The Time is Now // 4 Week Course
We are excited to announce our first ‘The Time is Now’ 4 week course in collaboration with Womenfolk, Blick Studios & Creating A Space.
OVERVIEW
This course will help you to create space in your life to work out what you want to do. To take the time to establish your values, vision and goals. To work out what is holding you back and help you find the confidence to make small tangible steps to achieve your creative dreams and ambitions no matter how big.
In Northern Ireland, there is a mentality that seemingly is ingrained in our culture of making ourselves small. Especially for women in the creative industries. There aren’t many spaces made for us to flourish and grow in a way that fits our needs. Enterprise support is generally based around high growth businesses rather than value led businesses that fit our personal goals and ambitions. Perhaps you want to run a lifestyle business and be able to work anywhere in the world, maybe you need to balance business with family life, maybe you only need a part-time income, perhaps you want to pursue your passion or maybe you want to grow a sustainable value-led business that creates good quality employment opportunities within your local town or city. There are many reasons people want to work for themselves and start their own business. This course will give you space and time to help you to define your personal values and vision and goals for the future and a plan for how to get there.
We are on a life-long mission to change that here in Northern Ireland where we want to break down barriers for women and creatively find solutions to make a difference within ourselves.
This course will provide a ‘space’ for women that are yearning to create deeper connections with themselves, to come together in a supportive environment and take the time to understand what they really want to do and the first steps to take to make this happen.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
This course is for creative women that want to take their dreams/ideas/concepts/current business/ideas to the next level. It is a creative approach to taking control and accountability for your life and going for what you want to do.
This course is about sharing experiences, hearing other people’s stories and collectively working to help each other to grow and build in a supportive and nurturing environment. This course offers a different perspective and most importantly space and time for you to focus on yourself your hopes and ambitions and how to manifest your dreams taking a creative approach and giving you practical tools to break down what you want to accomplish and how to start making it a reality.
WHY ARE WE OFFERING THIS COURSE?
We are providing this course because we feel that it is important to create space in your life to sit down and plan out what you want to do. To take the time to evaluate what is holding you back from manifesting the dreams & ambitions that you have always wanted. We also know from our own experiences how hard it is to take the time out of busy lives to work on yourself and also how hard it is to work in isolation. This course will provide you with some much needed time and space to focus on yourself within a supportive shared environment of like-minded creative women.
We will provide :
- A welcoming space and supportive environment
- Refreshments
- Workshop tools including: – Post It Notes, Paper, Pens & Notebooks, an organizational guide of resources and Womenfolk Manifestation Worksheets
WEEK 1 : VALUES & AMBITION
DATE: Saturday 12th October
TIME: 2.00 PM – 5.00 PM
VENUE: Blick Studios, 51 Malone Road, Belfast, BT9 6RY
Week 1 will be an introduction to the group, the 4 week course and highlighting our personal stories. We will be asking everyone what they hope to get out of the course, and tailor the 4 weeks to their desired outcomes.
We will be introducing ourselves, Esther Mogada from Creating A Space & Christine James from Blick Studios who will be leading the course. We will share our stories and journeys within the creative industries. Discuss why we wanted to create this course, why we think it’s important and what our intentions are going forward. We will ask the group to share their stories, why they wanted to do the course and what they hope to get out of it.
We will then move on to working collectively on establishing our personal values and ambitions.
Probably the most important part of this course as your personal values will dictate how you choose to live your life and your creative and business plans and ambitions. We will do this by asking questions like “What is your dream lifestyle? “, “What do you enjoy?”, “What are you good at?”, “What is your definition of success?”, “What is important to you in life?” “what are your values?” and “what is your overall dream?” to get you to really think about your own personal values and ambitions.
This is so important yet it can be so hard to create space and time in our busy lives to do and can be tough to do alone. So often we just keep going in the same direction, doing the same thing as we don’t have time to think about it or work out what we really want to do and how to get there.
WEEK 2 : VISION – DEFINING AMBITIONS & INTENTIONS
DATE: Saturday 19th October
TIME: 2.00 pm – 5.00 pm
VENUE: Blick Studios, 51 Malone Road, Belfast, BT9 6RY
Week 2 we will be working on defining our ambitions, establishing our vision for the future and begin breaking down our big dream ambitions into realistic short, medium and long-term tangible goals and intentions. We will ask everyone to write everything down on post it notes, and to really get used to planning out projects and writing down goals and intentions.
We will talk about the romanticism of time and creativity, versus the reality of what that looks like. We will also cover how important it is to fail and experiment, and to learn how to normalise failure to incorporate it into your practices. To take away the stigma of failure and see it as a positive tool to learning and growth.
WEEK 3 : CLAIMING YOUR STORY
DATE: Saturday 26th October
TIME: 2.00 pm – 5.00 pm
VENUE: Blick Studios, 51 Malone Road, Belfast, BT9 6RY
Week 3 we will be asking questions about what is holding you back, questioning what narratives are holding you back and how you can make steps to really claim who you are.
So often we hold ourselves back out of fear, or narratives that we tell ourselves without even realising that we are doing it. It will be a week of writing positive affirmations about ourselves.
Asking questions of what narrative we want to create, how do we put it in place and understand the person that we want to be.
We will be touching on how important it is to have people around you that believe in what you are doing, create a positive impact in your life and are able to celebrate you for standing in your truth. We will work on who these people are for you.
WEEK 4 : DREAM BIG & START
DATE: Saturday 12 October
TIME: 2.00 pm – 5.00 pm
VENUE: Blick Studios, 46 Hill Street, Belfast, BT1 2LB
Week 4 the final week we will recap everyone’s outcomes of what they have learnt, revisit everyone’s values from week 1 and the vision, goals and intentions that they set on Week 2.
We will talk about themes of perfectionism, and how we can keep the systems and processes simple and just make a start.
We will have limited numbers for the first run of this course! If this course sounds like its for you, book your space today!
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Another chance to see some of the pics from our @womenfolk.co JUNIOR.SENIOR event we hosted last month!
Jul 23
Here we meet and get some advice and insights one of our newist creative residents at Blick video editor Ben O’Neil
Jul 22
Due to an insanely busy period of work and travel, this is a very belated post on some of the key lessons from our last Blick Academy Creative Talk on 5th June with Saul Duffin founder of @yeomagazine
We have a full event writeup on our blog with lots more tips and insights from Saul and lessons he has learned throughout his creative journey! (Link to blog in profile) ✨️
Jul 16
Here we meet and get some advice and insights one of our newist creative residents at Blick video editor Ben O’Neil.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your creative work?
I’m a video editor who predominantly works in non-scripted television. Currently working on a two part documentary series for Amazon Prime
What was the biggest hurdle for you starting out and how did you overcome it?
Getting in the door. I didn’t know anyone in tv so the biggest hurdle was getting my name about and then getting hired to work on something. I made lots of tea for years then convinced someone to let me edit a small thing.
How do you stay inspired and motivated?
Watching good stuff
What do you wish you had known before starting out?
Everyone is faking it a little bit.
What’s your top tip/piece of advice for anyone wanting to follow a creative path?
Be prepared to fail and then get back up and try again. Also practice your craft as much as humanly possible.
Do you have any regrets or anything you wish you had done differently on your creative journey?
Too many to list probably. Still working on that part.
Where can people find you online?
I’m thoroughly offline but my email is mebenoneil@gmail.com
Jul 8
NI CREATIVE HUBS MEETUP #3 BANGOR
This is the third meetup for creative hubs in Northern Ireland to come together, connect, share ideas, and support each other. This time in sunny Bangor, where we will be visiting:
Boom Studios @boom.studios
Seacourt Print Workshop @seacourtprints
The Courthouse @courthousebangor
If you are involved with running or working in a creative hub in Northern Ireland, we would love for you to join us at this our third meetup.
This series of events is a collaborative project between Blick Shared Studios and Boom Studios
�Book your ticket on our website (link in profile) ✨️
Jul 2
Some pics 📸 from our @womenfolk.co JUNIOR.SENIOR event on Saturday 15th June with @wee.nuls and @majukooo sharing their creative stories ✨️
Jul 1
Happy Friday! It`s almost the weekend... some lovely light in our Cotton Court Studios earlier this week! Let`s hope we see more of it over the weekend 🌞 ☀️ 🌤
Jun 28
Last week I was very lucky to get to attend this year’s Hubs Meet Up Bautopia 4 Metamorphosis organised by the European Creative Hubs Network with the support of STPLN , the hosting hub in Malmö, Sweden.
This year’s Hubs Meetup was exclusively for European Creative Hubs Network members and was a three day event focusing on creative hubs and their current topics of interest and challenges. This year, it was all about delving into the transformations of our communities, the built environment around us and the impact of creators on designing how we live where we live. As well as the amazing opportunities for peer learning from and connecting with other creative hubs here are a few of the things I found interesting from the meetup talks:
Collaboration - is key, but people need to learn how to collaborate as it`s not a skill that’s traditionally taught in schools, colleges or universities.
Unlearning - we need to unlearn old ways of working to relearn new ways of working.
Cross-sector collaboration - will have a role to play in green and social transformation and future innovation, bringing together artists, creatives and industry. Creatives have different ways of thinking, methods and processes and are capable of shaping something new in lots of different ways.
CITY ECOLOGY WALK
We also got to take part in a city walk organised by Feral a creative studio and research platform for ecology in urban spaces which was a lovely way to get some fresh air, find out a bit more about the city, it’s heritage and ecology.
Some of the places we visited on the walk:
1. Traditional Herring Shacks
2. Traditional Herring Fishing Boats
3. Turning Torso
4. Redeveloped Industrial Seafront Area
SOCIAL IMPACT WORKSHOP
I also took part in an amazing social impact workshop, which I will share more on in coming days. Giving me lots of new tools and methods for measuring our impact here at Blick. I especially loved the advice that it`s ok to include anecdotal evidence including stories and observations, to build a broader picture of the real human experience and impact of your organisation. I`m looking forward to going through the process properly for Blick in coming months!
Jun 27
Thanks again to everyone who came to our last Blick Academy talk last Wednesday evening. We have our Womenfolk JUNIOR.SENIOR event this Saturday then will be taking a little break from events over the summer while we get ourselves organised for Autumn/ Winter when we are hoping to also introduce some more practical workshops. Let us know if there is anything you would like us to cover!
Jun 14
Some pics from our latest Blick Academy creative talk with Saul Duffin founder of @yeomagazine Thanks so much to Saul for a brilliant talk and to everyone who came along. Full event write up to come shortly!
Jun 10
Just over a week to go until our Womenfolk JUNIOR.SENIOR event on Saturday 15th June with two amazing creative women sharing their stories!
SENIOR SPEAKER: ESTABLISHED CREATIVE - NUALA CONVERY - @wee.nuls
Wee Nuls (Nuala) is a multi-disciplinary artist and creative director based in Belfast. She works in a number of mediums including spray paint, hand drawn and digital illustration, and printmaking. Wee Nuls street art murals can be seen across Belfast and have become a part of the visual identity of the city over the past few years. She is inspired by challenging gender inequalities, beauty ideals, sexism, and raising awareness for feminist issues in a playful way.
JUNIOR SPEAKER: EMERGING CREATIVE - MAJA SZOTKIEWICZ - OWNER OF MAJUKOOO - @majukooo
Maja Szotkiewicz is the founder of Majukooo (selling her illustrated stationery, prints and jewellery online) , and is currently in her final year of her Graphic Design and Illustration undergraduate degree at Ulster University. Maja`s work is inspired by everyday, imperfect moments, as she believes finding beauty in the mundane is the key to true happiness. Maja has been featured in Belfast Telegraph`s 30 under 30 list in 2024, was a finalist at the NI Social Media Awards in the `Entrepreneurial Student of the Year` category in 2023 and has her products stocked in 49 stockists in the UK, Ireland, US and Canada.
EVENT DETAILS
Event Date(s): June 15, 2024
Event Time: 11.30am
Location: Blick Shared Studios, Hill Street, Belfast BT1 2LB
Book through website (link in profile) 🌼 🌸 ♥️ ✨️
Jun 7
"I made a magazine directed at my 16-year-old self, who felt like there wasn’t anything cool happening in the city."
"Like most creative people, my work is a reflection of who I am and what my interests are. I love music, comedy, art and design so I have always loved to fuse those things together."
��"I don’t think I’d change much as the failures and mistakes were probably the most valuable part of the experience."
Looking forward to hearing Saul`s story at tonight`s sold out Blick Academy Creative Talk!
If you can`t make tonight`s event and want to find our more about Saul, we did an interview with him that you can read on our website ✨️(link in profile)
Jun 5
A quick summary of the month of May at Blick! you can find details on everything on our website! Link in profile 🌟 🌟 🌟
Jun 4
Happy Monday! Start the week by checking out our latest roundup of funding, support, opportunities, events, exhibitions and festivals for NI creatives.
Read the full listings including links on our blog on our website (link in profile)
Jun 3
Another chance to find out a bit more about Saul Duffin founder of YEO magazine who is speaking at our next Blick Academy event next Wednesday evening at 7pm in our Hill St studios!
You can read the full interview on our blog or get your free tickets on our website!
May 31
Less that a week to go until our next Blick Academy Creative Talk with Saul Duffin, founder of YEO Magazine, sharing his creative story and only a couple of tickets left!
EVENT DETAILS:
Event Date(s): June 5, 2024
Event Time: 7pm
Location: Blick Shared Studios, 46 Hill Street, Belfast, BT1 2LB
Cost: Free
Book on our website ✨️ (link in profile)
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May 30
Our latest roundup of funding, support, opportunities, events, exhibitions and festivals for NI creatives.
FUNDING AND SUPPORT
- Design Academy Adapt Fashion Industry Program Collaboration Between VORN - The Berlin Fashion Hub and Zalando
- Invest NI Ambition to Grow Programme - Up to £45000 Funding
- Design Competition Ukraine
- Student Invent - £2500 Prize Pot
- Artist Residency Frac Grand Large/ Hauts-de-France Dunkirk
- Northern Ireland Screen New Writer Focus
- Northern Ireland Screen Short Film Call - £6000 - £22000 Funding for Individuals and Companies
- Applications Open: August Craft Month 2024
- Craft NI Gallery Maker Call Out 2024
- Áras Éanna Residency
- 143rd RUA Annual Exhibition
- Sailortown Festival Smartphone Photography Exhibition
- Digital Arts Studios STARTS4WATERII Residencies – Open call for artists
- Belfast Potters market Applications Open
- The National Lottery Support for Individual Artists Programme – Travel Awards
EVENTS
Northern Ireland Screen Writing for Readers - Screenwriting with Steve Brooks via Zoom
Wed 29 May
12 - 2pm
Goal Planning with Groove: Get The Damn Thing Done!
Thu 30 May
11:00 AM – 12:15 PM EDT
Online
Social Media Safety for Creatives and Professionals
Mon 3 Jun
3:30 – 4:30 PM EDT
Online
Blick Academy Creative Talk: Saul Duffin Founder of YEO Magazine
Wed 5 Jun
7pm
Blick Studios, Hill St
Digital Horizon Masterclass: “Integrating Captioning into Creative Work”
6 June 2024
10.30am – 4.30pm
Ledger Studio, University of Atypical
The Circle: Let`s Talk About Imposter Syndrome
Wed 12th June
6 - 8pm
Oh Yeah Centre
The Power of Podcasting
Thu 13 Jun
9:30 - 11:30 am
Innovation Factory
Digital Horizon Masterclass: “Build your own Online Platform”
Thu 13 Jun
10.30am – 4.30pm
Ledger Studio, University of Atypical
Womenfolk JUNIOR.SENIOR
Sat 15 June
11.30am
Blick Studios, 46 Hill Street
An evening with Brendan Mooney MBE
Wed 19 June
Ulster University, York Street
5:30pm - 7:00pm
EXHIBITIONS
Usfolk 6
23rd May to 2nd June
The Naughton Gallery
Belfast School of Art 175 Degree Shows
Dates: 7th June Opening Night
8th - 22nd June
Read the full listings including links on our website ✨️
May 28
Off for the bank holiday and wanting to work on your creative business idea? The next exercise on our resources for creatives section on our website is now available to view and download
Exercise 4 - Understanding Your "Why" or Your purpose
Your “Why” or purpose is the reason you have formed your creative practice boiled down to a single sentence (or two). This exercise will help you to understand your purpose and communicate it to the world.
Downloadable PDF and Word Versions available on our website ✨️ (link in profile)
May 27