How did we get here and where are we going?
A good friend of mine recently asked me if I had always planned to make a job and income from North East Cultural Freelancers, and it made me realise that what people see on the other side of the Facebook screen is different to the reality. So, here is a little bit about how we got to where we are.
If you’re new here - hello! I’m Leila d'Aronville, Founder of North East Cultural Freelancers (NECF). Click here to learn more about the NECF team.
I appreciate that we have done so much, so the view is often that we have been funded to do so. This is not the case, and the time I’ve spent on NECF so far has not been paid for.
My personal story
I went freelance in April 2015 after working for over 12 years for one of the biggest NPOs in the region. I immediately felt a large gap in my professional life - the absence of coworkers.
Although I had mainly been PAYE, I was no novice to the experience of creative freelancers as my Mam has been a jobbing actor in the region for most of my life. We had experienced the precarity and ebb and flow of income as a family, but I hadn’t realised the gap that not working in a team would leave.
For the following three years I stumbled through, pulling close to my few freelance friends and colleagues and trying to build my network. I worked on projects with some of the most amazing creatives, but dreamt of an informal network that would fulfil some of the things I missed from being part of an organisation.
A few things happened between 2015 and 2019:
I had a really traumatic professional experience working on a project
I had a baby and had to try and return to the world of freelancing
Lots of friends and colleagues were going freelance and asking me questions about being freelance as if I was an expert!
How it started
In March 2019 I sat on my sofa with a glass of wine and started a Facebook group. I have set up and nurtured networks for much of my professional career, so I knew what I was doing with regards to framing the space, but my initial expectation was that it would be a network for about 100-150 people. Numbers quickly jumped into the hundreds and not long after we were at 1,000. Now in September 2022, we have over 3,000.
The first year was all about connection. We set up co-working and sharing opportunities and began a conversation with Arts Council England. I wanted to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to access important networks.
The pandemic
Jump to March 2020 when the world stopped, and everything came crashing down for freelancers. Two days before venues closed completely we organised a round table for creatives with Arts Council England (ACE). It was a useful thing for our regional ACE representative to see as people came rushing in telling stories of having to cancel sessions or having work cancelled. It meant she saw the coal face and saw how scared people were.
We then all scrambled. I know those first few months of the pandemic were so scary for us all. I remember lying awake at night worrying about how I was going to pay the mortgage, whether I would ever work again and whether we would all physically survive this thing.
A few things stick in my mind:
The generosity of the community was wild.
We were all in it and we all had each other’s backs. I remember when the emergency funds were announced, they were hardly large amounts of money for individuals – but people immediately started talking about how they could share their funds. Everyone was sharing information about anything and everything they found helpful/useful.
ACE opened up a conversation with us.
We had weekly meetings and regular round tables. They wanted to hear the good, the bad and we made sure they heard the very ugly.
I spoke to a House of Lords select committee
This was the most bizarre experience of my life! Standing in my bright red kitchen talking about the importance of looking after individual creatives, and how Universal Basic Income for artists would be a great leveller and the ideal solution to saving the sector. I felt wildly out of place, but I knew it wasn’t just about me.
We worked to ensure freelancers had a voice and were round the table when decisions were being made.
Freelancers haven’t had a voice before. Organisations rarely fully understand the challenges and opportunities of being freelance, or what freelancers truly bring to an organisation. I remember sitting in a meeting with the head of DCMS and several organisational leads. They were all talking about how freelancers were being affected by the pandemic and it was really interesting and different to what I was hearing. It made me realise that by not having control of our own narrative we actually don’t have power. I realised we needed to make sure that we had control over our own story, to take back our power.
Where are we now?
Here we are in September 2022 – the baby I had back in 2018 is in school and NECF is fully established as part of the cultural sector in the North East, and recognised as good practice outside of our region. We have done this through my stubbornness, the generosity of the freelance community, working in partnership with organisations to be able to deliver events, and an overall investment of less than £10k over 3 years.
Funding streams
This year we are developing more of a strategy and ensuring we bring money in – to make the network sustainable, develop leadership amongst our membership, and ensure clear and consistent support.
We have secured £25,000 from North of Tyne Combined Authority, which will ensure freelancers in the North of Tyne area will be able to access bursaries to attend training, networks, and development opportunities. It will also pay for some of the time I spend on NECF.
We have an investment from Gateshead Council to support certain training needs for Gateshead Creatives.
We are developing opportunities for more support through other partnerships.
We are continuing to apply for funding pots that we qualify for.
We have our individual and organisational membership model, which we hope to grow.
What’s next?
We want to make sure the network is supporting cultural freelancers in the most useful ways. We created a survey for you to let us know what you need. So far this is what the data shows:
You want support with funding applications
You want training in useful areas like finance and contracts
You want us to advocate for freelancers with organisations
You want coworking, networking and socialising opportunities
You want to continue receiving support from peers via NECF
However, we have to be honest and say that less than 2% of the number of people we have in the Facebook group have filled out this survey. We’re going to keep this open for a while longer - please do fill it in if you’re a cultural freelancer or organisation that works with them. We really want to make your life easier and this will help steer us in the right direction.
Thank you
Leila
