How in the midst of a crisis can we be our most creative? We know that during a global pandemic it’s OK not to be our most productive. But how do we prioritise our mental health and create new positive habits when there simply aren’t enough hours in the day? If you have caring responsibilities, how do you navigate the juggle? With some aspects of the creative industry on hold, how do we ensure employees that have been furloughed understand they have not failed? How as individuals, employers and as an industry do we better support each other?

We know in the creative industries we are the lucky ones working from home and we have already seen so many brilliantly creative, generous, uplifting responses to this crisis, but that doesn't make it easy. With that in mind Creativebrief has teamed up with Get Sh*t Done, the not-for-profit event series that supports women in the creative industries to get their projects, ideas and creativity off the ground.

Next Thursday 16^th April from 1pm a panel of experts including Sereena Abbassi, Worldwide Head of Culture & Inclusion at M&C Saatchi Group, Vikki Ross, Copy Chief, consultant, speaker, mentor and trainer and Jane Evans, Founder at The Uninvisibility Project, a creative, activist and keynote speaker, will answer your challenges. Tickets are free and available here

We would love to hear from you, so let us know what challenges you are facing so we can tackle your problems better together. To get everyone thinking ahead of the event, we asked the panel to share how they are navigating the new normal we find ourselves collectively facing.

The Uninvisibility Project has always been about getting midlife women employed, but after a year of campaigning, absolutely nothing changed. So, we changed. We started setting up businesses run by highly experienced women. We were in the final stages of starting the first of these companies, a new comms agency, then COVID-19 hit. 

So, instead of launching with a pic in Campaign of the founders cross-armed on the fire escape or a big party, we’re just launching straight into it.

Our pop-up office now has beds in the meeting room and recording studio, but our plans are not on hold. There has never been a better time for a group of midlife women to start a new agency. Especially one that’s virtual. We’ve been working like this for years. 

And we’ve been mothering for even longer. So, while the majority of adland are home-schooling or dealing with young kids, we’re stuck at home with musicians, audio engineers, filmmakers, editors, animators, influencers and actors and they’re bored out of their minds! We’re enlisting them to prove that cross-generational comms is the way of the future. We have the wisdom and empathy to know what needs to be said, we have the toys to create top-quality content and they have the ‘eye rolls’ and ‘exasperated sighs’ to make sure what we make is ‘cool’.

I always say that midlife women are strong because the worst that could possibly ever happen usually already has. We’ve experienced love and loss, success and failure, pain and joy. Now the world is facing something none of us imagined. It is essential we recognise the pain many are facing and do everything we can to ease their suffering. But it’s also essential to enjoy the peace, the healing planet and the love of our families.

Because all this is change. And the only way of dealing with change is by changing with it. The world will never be the same again. Let’s make it all better.

Right now, the world has come together to fight one thing: COVID-19. And perhaps for the first time, creatives have come together to respond to one brief. The client is the world, the target audience is everyone and the key message is to stay safe. In just two weeks, all kinds of creatives, employed, self-employed, unemployed, have used their creativity to create and communicate. So, while we’re encouraged to stay apart to save lives, as an industry, we’ve spontaneously come together to do good.

But we must come together to do good for each other too. Here are some tips I shared on LinkedIn last week: 

Credit: Creatives have lost clients and agencies have lost accounts. Spec work is their currency. If you share their spec work, please credit them; it could lead to them getting gigs again.

Comment: This is just the tiniest thing but if you ever worked with someone you rate and haven’t already, write them a recommendation here on LinkedIn. You never know when it might come in handy. At the very least, it’ll make them feel good whatever their situation right now.

Connect: If you see a job advertised that you think someone you know would be interested in, tell them, recommend them, email them, tag them. It'll take less than a minute to make that connection, and that minute could really matter.

I keep seeing quotes on social saying things like ‘If you’ve not achieved x, y, z during the pandemic then you’re NOT spending your time wisely!’ What a load of rubbish!

Let’s stop putting so much pressure on ourselves to be doing 'something'. This is a tough situation; there's a bloody pandemic going on! There may be work to be juggled alongside kids or scary financial pressures. We have no idea what the state of our industry is going to be like in a couple of weeks or months, let alone our lives. There’s enough pressure out there without putting pressure on ourselves.

Having said that, my mind works best when I have a few projects on the go; for some reason that works for me. You may be the same. But here’s the important thing: it's all about 'doing' and trying things out, not about the end result. If you think I need to get views or how is this going to get me some PR, it's game over. Why? Because it's all about doing something that makes you feel good. If you can gain something more than that then great but if no one knows about it, it shouldn't matter. As soon as your little project becomes 'work', it loses its appeal and that's when it usually gets abandoned. So, concentrate on tapping into your passion, make sure it’s fun and above all be kind to yourself.

But of course, there still will be a lot of unanswered questions that will niggle at you like, ‘when will we return to normal?’, ‘what is the industry going to be like?’ ‘will I still have a job next month?’ But forget those kinds of questions, because unfortunately it’s completely out of our control. Instead, I like to occupy my mind with questions that really mater like, ‘did Carole Baskin kill her husband!??’

About Get Sh*t Done

‘Get Sh*t Done’ is the event that celebrates those that dare to do. Started in 2017, these events have taken place regularly over the years to bring inspiration and more importantly to brainstorm interesting ways women can help each other out.

The event has a unique format at its heart; it’s split into two parts. The first part of the panel involves a panel discussion with leading women that have managed to get a project(s) off the ground, delving into their campaigns, initiatives or projects and their own unique ways of getting sh*t done.

For the second part of the event, we give the audience the chance to tell us how we can help them with their issues. This can be anything from a problem at work, a personal project, side hustle or business.

This event would be the 10^th in the series. The last event was held at Havas with Nishma Robb, Vicki Maguire and Natalie Graeme at Havas and the one before last at AMV BBDO with Nadja Lossgot and Caitlin Ryan. Both events were sold out with more than 180 women in the audience.

This event will be co-hosted by Rebecca Rowntree, Creative Director and host of This Way Up podcast, the podcast dedicated to recording female leaders in the creative industry about the good, the bad and the ugly of their careers. (Instagram: @thiswayuppodcast)

Sign up for tickets here