On Tuesday 29 March, the 30 strong cohort of creative freelancers from our inaugural Freelance Exchange Programme came together at The Good Growth Hub for an evening of networking, mentoring, candid conversation, and celebration.
Course participants, talented and upcoming creatives across digital marketing, audio/ video production, DJing, photography, copywriting, event production, jewellery designing , curation, event producers & much more came along to meet with their mentors and work on their career goals.
The evening began with a session from the award-winning Isabel Sachs founder of I Like Networking. Isabel gave a funny and honest presentation on why Networking is so important, especially for freelancers and left us all with some priceless tips on how to make networking much less painful. We also learned that Isabel is allergic to cats and hates Coriander! 🍕and, why it’s important to put just the right amount of personality into your first encounters with people to humanise the connections you make.
After a break for pizza:) 🍕the second half of the evening was taken up with 1:1’s between the participants with their bespoke mentors. We then all came together for a sharing of stories and did some connecting across the group. We also heard from several mentors on why the mentoring process is such a reciprocal experience – how much they are getting out of the experience – never just a one-way street.
The core part of the programme has officially ended though the team is following up with participants on next steps, how we can best support them including with a weekly offer of our Freelance Fridays – use of our space at the Hub for working and networking and other support and workshops – which is increasingly popular. There is still one more formal mentoring evening to come on the 26th April.