You may or may not have heard of a new community for creatives called “Never Not Creative“.

It’s a place for the creative industry to identify, discuss and come up with solutions for the issues that we face.

Some of these are historical and have been in place for many years. Some have emerged more recently, and while they may not necessarily be serious threats, they certainly can’t be ignored and in fact, are an opportunity to build a better creative industry than ever before.

Issues already identified and that the community are starting to discuss solutions for are:

• the mental health of individuals in the industry

• how prepared students are for entry into the industry

• addressing expectations around free pitching and free work

• setting standards for creatives and their clients to agree upon

Supporting the industry

You may or may not know that Streamtime is investing behind the scenes to support this community. We’ve been in this industry a long time (since 2002 in fact) and finding a way to support and develop a healthier industry has always been high on our list of priorities.

In the past, we’ve done this by supporting customer initiatives or projects, investment in industry publications, as well as sponsorship for creative events and media like The Design Conference, Creative Mornings, Foundry Live and the Aus Design Radio podcast. Rightly, or wrongly, there has never been a strong strategic or tactical link behind these investments that directly link to revenue or profit. All of this has in some way been driven by a sense that it’s just the right thing to do.

Since co-founding For The People in 2014, I’ve always wanted to try and help create the conditions for a better industry. Some of these things can be done from an agency within the industry, but actually it turns out it’s easier (or seems to be) to do it from slightly away from the core, busy, sometimes frantic world of everyday projects and work. When I got to Streamtime and was much better exposed to all of the different types of businesses, skillsets and experience that existed across the industry, the picture of what could and needed to be done was much clearer.

Luckily, I was able to present the idea of Never Not Creative to Aaron (Green, Streamtime’s Founder) and have it greeted with – “No-brainer”. Aaron and Streamtime have never questioned the value of the creative industry, but instead have always been 100% supporters of what the industry stands for and is capable of.

If Streamtime wasn’t supporting Never Not Creative, it would Never Exist. We wouldn’t have the time or the headspace to set it up. We wouldn’t have the resources, of both money and time to make events or partnerships happen. This article doesn’t mean you should evangelicise about Streamtime or Never Not Creative for that matter. But, we did want to make sure you knew where it came from and how and why it was possible.

Here’s how the Streamtime and Never Not Creative relationship works

1. No ads. You won’t see ads for Streamtime in the Never Not Creative community. You will probably see “supported by Streamtime”.
2. Supporting the cause. You will see Streamtime writing and posting about Never Not Creative to spread the word.
3. Better product. You’ll also see Streamtime trying to set some examples and even make it easier for our customers to adopt some of the standards. For example, maybe we can incorporate the Creative’s Pledge or a client equivalent into the standard terms and conditions you have with clients. Maybe we can store these pledges for you and your team, if they act as a social contract between employer and employee. Maybe we can find a way to monitor the mental health of your team. Maybe we can share how our customers have improved ways of working or relationships with clients, or better payment terms.
4. Walking the walk. One thing we’ve already started doing is walking the walk when it comes to working with our own agencies. Agencies that we’ve chosen because they’re very talented, but also, because they’re Streamtime customers.

Below is an extract from a contract we’ve been using. It will likely change over time with more feedback and some discussion within the Never Not Creative community and with more clients from different types of backgrounds and industries – but it’s a start.

A contract for creative and client relationships

It’s important to us that we get on well, look out for each other, respect each other and trust each other. Because of this, we like to agree on a social contract or pledge that we can keep each other accountable to. It really just means that we agree to treat each other fairly and as human beings.

1. We won’t use any work that we haven’t paid for. We’re happy to meet the minimum standard of 30 day payment terms, and expect to pay for a proportion of the project on commencement.
2. We expect you to tell us what’s possible in the time and budget that we agree. We hope that you’ll make sure that timings include time for yourself. We don’t expect you and your team to sacrifice personal, family, friends or personal development time because of our project.
3. We’ll only contact you at reasonable hours – unless there really is an emergency. Let’s be clear and say an emergency is something where human life is in danger 😉
4. If anything isn’t going to plan on either side we should both be willing to bring it up and have a chat about it. You know like grown ups. We prefer to nip potential issues in the bud and not let them drag on before it’s too late. In these discussions we both agree to keep calm and rational – this is work we’re talking about – not life and death.
5. We recognise that you’re an expert in your chosen field and we’re an expert in our product and business. Please let us know if we’re exhibiting behaviours that mean you’re not able to do your best work.
6. Your time is just as valuable as our time. If we delay the project for any reason, we’d expect that the deadlines are extended by the same amount of time as the delay. Common sense right?
7. At the end of the project, we’ll do a project retro. We’ll use this to give feedback to each other and talk about if we’d like to work with each other again – and what improvements we could both make.

Signed 17/7/2018

Andy Wright,

Managing Director

Streamtime

Get in touch

If you have any questions about Never Not Creative, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. But definitely, have more of a read at https://medium.com/never-not-creative and join us on Facebook at https://facebook.com/groups/nevernotcreative