Creativity Forever CIC is a non-profit dedicated to enabling creative opportunities and preserving creative heritage
The Problem
Creativity should be something everyone should have access to, but real creativity is being crowded out online with lowest common denominators and generative AI as everyone fights a volume game that feels like an unsustainable race to the bottom.
It may be a bubble, potentially irreversible damage is being done. In such a context highly skilled artists and creative people are undervalued and a gap is opening where a generation of young people may choose not to pursue creative training and careers - and we’ll never get that part of our culture back. This is all the more true for people who do not have the means or opportunity to pursue creativity through their own financial advantage or privileged networks. Even where some roles exist, real training and mentoring are hard to come by. We want to change this situation.
Our Solutions
We intend to create opportunities for people. As a small team of directors from creative professions we are well positioned to mentor, train and pass on creative skills. While we can train people, training without a prospect of an opportunity to use these skills is hopeless.
Creating a sustainable income as a non-profit is will allow us to create more opportunities and also allow us to preserve vital creative skills and heritage to be passed on. In order to do this we will hold our own IP (intellectual property) which will include training, training books and creative works such as films and documentaries which can be sold or licensed to then generate the next opportunity, thus self funding beyond what we can find through grant funding alone.
In the first instance we will focus on documenting creative heritage, with documentary filmmaking skills being applicable to the widest range of creative roles beyond just our own offering and will also be the most straightforward skills to pass on whilst we are in our infancy. As well as seeking to give participants accredited training, we will always do so in combination with real projects that give then the credibility of real work experience rather than purely student exercises that won’t reach the wider world. We want to give these opportunities to those most underrepresented in creative professionals and will start by focusing on the “NEET” (not in employment, education or training), as well as being open for neurodiverse people and others normally underrepresented in creative professions.
Ways you can suport us
Buy a course or book. Any books or courses that we can gain funding for will be free to access for those qualifying for support, with those able to pay for courses or books contributing to the funding for future projects that support our creative cultural heritage and allow those less able to find work opportunities to have a chance to find them with us. Some of these courses and books are under development at point of writing, if you’d like to support these before they are created please consider contributing to any of our related fundraisers.
Volunteer. If you would like to take part as a volunteer in any of our projects, whether to talk about creative heritage in one of our documentary or oral history projects, please check our “Projects” section. We also want to create narrative filmmaking projects, animations, music and art, but will announce these projects once we have at least a plan for delivery rather than raising hopes on purely speculative projects. In-person volunteering is likely to be in the West Midlands initially, but we will also likely need volunteers for online based projects. All volunteers will need to be UK based for vetting reasons.
You may also wish to volunteer to contribute your own creative skills to one of our projects or programs. Long term we would like to build a mentoring program. To volunteer your time with us, please visit our volunteering pages here:
Donate financially: Some projects will be announced when funding has been applied for or where we believe we have a chance of raising funds and starting this project when funding goals are achieved. Should you be in a position to donate to a project and you flag this donation for use on a specific project we will ring fence this donation for this purpose. Should you wish to donate more generally this will support our long term sustainability and standing costs and where these are covered will then be distributed to projects in most need of funding. Donations are not investments, all proceeds that generate a profit making IP will see that profit driven back into further non-profit activities.
All assets purchased by our CIC are legally “asset locked” as part of our non-profit status, with the exception of items bought for those not able to afford equipment to own themselves on the occasion where we run such schemes and where this would contribute to social mobility.
If you would like to donate please use our form so we can send you our details for bank transfer to avoid payment fees on your donation.
Donate kit: We are also open to donations of film equipment within reason. As a new organisation we don't have a site or storage, but there is a list of items we would be grateful such as lighting or camera kit as the more of this we have, the more people we can train. We would also like to be in a position to have more computing kit to people seeking to do editing or animation, areas that are hard to train on without.
How we can support you
If you’re interested in gaining skills to pursue a creative profession we can help. Our initial in-person training will run in Birmingham but we will also be offering online webinars and self-paced courses.
For those who cannot afford to pay for this training you can see if you qualify for our support (currently UK only). To sign up for the courses waiting lists please sign up here.