Run your own Never Not Creative kick-off
Introduction
Our Never Not Creative kick-off event is a great way to start a conversation and generate ideas in your own business, team or with a group of friends.
Below you’ll find pre-event communications, equipment list, a draft agenda, posters to download, and other tips to run an event.
No doubt you’ll adapt your event to work for you and the other members. All we ask is that you share any adaptations, and a write up of your findings.
Pre-event comms
We used Eventbrite and Facebook to promote the event and capture registrations. You can promote your own event in the NNC Facebook group — just reach out if you need a hand.
Here’s the copy we used and you can download the assets here:
We are Never Not Creative, a community for the creative industry.
We hope to support, inspire and come together to create the ideas, tools and solutions that improve the wellbeing of everyone in the industry and promote the value of creativity in the world.
What? A BBQ. A drink. An introduction to NNC. A chance to meet others interested and getting involved. A chance to raise important industry issues and discuss what we can do to combat them. A good time.
Who? All are welcome, but we do ask to express your interest ahead of the day so we know how many to expect.
RSVP on Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/never-not-creative-kick-off-tickets-45048138194
We’ll be joined by NNC Ambassadors and members, and anyone interested in what we’re doing.
Equipment / Resources List
- System cards or post-it notes
- Sharpies / markers
- 5 x A1 posters
- Drinks and snacks (optional)
- A couple of volunteers to help welcome people and keep the night on track
Agenda
6pm: Guests arrive. Greeted with drinks and invited to contribute to ‘the wall’
The wall contains 3 posters.
Poster 1 asks guests to share an experience that they’ve had — that has caused them to lose sleep. They’ll write this on a post it note / system card (e.g. That time when I hadn’t paid myself for 2 months, because I’d been spending too much time on one project and I felt like giving up).
Poster 2 asks guests to name (in one word) an industry issue, an individual issue and a client relationship issue, placing one in each column (e.g. Industry — working hours and weekends, Individual — burnout, relationship — getting paid on time).
Poster 3 asks guests to describe something positive that they’d like to see more often. It’s important to balance the positivity and negativity in these discussions. Good experiences and creating more of them, are also great ways to outweigh the negatives and create an overall better experience for creatives in the industry.
6.20pm — We start serving food and ask people to take a look at what everyone has written. We ask them to dot or tag the post-its that resonate most with them and that they’d like to see solutions for.
6.50pm — The facilitator leads a discussion on some of the most highly rated issues. The aim of this is to add some depth and dimension to the causes of these problems and to agree as a group on what the 3 most important ones are that we should look to tackle. They’re added to the following poster.
7.20pm — The group splits into smaller groups of 2 / 3 to come up with ideas to overcome the top 3 issues. This exercise takes 15–20 minutes.
7.40pm — We quickly go through the ideas and vote for the top idea in each issue that should be investigated further.
7.55pm — As we wrap up and leave, the facilitator will summarise the discussion, next steps and will ask one more contribution of the group.
Based on tonight’s discussions write a pledge that you’ll look to make as a creative in the future, and a pledge that you’d like a client to make that would create a better, more valued, less stressful working relationship.
Event tips
- Make sure to welcome everyone and introduce them to the posters. It’s a great way to get people talking and sharing right from the start.
- While we’re obviously focusing on issues in the industry it’s important to balance the negatives with positives for a healthy discussion.
- Encourage people to share personal experiences and examples. You’ll probably observe a number of issues come up that are process or client driven. Of course these are important, but more than likely they are a symptom of some deeper issues. These will probably come out as people warm up and get more comfortable with sharing.
