campaign moves into its second phase, one thought that rests with me is how those facing unstable work situations could be better supported?

The job I’m in currently involves being in a public facing role. But separating how I feel inside, from the outside world of work, is something I’ve always found very difficult. Not letting these images bleed is something we’re told to learn early on in our careers. 

It’s not unknown that unsteady work situations, temporary contracts, and freelance work aren’t for everyone. These often unstable forms of work need their own mental strength to deal with. Out of those on Step Up, it’s often this area that is raised as an issue, finding mental health and physical support to deal with the psychological burden of unstable work.

When the writer Kevin Braddock faced a series of breakdowns in his life, he created Torchlight System. A mental health storybook that allowed him, through writing, to self-reflect and process some of the difficulties he was facing.

The book maps the story of how Kevin started to look after himself again, after a long time of forgetting to do so. We see him learning not to punish himself so much, learning to ease the burden of his stressful editorial job, and finding ways and solutions to enjoying the everyday world around him.

It’s often at work that we’re hit hardest by our feelings. Workplaces can be inductive to what looks and feels like quite trivial stresses and anxieties. But we numb these feelings by pushing them away. Processing these feelings or at least taking time away to think about ourselves is as important as turning up in the morning.

I think we need to start having more conversations about how we can begin to look after each other better. More conversations about what we can do to help foster this in the workplace, as well as more understanding. 

Looking out for those around us and recognising their burdens, can help create huge change. I know how much having an open and understanding employer has helped me in the past. Being given the time to take a breather, sit down, to do something away from a computer, has been so vital to me feeling better about work. 

The hope is that in the future this form of expression become more open. Working together to help look out for each other should become part of the norm in the workplace.

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Struggling to engage

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how recruiters needed to consider a major overhaul if they were to really start getting people engaged, through the door, and into jobs. But it’s often the process recruiters put in place that stops many of us from engaging with job applications properly.

During my time applying for jobs over the last year, I’ve spent hours filling out forms with the same data about my employment history and school records. Every time, it’s the same listless process, dragging and dropping information that I’ve replicated a hundred times.  It’s got to the point where I’ve built a document with all my scanned academic certificates, just in case one untrusting recruiter comes around asking for them. A point where the information that would have at one point been the pride and joy of my working history, now just reads like a couple of dates that I can’t really feel, understand, or establish as part of my own narrative.

At the heart of the problem is recruiters wanting tailored applications. I can understand their reasoning, but it’s this lack of awareness of the job application process that can be frustrating. While some recruitment departments are recognising this, others (especially those of big institutions) are in dire need of an overhaul.

Over the last six months, I have probably applied for over 80 jobs. In that time, I have probably written 30 essays, made 10 films, and recorded my voice answering questions on countless occasions. Each one of these applications has taken a huge amount of my time. With each one having to be carefully crafted to fit the specific job description. There’s the emotional labour to consider, as well as the ability to break from other work to make these commitments to applications.

This work so often comes before having been given an interview face to face, meaning that these long hours spent perfecting essays, often go to waste once they are followed up with a rejection letter.

Alongside this, new techniques are making the job application process far more terrifying and much less personal. Video interviewing is one of these recent changes, but often these are not two-way conversations, but responses delivered into communication platforms, built to offer analysis on your responses. One interview I did at the BBC used just this system, recording responses, alone, in a room, for a panel to analyse months later.

I believe these are a step in the wrong direction. It’s the comfort and understanding of a face to face interview that can be an important part of recognising whether a workplace is right for you. Likewise, it’s the warmth and understanding of people, instead of apps, that make the recruitment process less alienating. In my own responses to these video interviews, I’ve often found them tricky to set up, reliant on up to date technology, hosted through poorly built apps, and full of the discomfort of being in front of the camera.

We need to be aware that young people are just as busy as any of recruiter is. We need to be aware of the difficulties many young people face in being put up against the competitive job market before them. And importantly, be aware that not every brilliant candidate, will be the one who has the time to type essays out as part of a general application process.

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Finding the right opportunity

For creative people, finding the right opportunity tends to be the struggle. So often we find ourselves situations that feel uncomfortable. We might know that it isn’t the right position for us, but for the sake of finances, we go along with it. For Martha, this has been the toughest part of getting work, finding a position that fits and suits her thinking. Having stopped and started for the last three years, Martha is still waiting for the right opportunity.

All images rights reserved © Martha Brant 

Martha’s Story

“Being comfortable, being happy just getting by, without exploring, is something I’ve always struggled with,” says Martha.

Many of us struggle with the daily monotony and grind of our working lives, but it’s this feeling of aspiration that can often upset us. For Martha, the difficulty has been not getting kicked down by her day job in the bakery, with it often sucking her of any energy to go and look for work elsewhere. “Working in this way, there’s no community, there’s pure functionalism,” she says.

But the feeling of wanting to jump ship, and try something else comes with its own doubts.

“I’ve always felt worried that I’m unqualified to do the stuff I feel like I want to do. I’m always trapped by the worries, factors, and anxieties that come up through work. For example, the anxiety of taking short term contracts, against the stability of the job I have at Hummingbird.”

For the past five years, Martha has freelanced in a number of different capacities. She started out in arts and costume, studying in Liverpool, before joining a West End production on the road. But over these years, she’s found more jobs that she knows aren’t right for her than jobs she’s felt happy in.

There’s a sense that she’s yet to find a position that she feels comfortable in. As we talk, her anxieties about what that might be, feel like the source of her unhappiness at work.

Her first job as a costume assistant for the popular West End musical, Cats, was only temporary. she wasn’t happy with the state of her work, finding the environment of a touring production tricky.

“I was with them for a year, but while I was with there I realized I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to be in a touring production, it wasn’t creative enough, I found the environment tricky. I just decided it was different from how I wanted to spend my life. On our course, we had so much freedom, a loose brief of a film for my final two projects I did two big costume projects and a set piece related to the Vietnam War. I loved the research that went into the design, but there was none of that on Cats.”

Migrating to London from Belfast, one of the things she’s found isolating is returning home to Northern Ireland. “Where I’m from, most people leave Belfast, we have all dispersed,” she says. Many of her friends applied to do law and medicine, while Martha made the choice to do art and costume for theatre production in Liverpool.

Martha is a true creative. She dreams up costumes in her sleep, she writes plays that inspire the mind and thinks deeply about the history and permanence of the stories she works on. But what she doesn’t want to see, is another play about the struggles, performed in Belfast.

“For my dissertation, I wrote about how Northern Irish theatre is connected to a cultural identity, so much of the theatre that comes out of there is about the troubles. I found it very interesting.”

For her, pushing boundaries would be producing theatre that pushes past that. But maintaining the security of a place in London, while similarly, applying and lending her hand to producing, would mean sacrificing the security of work she’s already got.

I get the sense that part of her reflections about work lies in the fact Martha doesn’t see the job she wants necessarily existing, at least not as a 9-5 secure position.

“I think the tricky thing I find is trying to find a balance: between living and surviving in London and doing what you want to do,” says Martha. “There’s a part of me thinks that I’m 26 and that I haven’t got a career yet. There’s pressure from myself, but pressure from society, to have a career, even if it isn’t a job that you want.”

Pathways don’t often hit us straight away. And whilst they might be more direct for others, often there’s a strong learning process to be had in narrowing down to the right kind of job we want to do. But with working lives changing so rapidly, and jobs rarely employing people for long periods, often the anxiety and pressures of creative work can be overwhelming.

But Martha has faith, and time on her side. At 26, she is massively honing in on the idea of a job that feels sustainable. Arts therapy is an area that’s hugely inspired her. The question next for Martha will be around trying to find a way to sustain a job that is liveable, and captures some of the strong sense spirit and thought that she puts into things.

All photos supplied by Martha Brant ©

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RE: Finding Work

Finding work can be exhausting. So often we forget the time it takes to even apply for jobs. With long application forms and weeks of waiting, finding time to apply for stuff in between gruelling shifts can be difficult. 

One area of creative work in London I think remains under discussed is the act of finding work in the first place. Shoved by the wayside, the creative people who could be dominating the arts sector, who could be vital in making galleries or theatres truly diverse and representative spaces, are left with precious little time to go out and find creative work. Instead, they’re exhausted after working long hours in mediocre jobs where their talent is not utilised.

It’s a problem I have faced over the nine months I’ve been looking for creative employment. Long job applications and follow-up essays have filled the days when I’m not labouring to earn my living. Recruitment agencies, that I have spent precious time reaching, have often wasted my time sending me unrelated and indirect jobs that I still have to go through the long process of applying for. It screams of a need to overhaul the recruitment industry for the creative sector.

On top of this, difficulties in finding freelance opportunities that don’t require vast amounts of unpaid preparation time are also difficult.

As a journalist, I have often been unable to pitch stories, through lack of time to develop them, or lack of headspace to face editors after long days of hard work. Similarly, much of the work I have engaged with over the last few years has involved teams of young writers collaborating on unpaid projects in order to develop our portfolios.

I know the situation is similar for other young creatives too. It might be that we’re setting up a festival to inspire and bring people together, or developing a blog aimed at helping those who have been diagnosed with depression. It’s work with a social conscience, but without necessary funding and support to sustain those doing it.

We might all work in our various ways, we might put in hours and hours of time towards developing collaborative projects together, but so many of us really struggle to find the kind of formal work that gets us paid. Our projects and organising commitments might take up a couple evenings a week. Delivering workshops and programmes has us busy for a number of afternoons – but being paid fairly for this should be our reward.

It’s a trait that the bloggers behind How to Be Jobless, are all well aware of. For the website’s editor, Erica Buist, it took nine months of working full-time on applications to find work, whilst continuing to run the popular blog. For so many of the others blogging there, their accounts of finding work, of giving up, or just accepting constant rejection, are both enlightening and incredibly sad.

It’s job adverts on public transport that I have found increasingly alienating. They tap into our psychological instincts of unhappiness but don’t offer a resolution. Whilst there might be some form of work available, often it is poorly paid service sector work, work that can be gruelling and demoralising.

On train 'job' adverts

A post shared by Robbie Wojciechowski (@robbieflash) on Mar 14, 2017 at 3:29pm PDT

For us to move forward, we need more recognition of the fact that finding work in the creative economy, notably work that pays us, can be excruciatingly difficult. It’s a problem that can be made easier by recruiters showing an improved understanding of the sector, but also by more companies committing to offering paid, and supportive opportunities, rather than exploitative ones. And more recognition that, at a fundamental level – without access to various networks, or to people who can financially incentivise creative work, many are left without the opportunity to make at all.

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‘Being An Artist Feels Like a Hard Thing to Become’

Allowing people of all backgrounds to feel that a creative career is possible, will ensure the artists of the future represent a diverse spectrum of people living in the UK. But it’s often this first hurdle, of feeling like a career is something possible, that most people struggle to pass as Step Up’s Gaby Sahhar has found.

Gaby has been torn between aspiration and accessibility. Poor art education in school left him longing for more, and over the years he has tossed and turned, wondering whether a career in the arts is possible. Making art that is accessible, has been a strong motivation for his work as he struggles to choreograph projects that challenge the dominant arts industry.

His work is powerful. It deals with the complex relationships of power at play in the world and in the body. Issues of identity and accessibility run through his thinking, but in Gaby’s work as an artist, and for a short time as a fashion model, he’s been able to reclaim his body and his mind as a territory for performance, by challenging the status quo.

“I want to celebrate my shaved head, my scrawny Palestinian body because it’s a myth that I’m here in the first place,” he says.

Much of his work has aimed to look back on the city he has lived and worked in all his life, and understand and reflect on the power dominant in space and place. For Gaby, it is about unpicking the dominant narratives and looking beneath the surface.

“While I was at Goldsmiths, I’d see people would really indulge into the voyeurism of London, the cupcake culture, the shiny fronts. People came to London and made work about Heygate [an estate in South London demolished as part of an urban regeneration program]. People didn’t and don’t understand the politics of space here.”

Much of his work became a reaction against much of this. Using spy glasses he bought online, Gaby’s focus is to portray the world, a city, that sits under the radar.  “A lot of my work deals with public spaces, department stores, underground. It becomes social commentary – to be able to create it, you’ve got to be able to film a certain type of thing. It’s a less invasive way of filming the city.”

His last work, which focused on challenging ideas of masculinity in the corporate world, saw him exhibiting in his local Tesco store. He has received support from the Tate, as part of the Tate Collectives, but he also talks excitedly about work exhibited outside the gallery:

“There are so many interesting spaces to work with – whether it’s guerrilla screenings or putting posters up in our community”

It has taken a couple of years for Gaby to build up the confidence to do this. Seven years ago, when he was just leaving school, painting furiously from his bedroom at home, art didn’t feel like an option, even though it seemed to him, like the only thing he really wanted to do.

It was when he found the Tate Collective that the idea of ‘art as a job’ first seemed within his grasp. “It blew my mind with Tate Collectives: seeing political art; meeting the staff in the office, who were making a living working in the arts. Seeing people in positions like that really motivates you.”

“I’ve done loads while there – they’ve taught me how to curate. We curated these events called Undercurrent and Hyperlink, and Late at Tates.”

He’s just curated a “Late at Tate” on Queer British Art, which for the first time has seen him in a senior role within the gallery. But at 24, he’s becoming too old to be part of the ad-hoc community of artists that are involved in the collective. Renting a studio in Bermondsey that he shares for £25 a month with a bunch of other artists, Gaby has managed to craft a small space in the city that feels like it’s his. But his next challenge will be working out a financial basis in which he can carry on producing work, one that means he won’t have to be tied to the three zero hour contracts he works in the meantime.

“Money and creativity don’t match up. The payment structure in place for people working in our position is so unmatched.”

While Tate has offered him opportunities, they only pay him for the hours he’s physically involved in building and operating the space. But this doesn’t account for the meeting and mental prep time involved in the projects. Whilst Tate has inspired him, engaged him, and got him creating, they pay him little for his contributions.

The dream for Gaby is to make art the backbone of his financial work. “Being an artist feels like a hard thing to become,” he says.

All images are from Gaby’s sketchbook. 

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The Politics Of Creativity

Sam is an artist by trade, but he is also an experienced writer, who has published a collection of his essays with a local publisher. Sam’s story is representative of the wider struggles of young creative people trying to make a living in the UK today.

Drawings by Sam Mead

Sam’s Story 

Sam has been a part of the Step Up scheme for six months,  and in that time has gone from working as a cycle courier, cycling up to 70 miles a day; to casually labouring as a gardener in Haggerston, two days a week. For the first time in ten years, he’s in stable accommodation. Renting in Peckham, his landlord is familiar with the difficulties faced by creative people. She herself is a writer. Sam met her when he was first thinking of moving to London. She offered him his first room, and now seven years later, Sam is renting the whole of the flat, having turned his cramped old bedroom.

Artwork is sprawled everywhere across the flat. On the walls, floors, and coffee tables, experiments are in development. Sketches, etchings, and drawings litter their flat. In the studio upstairs, box upon box reveals the archive of Sam’s drawings. Sprawled across his desk are paintbrushes, marker pens and different types of paper.

Recently exhibiting at a little side-street cafe in New Cross, South East London, Sam is now starting to sell some of his work. He’s even starting to take commissions: one for a friend working for the Labour Party, the other helping design album sleeves. It’s the start of a tidy living, but it isn’t yet enough to fully stop the courier or laboring work.

© Sam Mead

The situation stifling him from delivering his work full time is one I’ve watched fixates so many phenomenal young artists. It’s a similar difficulty I see when I read any kind of novelists works. In taking up a creative passion as full-time work, it often means compressing the identity of our work into small consumable items. What traps Sam is how to make his creative work as a full-time career interest, while still being able to maintain the freedom and level of expression that allows him to create his work in the first place.

Living in unstable accommodation for much of his time in London, on sofas and floors, and in whatever cheap housing came his way, Sam has been able to produce a huge body of work. But in doing so, it often meant being totally removed from society, something that was often destructive to long term progression.

Similarly, for many young workers entering the creative industries, sacrificing stable living to build a creative portfolio is common practice. Whether it’s finding access to a co-op, squatting, or living off friends sofas, falling off the radar seems to have become a well-trodden path to a career.

One day, Sam’s work will see him with a prominent foot in galleries, or perhaps with him publishing his notebooks as art pieces, but in order to do so, should the struggles and sacrifices he made have to extend towards an unstable life where he and his partner have to sacrifice a home?

© Sam Mead

Living off the radar

It’s this precariousness, within people’s home lives that is most concerning. Living off the radar, is often how people make ends meet.

For Sam and the community of couriers working in London, it’s the nature of it being off radar work that is attractive. But it’s also the same reason why the work is often irregular, underpaid, or unregulated. Working hours can stretch well past the legal limit, and irregular shift patterns mean that he never knows when he’s going to be in work.

The creative economy shouldn’t be dependent on people going off the radar. It’s this insecurity at home or at work, that can lead to anxiety, disengagement, and paranoia.

If Sam is to make it as an artist, it means going ‘legit’. With a home and partner his life has taken a big step forward, and finding a way to earn his keep without having to enter the precarious and irregular courier jobs is the priority. Creative incomes are hard to make, and working as an artist doesn’t fit a conventional nine-to-five model. It’s a job that is as much administrative as it is creative.

Sam has hundreds of ideas, and one will eventually earn him his break. But until that point, it’s his cargo bike that keeps him in the flat and in work.

© Sam Mead

All drawings by Sam Mead. He’s available to contact for work by his email, sam.mead@hotmail.com 

[creativesocietyblog-blog]

Introductions: Writing about creative work in London

For the past nine months, I have existed in the fragile confines of the casual labour market. On the off days, I work in a local cafe or as a labourer.  I write when there are commissions, but still struggle to make more than a day rate a week.

I’m not the only one. There are hundreds of young Londoners in situations like this: running between various precarious jobs in order to make a living. We plan ideas as sidelines to our part-time jobs, we write applications to try and find new ones, struggling and pushing against the everyday difficulties of gig economy work.

It might be that shift patterns are short, or just that there isn’t work going. It might be that the owner is off sick, or the shutters aren’t working on the cafe. It might be that my health isn’t up to spending another day smashing up bricks or sweeping up a dusty building site. It might be that the untrained supervisor running the bar can’t find the staff to cover the rest of the shifts. But it’s these hundreds of every day, small-time irritations that make working at this level often so difficult.

I’ve thought a lot about working life for a London freelancer. It’s led me to often referring back to the Victorian author Henry Mayhew and his tales of London labour.

Published in the 1840s, Mayhew’s book London Labour and the London Poor, is a collection of essays about working life, tracking in great detail the precarious and unsteady lives of the Victorian workforce. But it can be read like an archive, giving us a deep look into the kind of struggles faced by workers in the city at that point in time.

The essays are rich personal accounts of people’s occupations, and whilst Mayhew was often concerned with the financial aspects of their work, he also aimed to offer a voice to the culture of work that existed in Victorian London. His essays shunt us back in time, into regular working lives and struggles, that many people working in London would empathise with today.

Mayhew walked through London and listened to the stories of the people who worked there. He tracked the stories of everyone from the dockers who waited for work on the quayside of an early morning, to the costermongers and street sellers who would ply their trade in their local markets. His accounts even pay attention to the astrologists and the theatre performers, who would rig up booths on the high-street in which to perform their shows.

But reading his work has often led to me think about how a modern day version of the book might look. His accounts often talk about the rather schizophrenic nature of work in the city. But they also pay attention to the precariousness of these jobs, and the struggles of many to make a living from creativity.

While biding my time between applications for more regular work, I’ve been interviewing other people facing similar situations to find out what their biggest barrier to finding consistent work in the current economy is.

Exposing the issue

In thinking about Mayhew’s writing I wanted to create a version that would work for a modern society. His stories echo so many modern working lives, their voice and struggle so similar to the kind of in-work struggle many face across the UK. But what they do, better than any news story on the issue, is focus on the more tentative and sensitive discussions when it comes to working. Mayhew was always careful to reflect on the health of his participants, as well as the kind of unstable living situations they were facing, and how it affected their work, issues the modern media sometimes neglects to cover.

Over the next nine months, alongside The Creative Society, we’re looking to document some of these under-reported struggles.

We want to pay attention to the issues that lead to the form of creative unemployment many are suffering at the heart of Britain’s economy, and understand the vastness and variety of the issues that trigger it.