Your origin story tells you about the impact you want to make
As a cultural professional you clearly have not chosen this career for the money. So why do you still yearn to work in the sector, even if you might feel you’re being forced out due to the unbearable financial and resource pressures?
In my conversations with cultural professionals in my podcast “Cultural Professionals Teabreak” it becomes clear, it’s the origin story which drives you on. Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now, your origin story underpins all you do.
In those podcasts you can hear each of those great impactful leaders describe how their lives were changed by an early experience of art and how that origin story still drives them on.
Very simply they felt the transformation for themselves and want to create the same experience for others.
Our origin story is our root, our anchor and it’s a source of power.
From that story we can develop grit, a deep sense of purpose which can drive us forward. It allows us to take the knocks yet still keep going because we know how powerful our work can be.
My origin story was one afternoon playing a Status Quo album I had lying around. Something in that vinyl connected with me and put me on a track where 7 years later I was part of a team opening up a new music venue in Newcastle.
“Big Fat Mama” by Status Quo literally changed my life.
It’s that memory, the feeling of connection with a better world, I keep searching for.
Cultural Professionals do that every day which is why they are so special and should be nurtured.
I usually begin conversations with clients by talking through your origin story, because it explains so much.
It’s a huge resource which if nurtured and explored can give you vast wells of resilience.
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