Pull Up a Chair: Failure and Imposter Syndrome

Pull Up a Chair is NECF's monthly online meet-up for cultural freelancers.

Ever feel like everyone else has got it figured out?

Freelancing in the creative and cultural sector can be brilliant, rewarding and full of possibility. It can also be uncertain, isolating and full of moments when we wonder whether we're really cut out for it.

A project doesn't go to plan. A funding application gets rejected. Work dries up. Someone else gets the opportunity you wanted. Or you find yourself wondering how everyone else seems so confident, while you're just trying to work out what you're doing.

But what if failure isn't something we need to avoid at all costs? Making mistakes, trying things that don't work and getting things wrong can be an important part of learning, developing our practice and figuring out what works for us. The tricky bit is allowing ourselves to learn from those experiences without letting them convince us we're not good enough.

And when we're surrounded by other people's successes, it's easy to forget that we rarely see the full picture. This can feel particularly acute in freelancing, where we're often working independently, comparing ourselves to others and navigating a sector where opportunities and recognition can feel unevenly distributed.

For our next Pull Up a Chair, we're making space to talk about failure and imposter syndrome, and what they mean for us as creative freelancers.

We'll explore the moments that knock our confidence, how we respond when things don't go to plan, and what it takes to learn from difficult experiences without being defined by them.

This isn't about putting a positive spin on everything that goes wrong, or pretending that setbacks don't hurt. It's about sharing experiences, being a little kinder to ourselves, and recognising that none of us has everything figured out.

Come along to share, listen, reflect or simply spend some time with other freelancers who understand the realities of working this way.

You don't need to have a big failure story or a perfectly formed opinion. Just pull up a chair.