6B2 - Undertake research to identify and evaluate their personal and professional skills and the career or progression opportunities available to them.
Andrew Odong: Founder of PESA Productions:
Creative Production: From Freelance To Start-Up:
Andrew has been a creative producer for 5 years, however it was not up until working in the role for 4 years that he fully realised what it meant to be a producer/what a producer is. His first exposure to being a producer was at university, when he organised, branded, and content produced an event for a street dance competition. Originally studying Physics with Astronomy at the University of Leicester due to pressures from his parents, he started to realise he enjoyed the more creative arts since there is more scope to develop our creative skills in the future with creative jobs over others which will eventually be taken over by artificial intelligence (AI), but "you can't automate creativity".
Andrew wanted to help/serve people and their interests, and eventually landed a job as a conference producer - "the curation of content and speakers for industry events" - which involved researching the conferences and writing programmes. The job allowed him to understand the people and the thinking behind different brands, for example, Apple, and realised that not everyone has things all figured out like we sometimes like to believe or that the brands make it seem.
Transferable skills learnt from this job included: communication, research, project management, networking, and business accumen.
After working as a conference producer for a couple of years, Andrew decided to go freelance, working with partners such as the British Film Institute (BFI) on an event called Rise which celebrated LBGTQ persons of colour, Spotify, and Shoutout Network on a podcast where women were supported in telling their own stories. Through these different projects, Andrew learnt how his skills were transferable and learnt the value you can generate to make a person or brand's service/life better.
Why set up a company? Andrew had a profound desire to create something bigger than himself, to create something which has legacy. Andrew works on his own in PESA Productions, however employs freelancers on a project-by-project basis depending on the job's needs. However, he talks about the company as being supported by a team. Wanted to democratise production - help people to visualise their ideas in a financially sustainable way.
What is PESA Productions? "A content-driven creative production company specialising in premium events and creative content. It's core values manifest via pragmatic and visionary approach to production, with a keen awareness of inter-generational and inter-cultural nuances". The company's values include representation, authenticity, kindness, and sustainability.
Types of creative production: Events, film, photography, podcasts. PESA Productions has worked with brands such as WeWork, Interview, I-D Magazine, Modern Matter, and Intern. Andrew views "production as a service as well as a product".
"The work we make and the people you make it with should reflect the world you want to live in" - Jannis Birsner, Film Producer. Focuses on diversity - being able to tell your own stories.
Why we should all be producers? Need to be proactive about your ideas and practical about the steps needed to bring them to reality, identifying and maximising opportunities.
The relationship between design and production: Andrew stated that designers should always know a producer to work on commissions. The perfect candidate does not necessarily have to be the best designer, but need to be able to understand the producer's vision and know the importance of listening, be able to find other visual references that the producer hasn't found themselves.
Five things you should know: Value-based networking (will see your career sky-rocker when you realise the value you can provide others), identify your value, customer and client experience (friendly, punctual, always keep your word), ideas are useless without action, and find your advocates (important to know people you can trust).
"We have a tendency to network up, but really we should be networking across" - find and work with people who find value in the same things you value, have the same level of hunger for something, the same level of skills to an extent, etc.
The difference between a creative producer and a creative director is that the creative producer is the one who puts the puzzle pieces together to visualise the creative director's ideas.
Director = ideas, Producer = orchestration.
Be strategic about the best opportunities to meeting people - there's always value in meeting people face-to-face, but also remember to think about your own social level.
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