work n stuff

[1nnit]

I was in a sandpit the other day with a bunch of women. One was a singer, one a musician, one was a DJ, another a film producer and the last a designer. All had significant careers and were professionals in these roles. You would have heard of their stuff. All had moved to where we live due to having kids and needing space/a better life balance etc- it is a town where property is cheap but resources are poor. All have tried to find interesting work/set stuff up and have not succeeded. What is this about? Is it a feminist issue? Is this what is happening to other female creatives who leave London or other cities? Such huge skills and resources lying idol when the will/need to work (but without commuting) is there. It seems like such a frustrating waste to me. I don't really have a question but would appreciate any reflections.

Hi Dandelion. I don't really want to go into what I was going to do as its pretty specific- regarding the rest of your post I'm not really sure what to say.

Maybe I am not being clear- I am not turning anything down locally because it offers a regional salary. As it happens I am doing several jobs here for free when I could be working at city rates for one of my other clients because I WANT to be here, I WANT to work locally and I WANT to put my expertise into the local economy.

The barriers are about local organisations not being interested in collaborating on projects that would create local employment for local people.

I am particularly interested in how these barriers are affecting women who have creative expertise and are trying to make a living here after having children and why there is such marked underemployment of this constituency. My question to this board was whether these barriers might be feminist issues.

I am not turning my nose up at anyone, i am frustrated.

and thank you Buffy- I am in the process of setting up a social enterprise at the moment for a particular project which has a strong market potential and will be running this locally. I like to work on lots of things at once tho so its a good suggestion to set up a vehicle to run other projects through- although its tough to think how this would work when it is so hard to get anything off the ground here. Fundraising is not hard if the right things are in place but having project partners can be important.

Thanks for the link Buffy. I had forgotten about UnLtd- I applied to them once before many moons ago. Will check 'em out again. x

Thanks Loopy tiles for your links- i missed them before sorry. will check them out.