Breakfast roles

First thing in the morning, while some of us might be finishing off our coffee before dashing into the office or studio, creative practitioners in Portsmouth have already been getting on with the business of the day. For the past two years, Creative Industries Business Advice and Services (Cibas) has served up monthly, topical speaker sessions and professional networking opportunities – for breakfast. Breakfast Briefings are a well-established practice among professional bodies, Chambers of Commerce and enterprise agencies in the business mainstream, but when we first suggested transferring the model to the creative sector many people were convinced that it wouldn’t work.
There is a popular perception that artists are not early risers and that compared with, say, an evening event in a bar or gallery, the formality and corporate connotations of a business breakfast briefing would be about as appealing to a creative practitioner as a meeting with the bank manager. In fact, it is these two perceived obstacles that have contributed most to the success of the initiative. Having organised many networking events, full and half-day seminars and workshops, we have shown in our evaluation that creative practitioners often needed to be highly convinced of the benefits of continuing professional development (CPD) before taking significant time out of their working days. Considerations such as childcare and family duties can restrict an individual’s ability to engage. So we designed the Breakfast Club to be bite-sized, and to offer specific expert information and professionally engaged peer-support within a framework that doesn’t require a major time or resource commitment.

It is well established that the very first part of the day is thought to be the most productive time for many people. For others it is simply the most convenient or conducive to the rest of their lives. Our events usually take place in a board room environment. With modern, though typically corporate, décor and an air of formality, it is not the natural habitat of the creative practitioner. However, just like the potentially boozy exhibition preview, opening night or networking evening, breakfast time seems to induce a similarly altered state of consciousness – one that would appear to be conducive to intensive note taking and the frenzied exchange of business cards, information and contacts. The topics come from issues that we identify through our one-to-one advice service and through suggestions from attenders. They range from marketing to mind-mapping, from intellectual property to the Internet. Invited speakers and facilitators include marketing consultants, business advisors, legal advisors, web developers and established creative practitioners. There is no doubt that a bigger buzz is created by the more sexy subjects like ‘Web 2.0 for business’ than, for example, ‘An introduction to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’. But as a conversation-starter and a lead into facilitated discussion and networking, according to one attender, “This is a great way to start a day – I swapped business cards with five people before 9 am!”.