The Future Role of Coaching in the Creative Sector
Coaching is set to play an increasingly vital role in supporting the development of the creative, cultural, and artistic sectors in the future. As the sector continues to evolve due to technological advancements, economic shifts, and changing social dynamics, the guidance provided by professional coaches may well be crucial for nurturing talent, enhancing resilience, and ensuring sustainability.
Both as individual practitioners or in the form of collectives (like the Scottish based initiative Coaching for Creatives) coaches are already addressing the needs of the sector ‘one conversation at a time’. Organisations spanning Ireland and the UK such as Wellbeing in the Arts, Minding Creative Minds, Dancers Career Development and Clore Leadership all now use coaching as a part of their offering.
“Coaching can be defined as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential”
The very nature of coaching though often keeps it out of the spotlight. Mostly a one to one confidential conversation (but sometimes in group formats), the conditions that make it effective also serve to keep it under the radar. Covid-19 made explicit how precarious the working lives of creatives actually are and coaching emerged as an accessible way to address both the existential and practical challenges that every creative faces.
While coaching is widely recognised in industries across the world as a robust tool to support to professional and personal development, its effectiveness in the creative sector has only recently become evident.
Here are six ways coaching can play a crucial role in future of the creative sector:
1. Navigating Industry Complexities:
One of the key functions of coaches in the creative sector is helping artists navigate the intricate dynamics of modern cultural and artistic markets. From global competition to digital distribution channels, the terrain is complex and ever-changing. Coaches empower creatives to adapt to these shifts, fostering innovative ways to engage with audiences in a rapidly evolving landscape. There is no one size fits all approach to individual development in the arts, so coaches can play an invaluable role in supporting creatives to be both flexible and adaptive in a time of ever-increasing change.
2. Facilitating Career Longevity and Resilience:
In the volatile world of creative careers, resilience and adaptability are paramount. Coaches provide strategies honed from years of research into successful and sustainable creative careers. They assist creatives in developing self-directed approaches that foster productivity, adaptability, and sustainability while mitigating burnout and persevering through challenges. Funding and policy changes all have a role to play in creating a more sustainable sector but specific career support is needed at an individual grassroots level too, and coaching is one of the most effective interventions in supporting people to adapt to change.
3. Bridging the Gap Between Aspirations and Practical Realities:
Coaches serve as invaluable thought partners, helping artists align their aspirations with industry realities. By fostering critical consciousness and offering diverse perspectives, coaches enable creatives to set realistic expectations and chart actionable paths to success, guarding against disillusionment and career derailment. To create anything of value a creative must follow a vision, a sense of possibility that often lies far outside of the view of others and often the world at large. Given the precarious and challenging nature of a creative career they must adopt a similar approach to their professional aspirations too. Marrying these aspirations with contextual realities is complex, intricate work that coaching is particular suited to.
4. Enhancing Skills and Professional Development:
Beyond nurturing artistic talent, coaches offer guidance in essential business practices such as marketing, networking, and time management. This holistic approach addresses the need for comprehensive skill sets in navigating today's competitive landscape, ensuring creatives are well-equipped for success. While most creatives are highly educated and leave their training skilled in their craft, many feel under-equipped in the skills of managing the business of being a creative. Coaches can help creatives identify specific areas of personal and professional development to prioritise. Many coaches have specific training and experience in the area of business development.
5. Expanding Networks:
Effective networking is crucial for career sustainability and psychological well-being in every sector including the creative one. Coaches nurture confidence and provide strategic support in navigating professional networks, recognising the significance of connections in unlocking opportunities for collaboration and growth. All careers are social in nature but creative careers are particularly so. Many creatives can find talking about their work to be particularly challenging and in an industry that relies on successful collaboration to function the ability to nurture relationships becomes crucial. The coaching relationship acts as both a sand-pit and microcosm enabling creatives to develop this capacity in a safe and playful way.
6. Addressing Burnout and Well-Being Challenges:
Burnout is a pervasive issue in the creative sector, exacerbated by the uncertain nature of artistic careers. Coaches play a critical role in managing burnout, offering a reflective space for creatives to identify and address unhealthy work practices. By fostering well-being and establishing boundaries, coaches can empower creatives to maintain productivity and sustain long-term engagement. Many creatives can go their entire careers without ever having a conversation about their work lives with an objective professional who passes no judgement. The last 100 years of therapeutic and counselling psychology have emphasised the importance of this type of conversation. Coaches trained in a humanistic approach can provide creatives with a safe psychological space to explore their challenges, develop self-awareness and create new ways forward.
As coaching continues to professionalise and evolve, its significance in the creative sector is poised to only grow. From navigating industry complexities to fostering resilience and well-being, coaching is becoming instrumental in shaping the future of creative sector.
“With regard to the creative class coaching extends its alternative development of people and their organisations, based on the values of communication, acceptance of diversity and individuality, strengthening the sense of subjective efficacy and integrity, while expanding individual consciousness. As a result, this enhances the effect of stimulating creativity, which directly affects the development of the creative class as an essential element of the proper functioning of an important sector of the economy, which is the creative industry.”
Nurturing Hope: Empowering Arts Graduates for Sustainable Careers.
“I 100% believe that my outlook for my career has changed. I have the tools to be able to navigate the trenches that is the industry.”
(Arts student & Career Mapping for Creatives Participant)
In the bustling world of academia and the dynamic arts sector, a silent struggle persists. As graduates eagerly step into the spotlight, their dreams brimming with creativity, they're often met with a harsh reality: the journey ahead is fraught with challenges. Burnout, exploitation, unpredictable work patterns and financial insecurity loom like dark clouds, threatening to overshadow their passion. Yet, amidst these storms, a beacon of hope shines brightly – the promise of empowerment through learning the skills of leading a self-directed creative career.
At the heart of this narrative lies a profound truth: while creatives possess an unwavering sense of vocation they are offered little of the career support or knowledge needed to sustain their careers. The traditional paradigms of career theory fail to relate to the unpredictable nature of modern creative careers. Career guidance was never needed by creatives who knew their callings and so the idea of career support for creatives at university and third level settings has been abandoned almost entirely. In doing so we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We now find ourselves at a crossroads, where the real-life challenges facing every creative entering the sector can no longer be ignored. It’s no longer justifiable to train students in the skills of their craft while neglecting the skills they need to manage their careers.
But fear not, for where there are challenges, there are also opportunities for transformation. It's time to embrace a new paradigm – one that champions adaptive career skills tailored for creative careers.
Picture this: a room filled with eager minds, each craving one thing above all – hope. In fact, when asked to write on post-its what they wanted from the workshop this single word ‘hope’ appeared on more than one. This was the poignant scene from a recent workshop I ran in an Irish university, where students yearned for reassurance as they teetered on the edge of uncertainty. And therein lies the crux of our mission – to instil hope in the hearts of every creative graduate poised on the precipice of their career journey. Hope has been identified as a core element of of developing, adapting and sustaining a creative career. These students knew intuitively what we as a sector seem to be forgetting; that hope is not only found but developed.
So, how do we navigate this uncharted territory? Let's embark on a journey of empowerment as a sector through knowledge, armed with some fundamental pillars of modern career theory for unpredictable times:
Developing Self-Concept:
Creatives are not defined by job titles; they are architects of their destiny, weaving a tapestry of projects that define their career trajectory. At the core of this journey needs to lie a deep understanding of self – an unwavering compass to guide them through the ebbs and flows of their professional landscape across a lifetime. By identifying and nurturing the essence of their self-concept, creatives can emerge as resilient champions, equipped to weather the storms of change with grace and tenacity.
Growing Critical Awareness:
In a sector where exploitation lurks in the shadows, critical awareness becomes our greatest ally. Each contract, each negotiation, becomes an arena where creatives must know how to champion their rights with growing resolve. Armed with a keen understanding of their sector and their personal needs, they can navigate the murky waters of uncertainty, emerging victorious in their pursuit of sustainable careers.
Learning Life and Career Design:
As the lines between work and life continue to blur, creatives find themselves at a crossroads, grappling with the delicate balance of life and work. Burnout and workaholism threaten to derail their journey, yet with proper awareness, they can forge ahead, sculpting a life that honors both passion and purpose. Through conscious design and thoughtful introspection, they can carve a unique path illuminated by fulfilment and meaning.
These are some fo the core pillars of career development that have been embraced by national campaigns in Canada, Australia and the UK over the last decade as part of a blueprint thats support people and policy to meet the changes in our unpredictable world of work. Over the last two years, delivering ‘Career Mapping for Creatives’ workshops in these skills to graduates across the arts, I have encountered a resoundingly positive response. Participants have found new perspectives on the careers future that have brought fresh hope and new options. To date most third level settings across the country offer no education in career management and development for creatives. We need this to change, and it can.
But the question remains – do we possess the will to enact change? The research is clear, the solutions within reach. It's time for universities and arts institutions alike to champion this cause – to pave the way for a future where every creative emerges from the depths of academia, not as mere graduates, but as empowered visionaries, poised to launch their careers with hope in their hearts.
“It doesn’t seem as scary. I have more faith and clarity now”
(Arts student & Career Mapping for Creatives Participant)
In conclusion, let us not merely toss aside the idea of career support for graduating creatives; instead, let us usher in a new era of empowerment – one where every creative takes the plunge, not into uncertainty, but into a sea of boundless possibilities. Together, let us nurture hope, ignite passion, and enable creatives to facilitate sustainable careers fuelled by knowledge and propelled by passion.
“I found the content to be an excellent introduction to a more positive vision of my future career. I feel that I can apply more of my innate abilities to various aspects of my future career”
(Arts student & Career Mapping for Creatives Participant)
To find out more about Career Mapping for Creatives and how we support graduates to develop sustainable careers visit us here.
The double-edged knife of having a calling: What can we learn from a decade of new research?
Do you feel like your career is a calling?
Like many creatives, it's the word that's always sat best for me when trying to understand my own career. Whether you call it 'following your dream', 'doing what you love', 'being bitten by the bug' or 'pursuing your passion', there's now a growing body of research on what it means to have a career as a calling.
We've learned a lot since we first coined the word 'vocation' (coming from the latin vocare meaning 'to call') and studies have been done on groups commonly associating their work with callings such as teachers, doctors, nurses, clergy, and creatives. Perhaps less expectedly zookeepers also fit into this category. Interestingly they seem to epitomise the double-edged knife of living out a calling in our modern times. They are typically highly qualified, committed individuals who see their work as benefiting the wider world (conserving endangered species) while also having to regularly engage in 'dirty-work' (literally shovelling shit in this case) at often exploitative working conditions and levels of pay.
But how do we define a career that's our calling, and what makes this kind of career so unique?
What is a Calling?
There are many proposed definitions of calling in career research. Most point towards a sense of duty and purpose, experienced as a push or pull from within or without, towards meaningful work. I think the following definition by Dobrow & Tosti-Kharas (2011) covers most of the bases;
"a consuming, meaningful passion people experience toward a domain"
One of the most recent and in-depth additions to our understanding of calling in the modern career comes from Work as Calling Theory (Dik & Duffy 2018). Drawing from over 200 studies across ten years of research, these theorists added additional elements to the concept of career as calling. They proposed that those who experienced their career as a calling tended to:
(a) approach their work in a way that ties it to a sense of meaning and purpose
(b) focus on prosocial contributions they can make through their work
(c) identify an external and/or internal force guiding them to a particular career
What's new here is the recognition that having a sense of calling involves 1. a 'prosocial' contribution - we not only want to do what we find to be meaningful but it's important that it has a positive impact on the world around us too and 2. there is a 'guiding force' which seems to be, well... calling us. These additional points are what separate having a calling from meaningful work or work done principally to meet financial needs.
The fact that many of us see our work as our passion and feel 'called' towards doing it both for ourselves and the greater good may account for why many creatives are so tenaciously resilient in pursuing it. While this can leave us vulnerable to some clear pitfalls it also offers us many possibilities in terms of living a fulfilling life.
The Bright Side of Callings
As you might imagine from all this talk of meaning and passion, careers as a calling are very much associated with what is referred to as 'life-enhancing outcomes' in the research. Before you get to enjoy any of these benefits though, you must first recognize that you have a calling (if indeed you do) and be in the process of responding to it.
Access to opportunity is a very real barrier to anyone hoping to follow their calling. It's estimated that only 10% of the world's youth will experience the freedom to actually pursue a calling. For many of us in the West with inherent privilege pursuing a calling may be a complex but it is, for most, a possibility.
Perceiving your career as a calling seems to set off a chain reaction. Once we've noticed a type of work that we find meaningful we tend to explore it. Indeed, the more we recognize what we find to be personally meaningful, the more we position ourselves intuitively around the people and places that can facilitate that calling. We tend to find our tribe and fit quite naturally. This is why for most of us career guidance in secondary education is less of a need. We are in the fortunate position of knowing what we love and where to find it already. 'Living' our callings actively in this way leads to a greater sense of career commitment and a stronger sense of personal identity. The story of who we are and why we do what we do makes sense to us and is one we enjoy.
Having this type of career clarity is becoming increasingly important for everyone. The average person may change career a number of times during their lifetime and it is not uncommon for many of us to move between multiple jobs and companies in a single year. Where once people could reliably identify themselves in relation to their company or place of work we are moving towards a world where more and more people will need to make sense of their own career stories in order to feel at home no matter where they are or what might happen.
Luckily for most creatives this is something we do naturally and having a sense of calling only bolsters our ability to do so. Despite all of its complexities, living out a calling has much to offer us.
Research has shown living out a calling to have positive effects in the following areas:
Job Satisfaction: getting to pursue what you find most meaningful in a self-directed way that leads to a greater good unsurprisingly leads to a greater sense of satisfaction with your work. It's worth noting here that satisfaction comes from our own subjective evaluations of past and present work experiences and future possibilities. Our level of satisfaction with our careers is very much of our own making and in the hands or mouths of others.
High performance: People living out their callings have been identified as high-performers in the work environment (there's a darkside here too - more below). We know to that there is a spill over effect here too in terms of our wider life. Feeling confident, competent and satisfied in our work tends to lead to better ...?
Motivation: the more intrinsic and self-directed our career goals are the more motivated we become. When we approach our careers or calling in a proactive fashion like this we tend to experience being more creative, committed and resilient in doing so. Interestingly, theorists suggest it the extrinsic goals (fame, wealth, and motivations of those working in the financial sector that can lead to kinds of manipulation, short-sightedness and poor leadership that resulted in the economic crash of 2008 - need to add in a missing word, and close the brackets.
Well-being: Where we have the opportunity to engage with our calling actively, and do so, we typically experience greater wellbeing. This is in part due to the feeling of competence we get from doing what we love and what we feel we can do well. Also, due being around the types of people, ideas and places we find interesting and engaging. The fact that living out a calling is inherently self-directed means we get all the benefits that come with being master of your own fate in that regard.
The Role of Support.
We know that those with a calling who have access to career support do better in terms of living them out. Their experience is generally more positive than those who feel that there are more barriers to their career as a calling than available support. Research in this area highlights the need for support at every age and stage of our careers. We need gatekeepers, people of influence, family members, peers and close friends all to recognise the challenges of pursuing a calling and to do what they can to support us in whatever ways they can. No matter where you are in your career you’ll be in a position to support another too. Either as a friend, peer, person of influence, advocate, mentor etc
Support is a mediating factor influencing our experience of our callings as being on the bright or dark side. Thankfully there is a growing understanding of this and organisations like Minding Creative Minds in Ireland and Freelancers Make Theatre Work in the UK are among a growing number actively supporting creative careers in this way.
We will all have our own version of the dark side of our career as calling, but what comes up again and again in the research and how might we tackle it?
The Dark Side of Callings
Awareness is often the first step when addressing any problem situation. So what are the blind spots for those who are pursuing careers as calling?
Not answering the call: Research has highlighted that those who have a sense of calling do roughly as well as those who don't in terms of well-being and performance. It was a third group that seemed to come out worst; those who perceived they had a calling but were not actively pursuing it. See the questions below to evaluate your level of engagement and what areas might need attention. It's important to note that our callings can and do change over time in the same way that what we care about shifts overtime. Where a calling can't be pursued actively, or where we meet a dead-end in one way or another, it can be helpful to get the cycle going again by looking to find a way to make your work more meaningful. Exploring in this way, for most, is what leads to identifying a calling in the first place.
Mismatch in perceived and actual ability: One study on musicians showed how we can become blinded by our own sense of calling and assume that our talent doesn't need development. Our talents, skills and abilities are massive resources and they need nurturing, calling or not. Having an eye on how we are maintaining and building upon our skills and abilities is crucial for a sustainable career.
Financial insecurity: Was it not ever thus? A recent study looking at the experience of more than 100 creatives from across Europe who had moved from capital cities to more regional ones as a result of the cost of living reported a number of positive outcomes. By moving to a smaller or more rural setting (for many their hometowns) creatives reported they were able to make more art, collaborate more with other creatives and their quality of life increased. For those of us living in capital cities reaching the same outcomes might mean identifying your basic need for good living and aiming to make them the bottom line. For most creatives it means structuring our work in ways that support us both financially and creatively in the long term.
The Big Three: These have been particularly associated with those who feel their careers to be a calling as opposed to freelancers more generally. Love is blind, as the old saying goes and it would seem that loving what can regularly blind us to the risks of the following:
Workaholism: Having a career we love can of course lead to a dominant focus on career over other key areas of life. Sometimes the very nature of our working contracts and environments mean we have to advocate very actively for a sustainable balance. The absence of which can lead to...
Burnout: I think of this as work that does not meet our needs. Typically our needs for rest, free time, hobbies, health, wellbeing, and personal relationships are key in protecting us from burnout.
Exploitation: When there are people who love what they do so much they'd do it for free in a sector where demand is much lower than supply, exploitation seems to be a recurring issue. Again, knowing what your needs and rights are here and developing knowledge and ability to advocate for them can often lessen, or in some cases eradicate, exploitation. At the very least knowing it when you see it creates the opportunity to avoid it in the same place in the future.
Pursuing your calling in the 21st century has as many possibilities as it has pitfalls. What's different today (and moving forward) is the ever increasing rate of change and uncertainty we face. By taking a wider overview of the risk and rewards of our callings we can begin to map our own ways forward. In a word, adaptability will be the key skill for managing a sustainable career path over time. Being curious about the options that lie around you, concerned about the 'dark sides' in the same way a sailor would be of rocks. Knowing what areas of your career are both within and without your ability to control and learning to focus strategically on the former. Being skilled in these areas enables those who can pursue a calling to do so with an increasing confidence to meet whatever changes they might encounter along the way.
To what degree are you currently living out your calling?
Do you have regular opportunities to live out your calling? If not, what can you start doing to create more opportunities to do so that lies fully within your control?
Are your current roles, practices, and jobs fully aligned with your values and calling? If not, how can you move the dial a little further in each area towards doing so? How can you make your work more personal and meaningful wherever it is?
Are you currently engaging in activities that align with your calling? If not, what can you start? What could you experiment with doing?
Why haven’t you heard of the Boundaryless Career before?
The data suggests that the creative industry is structured and maintained by Boundaryless Careers. So why have you never heard of them before?
The boundaryless career was the title given to careers like yours and mine in 1996 by theorists Arthur and Rousseau. They sought to understand how freelancers develop and maintain careers over time, as they move from project to project. Research was conducted on creative careers right across the film industry in Hollywood, and further afield, to uncover how people entered the industry, established themselves and sustained their careers. From this work a theory was outlined, strategies identified and guidelines constructed. All aimed at understanding how successful freelance careers like yours and mine develop. These ideas have gone on to inform governments, arts council policies and artists’ development projects across the world.
So why haven’t you, as a freelance creative, heard of them before?
Well, you might have done if you work in arts policy, career development or perhaps as the result of a very random google search.
However if, like me, you only stumbled across these ideas twenty years after starting your own creative career, you might struggle to understand how that could be.
Surely if there was research like that it would be a part of every arts course in the land? You’d have heard someone throw the term around over a coffee or pint as you talked shop with a fellow creative? Some helpful soul would have dropped the ideas in your ear as you first spoke of your interest in pursuing a creative career?
The Boundaryless Career: Who’s driving the bus?
Boundaryless careers refer to careers that are not bound to any one employer, job or organisation. The name sits in contrast to traditional careers, the bounded ones; those that remain within the context of one employer, job or organisation.
A metaphor that is helpful here is to think of the bounded career as being a passenger on a company’s bus. The company decides the overall direction of travel, when you can get on or off, and where you sit throughout.
In comparison, the boundaryless career is one where you drive your own bus from project to project. You are responsible for driving, directing, maintaining and improving your bus as you go. It’ll be of no surprise to hear that the data suggests that creative industries are structured and maintained by Boundaryless careers.
But what’s new here? Haven’t we always had to find our own way in our career? Yes, we have, but the Boundaryless career theory offers us for a clear overview of how we do that effectively for the first time.
Boundaryless careers require a much broader set of skills and competencies than more traditional ones in terms of career management. Traditional bounded career-goers have less decisions to make, on a less regular basis, about the direction of their careers and get more support in making them. Most companies offer regular appraisals, career support through HR or career coaching and the option of popping in to your manager to talk about the next stage of your career when you feel you need to. All very helpful.
Freelancers by contrast, have more decisions to make, more often and have less support in making them.
Speak to any creative who’s just entered the sector and they will tell you how ill-equipped they feel to deal with the reality of their freelance career. They are trying to make their way on a bus they have no idea how to drive, with no map, and with little in the way of career support.
"For the individual worker (creative) project networks provide more varied work, opportunity, and development potential then do traditional firm careers."
Candace Jones
Every type of meaningful career, be it bounded, boundaryless or otherwise, will have its challenges and opportunities. Knowing about Boundaryless careers and being able to take an informed approach to your own means you can pre-empt challenges, build relevant skills and start from a place of knowing.
Boundaryless Career Stages
Much of modern career theory looks at how we best develop our careers in a world that is constantly changing. As a result, there has been a move away from looking at careers as a progression of neatly defined stages where you predictably move from one to the next. The boundarlyess career is dated in this respect but still offers us a useful frame to understand our career development blind spots and where we might be best invest our time and energy next.
Beginning: Getting access to the industry
Identifying gatekeepers and your tribe
Demonstrating interpersonal skills and making connections
Showing motivation and persistance
Crafting: Learning required skills and industry culture.
Learning technical skills and roles
Assimilating industry culture - norms and values
Demonstrating reliability and commitment
Navigating: Building reputation and personal networks
Establishing reputation through quality work
Expanding one's skills and competencies
Developing and maintaining personal contacts
Maintaining: Expanding the profession and balancing the personal
Mentoring and sponsoring others.
Balancing personal needs and professional demands
I think a more helpful way of exploring these stages is to think of them as a cycle. Like the seasons of the year. The more familiar we become with each season the more confident we become in managing them,. Change in our career becomes a natural process we learn to be on the lookout for.
Boundaryless Career Competencies: Getting granular
The theory moves on to explore what skills and competencies the creatives in the film industry were using to move across stages, and this, for me, is where it gets really interesting. Here is where we begin to see in detail what driving the bus of your creative career really entails.
The image that the authors of this theory use to describe the process at play here is one of multiple threads being spun together to create a unified, sustainable career. I think it's notable how many of these threads are missing from how we, both as individuals and as a sector, think about creative career development.
Typically our focus falls on just two strands. Knowing What and Knowing Where; training, creating work, gaining exposure and on the job experience. All of which are crucial but far from the full picture as you can see.
If we are interested in developing sustainable careers the Boundaryless Career reminds us to broaden our approach to a much wider and more holistic one. One that includes Knowing Why, Knowing Whom, Knowing When, Knowing How. This is quite different from our traditional approach to career development which is based primarily on bounded careers.
“Good interpersonal and communication skills are critical for career success in the film/creative industries because of the highly interdependent and ambiguous nature of the work"
Candace Jones
We are beginning to see things change. Support services for mental health within the creative sector have blossomed as we begin to fully acknowledge the challenges of maintaining a boundaryless career. Universities and third level training are also beginning to provide creatives with workshops in boundaryless career skills.
The cogs in the machine are beginning to move but as a freelancer you don’t have to wait for the machine to get there. You can start as and where you are. You are, after-all, driving your own bus and permission is not required to either pick a new direction, park up for awhile or do whatever you feel you need to develop your own career.
Next Steps:
Review the Boundaryless Career Competencies overview above.
Based on where you are right now in your career, identify some projects or actions in each area that you could do to develop your own career.
Now create a 'quick win' list for each section to get the ball rolling; a few simple 5-10min actions for each, to do in the next week or so. A single email, piece of research etc. just to get the ball rolling.
Identify which area you would reap the greatest benefit from focusing on right now. That could be an area you are already doing well that you want to build upon, or a blind spot that you have neglected.
Summary
The boundaryless career is far from the full picture. Criticisms made of it have been that it doesn't acknowledge fully the systemic issues that cut marginalised groups and individuals out. Neither does it address the level of uncertainty in our career progression or the role of random chance, which we know to be a significant factor.
Still, the boundaryless career offers us an understanding of the territory we move in as creatives and a road map for how we might begin to sustain our careers long term. It gives us the lie of the land. As such the Boundaryless career offers us a starting point from which to evaluate where we are in our careers and what the next best step might entail..
"One must seek out projects that challenge and expand ones skills. In project networks, the individual, not the organisation, is responsible for developing and enhancing skills.”
Candace Jones
Fundamentally, the Boundaryless career theory introduces us to the skills of a self-directed creative career for the first time. It highlights the need for creatives to understand and take ownership of the who, what, where, when, how and why of our careers. It makes clear the complexity of freelance creative careers and offers us all a prism through which to understand them better.