Winchester Creatives - here for the next generation of creative talent.
Winchester Creatives was started during the first lockdown in 2020. We realised that the pandemic and the recession it was causing was making it impossible for young creatives to find jobs, or get on-the-job work experience. So we set about doing something about it. Through the range of programmes we’ve rapidly set up, we’re now helping lots of young people get roles in the creative industry.
The story so far
April 2020
Richard reads a Resolution Foundation report on the predicted unemployment figures arising from the first UK lockdown. He calls Dan to discuss how COVID-19 will significantly impact the lives of young people. They predict the oncoming recession will hit graduates the hardest. The question they discuss is “who do we want to be during Covid-19?”. They decide to take positive action and do something to help.
May 2020
An amazing volunteer team comes on board. They explore what message they wanted to get across to the public during the campaign. With Richard’s help, the creative idea of our “Mind The Gap” campaign is born. The team work towards launching a crowdfunding campaign to provide free mentoring and a sponsored apprenticeship programmes for young creatives.
August 2020
The Crowdfunder is officially launched, alongside our ‘Mind The Gap’ campaign to raise awareness of the issue. The campaign lasts until September aiming for £5000 to be raised. During the campaign, we sold unique artwork prints from young mentees, as well as facemasks, wristbands and coffee mugs.
September 2020
The campaign is a huge success not only reaching the £5000 goal but also raising an additional £1,500 to reach the campaigns stretch target of £6,500. Now the real work begins. We start planning to scale and deliver mentoring support for 25 young local creatives.
October 2020
After this, our Winchester Creatives team launch our Business Sponsorship campaign. The goal was to inspire local businesses to provide sponsorship to support 5 young creatives with paid-for work placements for 6 months. Here’s our local Member of Parliament Steve Brine MP getting behind our business sponsorship initiative.
October 2020
The wonderful team at Casella Family Brands respond to our call, magnificently donating £10,000 to support 5 paid apprenticeships. In return, our apprentices are set a unique New Product Development project to complete. Their creative work will be put in front of the senior procurement manager at Tesco. If their pitch is successful the work will turn into a national new product launch campaign in October 2021. So the pressure is on!
November 2020
Our first event marks the launch of our mentoring community program. Our first speaker is Sam Conniff, author of the bestselling Be More Pirate. He gives a truly inspirational talk, which is worth a watch if you haven’t already seen it.
November 2020
More influential people from the Hampshire area come out to support Winchester Creatives ‘Mind the Gap’ campaign including Lib Dem Councillor Jackie Porter (pictured), Canon Andy Trenier from Winchester Cathedral, Steven Northam of Incuhive, Wendy Wyatt from Winchester Design Festival and many more.
December 2020
Sponsors continue to come in. The great people at Winchester College see the need for what we’re doing. They have a need for a video content creator. We provide one and create our first full-time job for our young volunteers. Yay! In return, they pledge to help Winchester Creatives by providing some much-needed sponsorship support. Merry Christmas indeed!
January 2021
Kicking off the new year, the first Winchester Creatives paid apprenticeship project begins with the bespoke Casella Family Brands project. The team consists of young creatives with a range of skills across brand strategy, graphic design, user experience, copywriting, digital design, and illustration. After 8 weeks the team pitched their own creative work to support the launch of a new Shiraz, called Pepperbox, to the entire senior team at Casella Family Brands (Europe). An opportunity they won’t get for another 20 years in their careers!
February 2021
Winchester Creatives officially launches our ‘Mend the Gap’ campaign. The plan is to showcase the exciting work Winchester Creatives are doing to help young creatives and to demonstrate the value of our mentoring programme. At this time one of our young mentees suggests we start a ‘Young Lives Interupted’ Instragram Live series, which we start the following week.
February 2021
Fundraising is hard. The third lockdown is taking its toll. Rather than get despondent as a team Richard Coope decides that we need to build a coalition of support to tackle the problem of unemployment at scale. He starts The 'Alliance for Hampshire Jobs' with Ian Coulter (Co-founder, Winchester Job Club). They encourage local leaders to develop a joined-up plan for job creation. As institutions weren’t gripping the issue they inspired local grassroots organisations to share resources and solve the problem themselves!
March 2021
Richard Coope, Dan Benham and the Winchester Creatives team are awarded the prestigious Mayor of Winchester Local Heroes and Community Awards. This was in recognition of their commitment to tackling job despair for young people and helping recent graduates gain the necessary skills required to get their first job in the creative and digital industry.
May 2021
There is a lot for young people to be angry about. So Richard decides to channel that frustration into something positive. He instigates our “Create Not Hate” poster project to inspire our first mentoring cohort to create personal artwork that explores the concept of turning negative thoughts into positive outcomes. SWT (South West Trains) are so inspired by the campaign they commission one. of these posters to be displayed at Winchester train station. Our mentees are clearly delighted!
June 2020
Winchester Creatives after a few lateral flow tests were able to congregate and celebrate the graduation of the first mentoring cohort. As it’s early days of gradual lock-down only a number are able to attend. Some mentees got to meet their mentors in person for the first time. We sit around a firepit and share how the experience of lock-down was for us all. It reminds us of the importance of having meaningful conversations and showing kindness and consideration for others.
July 2021
Richard summarises our ‘Year in Review’. We run the numbers and we are thrilled at the high level of social impact our initiative has achieved. We are pleased with the significant reductions in the feelings of hopelessness and job despair that our young mentees are feeling. More than that we are delighted by the number of full-time roles our mentees have achieved in the creative industry. We run the numbers again and our HACT social investment score shows that for everyone £1 put into Winchester Creatives it then generates £7.25p in return in social impact.
October 2021
We’re delighted to hear our Winchester Creatives campaign (and the Brightful team that helped to support it) is recognised as a BIMA10 Award finalist. This shortlist recognises the top 10 campaigns across the UK in the last 2 years and celebrates the positive impact these campaigns have created. We feel humbled to have been recognised for our efforts and to have been nominated on this prestigious shortlist.
Support us
Donation and support can make a massive difference to the future of a creative young person near you. We believe in passing the ladder down to the next generation, and by supporting us, you’ll be helping young talent get ahead. Anything you can give to support us is greatly appreciated.
Who we are
Richard Coope
As the Founder of Winchester-based change agency, Brightful, Richard is passionate about delivering ‘change for good’ and helping our local community. He resurrected Winchester Creatives as a not-for-profit social enterprise in 2020. He was awarded a 2020 BIMA100 Champion For Change award.
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Dan Benham
Leaving Uni in 2009, in the height of the last recession, he’s got first hand experience of trying to make a career when times are tough. He’s since carved out a career in the creative industry working on award winning projects, events and campaigns with worldwide brands and small startups alike.
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Rishabh Sharma, mentored by Philip Guest