Poached Creative pilot - summary of results

Over six months, Poached Creative helped eight people to gain an understanding of, and skills in, either writing or design. The pilot project aimed to provide experience and a track record for Poached in working with people who were long-term unemployed. It was also intended that the experience would help Poached to begin to build its portfolio and attract commercial clients. From April to October 2009 all the aims were either met or exceeded.

• 2 trainees completed a graphic design and communications programme
  
• 5 trainees completed a writing and communications programme
• of these, 2 trainees completed twelve-week programmes and 5 completed six-week programmes
• 1 trainee did not complete the programme
• 5 of the trainees were referred by the Careers Development Group (CDG), a charity specialising in getting long-term unemployed people back into work
• 2 were referred from Camden Calling, a social enterprise giving vulnerable people access to the art and music scene
• 1 trainee found us on a volunteering website.
  

Trainee outcomes

All trainees improved overall in their own assessment of their knowledge of, and their skills and experience in:

• interpersonal communication
• written communication (writers)
• writing for the web (writers)
• design principles (designers)
• file formats and requirements (designers).
  

Knowledge of writing for the web, web standards and principles and web technologies were the areas that saw the greatest impact in terms of trainee knowledge. For all but two trainees, the experience demonstrably improved their overall confidence and sense of direction. Many of the trainees talked about how the programme raised their self-esteem, helped them find motivation and gave them a sense of pride in what they had achieved.

Some comments from the trainees included:

"I really like the fact that it’s real work that you’ve got to get it right. I was being trusted with that and it really raised my self-esteem - that’s pretty important."

“Confidence in my own ability, interview skills, experience writing for professional organisations, feedback about my writing…I wish it could have been more than one day a week.”

"You've been a huge help in helping me get my confidence back."

"Good just coming into Poached each day and working with everyone. Getting up early and getting into good habits and a routine. It was difficult at first but it got easier."

"For anyone who wants to do anything involving web pages, journalism or writing, I think it’s a good idea."

“Very stimulating.”

"I've learnt loads, loads!"

“It was good, thank you.”

Read the trainee blogs for their first-hand pictures of the programme and their development.

Poached Creative is happy to share its practice with other organisations with similar social goals. If you would like to find out more about the project, or to see the full report, please email us.

Paying off

Poached Creative has just won its first paying client. A small start, yes, but a milestone that shouldn't go unnoted on these pages.

This is testament to the hard work of the team - me, Chris the designer and Angela - who have all been toiling unpaid for the five months of this pilot.

If there's any one lesson I've learnt from the experience so far it is that no matter what industry or sector you're in or who you work with, cold hard cash is an absolute necessity.

Now we've proved we're capable of earning it I think more will be forthcoming.

I have a bit of a theory of like things. Odd socks for example - just the odd ones, mind - tend to hang about in groups. Don't even try hunting, you'll never find the pair. Flip flops are the same. Find one lone flip flop on the beach and I bet you'll quickly find another in a completely different size and colour from the last. Abandoned shopping trolleys too. Find one floating in a canal and no doubt there'll be another on the tow path nearby.

I think earning money is like that. Attract a paying customer and chances are, if you don't mess it up, more will come your way. Success attracts success and I'm confident that after months of struggling to prove itself and become market-ready, Poached is on the way up.

The value of mentors

I'll be honest, I've been flagging lately. There's no real reason for it - everything's been going exceptionally well with the Poached pilot.

We're into the second half and Chris G has put together a really high-quality design programme for our two new, enthusiastic design trainees. I'm getting help and support from my trainees, who are all staying on beyond their original writing and communications programmes to gain more Poached experience. And there are a few commercial opportunities that I'm pursuing (with some high quality help from some of the people I most want to work with).

I've also recently won agreement from my current full-time job to go part time. What a relief! Finally I'll be able to devote the time to Poached that it needs to move to the next level.

But none of this seemed capable of lifting me out of a bit of a slump. I don't mean to sound ungrateful - it's just a fact.

Mentoring magic
This week, however, I think I've broken out of it. Business in the Community has managed to match me up with a mentor and just the first meeting with him has given me a renewed sense of purpose, achievement, and confidence. We're very different. He works for National Rail and basically manages railway lines. Years of experience, hundreds of staff, massive budgets. But we both think we'll get a lot out of this relationship.

Certainly, for me, it's having someone with business know-how who's committed to me for a few hours a month. I can talk through my difficult issues, test out different approaches, and draw on his vast knowledge. I don't feel like I'm putting too many demands on his time because he's already dedicated it.

There's also the power of having someone hold you accountable for the things you set out to do. Most of the time it's only me who'll get annoyed at myself for letting something slip and, of course, when time is tight it's always the longer term planning and development that gets pushed aside for more urgent matters such as training programmes and funding applications.

Immediately I'm reviving discarded business and project plans, going back to my original pilot project proposal and realising how far I've come, and planning out the market research and benchmarking I've been meaning to do.

Unofficial but invaluable
I've been very lucky recently to have several people step in as unofficial mentors, such as Emma Courtney who never fails with encouraging words and her questioning spirit and a new contact, Robert, who I met on that scary leadership programme I told you about. He's insisting I build my networks and contacts and checking up to see if I'm doing it.

Reciprocal support
Of course, in theory I know the value of mentors because I've been trained as one and I am one to many of the people I work with, but it's not until you receive it yourself that you realise just what a force for success a good mentor can be.

More about mentoring can be found on the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation website.

Poached Creative pilot hits halfway point

I thought I'd better put up the results of the first half of this pilot project.

Just to make it clear, I had four trainees but one dropped out mid-way through his training because his partner had a baby. These results are based on the three trainees who completed their programmes a couple of weeks ago.

Early evaluation from the first half of the pilot shows that trainees improved in their own assessment of their skills and experience in:

• interpersonal communication
• written communication
• writing for the web
• web technologies.

The experience also improved their overall confidence and sense of direction and will give them all at least one published piece of writing to use in their portfolios.

Comments from trainees include:

"My existing skills in things like teamwork, verbal comms, and patience have improved. My writing style has changed totally (for the better!) and I now know how to structure a piece of writing. Also my level of confidence has gone up because I feel I have accomplished something."

"I've gained a lot more confidence in my writing since I started with Poached...I've also been very grateful for Jess's support, especially in terms of my depression."

"I feel more equipped, more confident, more motivated...kind of, more alive as well as more happy."

"I think it's a really good programme as it gives access to this field to people who may not ordinarily get the chance."

Read the blogs of the trainees using the links to your right.

We start a new programme in design next week for two more trainees. Keep an eye on this blog for updates.

There will be time...

It's been a busy few weeks and I had two new trainees start today. Things are really moving on quickly, meaning I've got to work hard to keep up.

First, there's the training. This is priority number one. I've got three people now relying on me every Thursday to give them training, guidance, feedback, work and support. If I do nothing else I have to make sure I get that right.

Second, there's the business essentials. Make sure there's somewhere to train out of. Make sure the paperwork's filled in. Account for the money spent so far. Try to make sure we've got enough computers, the right software, people to train and work to do.

Third, there's the business development. By which I mean business survival. We need more funding, we need paid work, we need organisations that are willing to pay us to train their beneficiaries. I'm finding it difficult to get the time to sort all this out.

Fourth, there's the professional development. I need to learn from this pilot, develop as a leader, influence others, build contacts and maintain existing relationships.

Finally, there's the people. Now if I'd really done this in priority order I would have to put them first because without them, none of this could happen. There's Angela, Jeevan, Chris and Brij, my trainees, who inspire me to get up every morning and work late into the night. There's Saba, Chris and Martine, Claire and Louise, who are all successful professionals in their own right and have volunteered their time to contribute (or promised to contribute) to the training programme. There's Claire, my development manager at UnLtd, without whom I'd have no money (and probably very little sanity). There's Sophy, Chris, Otu and Paul who are all helping in an advisory capacity with their various areas of expertise. There are my contacts at CDG - Michael, Kemi, Darren, James and Natasha who have all helped me get office space and people to train. There are my colleagues and bosses at work (the paid variety) who have been so supportive of this new venture. Then there are all the people - my flatmates especially - who just support me as a person to get all this done.

I'm afraid this is a really boring blog post - it doesn't think of its audience, it doesn't add anything of wider value, no links, no pictures, no particularly stylish use of language - just about everything I've ever told my trainees not to do. But it's going up for the record as a massive thank you to everyone involved so far.

People, bureaucracy and making things happen

The first few weeks of this pilot project have been all about making things happen. It sounds simple, but I'm fast discovering a few key rules of running your own business, social enterprise or charity:

1. Things rarely go to plan. Take for example (one of many) my 'next day delivery' PC which was supposed to arrive in the office last Wednesday. A week later I'm still trying to get it delivered in time for Thursday's training.

2. People need chasing. This is true no matter how willing they are to help or how much they want your services. Even your most dedicated supporters and useful contacts need you to chase them because your priorities, by and large, are not the same as their priorities.

3. Bureaucracy takes time. The larger the organisation, the more time you have to allow to get things done. Oh, and the more chasing too - see point 2 above. This doesn't mean you should give up on working with larger organisations. Just that you need to plan ahead and plan for things not going to plan - see point 1 above.

4. It's hard to make things happen. Really hard. Imagine trying to push something really heavy - like a car. Even though it's on wheels you still need a tremendous amount of effort to get it to budge in the first place. Once it's moving things get easier but you still have to maintain momentum or it will stop. This is what it's like.

The upside of all this is that once you get into the habit of making things happen, quite often you'll find that things start happening around you all the time.

One of my inspirations for going into social enterprise was Andrew Mawson, who established the Bromley-by-Bow Centre and wrote a fabulous book about it called 'The Social Entrepreneur'. This first-hand, lively account of crashing through bureaucracy to create something that turned around the lives of the people in his community proves that the social entrepreneurial method of 'learning by doing' is an effective way of making things happen.

I try to apply a little bit of his wisdom in all my dealings with people, bureaucracy, and even the barriers I unconsciously put in my own way.

As Andrew Mawson says: "It is important, simply, to be open and alive to possibility, to encourage people rather than to be suspicious of them, and to see the potential for success rather than the potential for failure."

Virtual stalking or communications revolution?

Twitter. It's all over the place. Electing presidents, attempting to rescue lost chums, giving me a sneak peak at my ex-boyfriend's dream bicycle (no, I'm not going to link to that one)...

It amazes me that the ability to ping 140 characters of text into the ether can have so much of an affect on society, individuals and relationships.

The truth is, while I've been hearing about Twitter for a while now, I hadn't actually seen it for myself until a couple of weeks ago. It was the first day of the pilot project for my start-up social enterprise and I'd spent hours preparing the more theoretical component for the day.

The idea was to give both trainees a broad foundation in communications theory - the message, the medium, communications channels, noise, feedback, that kind of thing. Twitter came up when we were talking about internet channels and I confessed I'd never been on it. Jeevan didn't know much about it either, so Angela took over my laptop and gave us both a quick tutorial.

She showed us what it meant to 'follow' somebody (which still seems quite stalker-like to me) how to send a post, and the counter that tells you how close you are to your 140 character limit.

This reminded me of writing news text messages when I worked for Australian Associated Press. Trying to condense a 400 word article into 140 characters without the aid of text-speak was, in fact, really good for developing concise writing. Providing the laws of grammar are heeded, it seems to me that the same could be said of Twitter. Perhaps, alongside the enforced brevity, we could introduce a grammar and spelling check that encourages the use of correct English.

But this still leaves the question of the terminology that builds up around anything web. People using Twitter post 'tweets', apparently, and the most popular tweeters are collectively known as 'the twitterati'. I only really know that through searching the Urban Dictionary - another revelation to me and, again, courtesy of Angela. Thankfully, this is the only dictionary that's currently keeping pace with the rapid rate at which web users create new words.

Our focus turns to web writing next week and I'm sure, once again, I'll be learning almost as much as my trainees.