Why we’re building The HudsonBec Group, a group of businesses enabling creativity to thrive
Over the last ten years, we’ve run businesses based on celebrating creativity and creatives. Now, to crystallise our purpose, mission and beliefs, we’re publicly bringing them together as a group. Please welcome, www.thehudsonbecgroup.com
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We’re all sick of hearing about how the robots are coming for us, how there won’t be any jobs left for us to do, and how technology will bring about the demise of humans’ ability to contribute meaningfully to the world of work.
Although nobody can predict whether or not this dystopian vision will become reality, we’re confident that, in order to adapt to whatever scale of change is hurtling towards us, the world is going to need more creativity — and creative thinkers — than ever before.
We believe that the creative industries will continue to become more and more powerful because of that fact. We can imagine a world in which creativity becomes a core capability for the majority of the workforce and every business on the planet. Where to work in the creative industries is not seen as a path for those who weren’t good enough at school for anything else, but the pinnacle of success and prestige. Where there are no barriers to what can be achieved by a good idea, and where the biggest companies in the world continue to be founded and run by creatively-minded people.
A world where companies are hiring more creative people than ever. Where there are as many Chief Creative Officers on boards of companies as there are Chief Financial Officers. Where there are unrivalled opportunities for creatives and for new ideas, intuition and human ways of thinking. A world where we need more creative thinkers than ever, and we need to empower them to do amazing things.
And the facts would also suggest this is where we’re headed; in this month’s report, Creativity and the Future of Skills published by The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre (PEC) and Nesta; of the 39 transferable skills considered for work, ‘creativity’ is consistently the most significant predictor for an occupation’s chance of growing, as a percentage of the workforce by the year 2030. A pretty compelling graph from their report below:
Because of this, we’re building a group of businesses to enable creativity (and creatives) to thrive in this new world.
We currently have four: It’s Nice That, Anyways Creative, Lecture in Progress and If You Could Jobs, but are hoping to build more when necessary, because we’ve always believed in building our businesses based on a user or audience need. This is how they currently look, and what we’d love to see them become:
It’s Nice That
We started back in 2007 with It’s Nice That, an accessible, un-intimidating platform for finding brilliant work happening all over the world, which we couldn’t find as students. It now has a total reach of 1.5m creative people every single month and continues to be the cornerstone of our group — keeping us on the cutting edge of what’s happening in the industry, and continuing to offer a platform for brilliant work to be seen. We want to see this reach and impact continue to grow and bring inspiration and information to millions more. We also want to use this reach and influence to support people and causes we believe in, giving them a voice and a place to be heard.
Anyways Creative
Our creative agency, Anyways Creative, was born when a big brand loved the wealth of creative talent showcased on It’s Nice That and asked us to commission an illustrator to make some content for one of their events. It’s since grown into a fully-fledged creative agency working with some of the biggest brands in the world. We want to grow this by staying agile and collaborating with our clients — partnering with them, whether they be big corporate players or small and charitable, to help them embed creativity into their organisations, not just in their messaging and storytelling, but in everything they do. Helping promote their products, messages and causes in beautiful, creative ways that they could have never imagined and continuing to use the countless relationships with creative talent we’ve built through It’s Nice That.
Lecture in Progress
Our educational resource, Lecture in Progress, was started 18 months ago because we were becoming inundated by young creatives asking us for careers advice: everything from portfolios to CV writing to ways of landing their first job. It’s now in its second full year and reaching more than 25,000 young creatives every single month. With it, we also got the chance to go into business with Sir Paul Smith and his foundation, which shares our desire to get information to people who are currently unaware of the creative world, and to eventually diversify the talent pool we’re all recruiting from. In the future, we see Lecture in Progress helping tens of thousands of young people, from all walks of life and age groups, get into creative careers.
From the careers that will emerge from the technological advances we can imagine to professions we couldn’t have dreamt would exist today, we want to equip them with world-class insight into the creative industry, and to cement the creative industry as a reputable and respected career in the minds of their peers and families. We want to make sure that the parents who have never heard of creative subjects are encouraging their kids to find work and education in the creative sector; we want to become an antidote to the potential nervousness around such careers.
If You Could Jobs
We complement Lecture in Progress’s early-career focus with our more established recruitment offer, creative jobs board If You Could Jobs. This was born through our desire to help some of the creatives we were championing on It’s Nice That find jobs. Now, it’s a considerable business in its own right — showcasing hundreds of jobs every single month from brands and agencies. We believe we can grow this to fill hundreds of thousands of jobs in the creative industry every year — flexing our offer to promote the constantly growing list of creative opportunities for individuals that will undoubtedly arise.
What’s Next?
As well as the specific goals of each business in the group, we also hope that we can use all of our platforms to make an impact on diversity within the creative industry. We hope the team at The HudsonBec Group, the people engaging with us, the people being championed, trained, developed and commissioned will come from a wider range of backgrounds than they do today. That they are a diverse, multicultural group of people from all walks of life and that the sense of fulfilment that comes from being part of the creative world is open to everyone.
In short, we hope that The HudsonBec Group is a world-renowned centre for creative excellence and opportunity for everyone.
And with that, we would love to hear from people who believe in the power of creativity as much as we do, and want to join us on this journey.
If you’re interested, see more here at our recently launched group website — thehudsonbecgroup.com, keep an eye on our careers page, or drop me an e-mail on alex@thehudsonbecgroup.com
