Broker Case Study - Dreamfinder
Natasha Carlish's career has taken her from stage managing plays to producing TV documentaries, but her dream was always to make a feature film. She started making that a reality in 2002, when she set up her own production company. The early years were tough going, but today things are looking up. At the end of last year, Dreamfinder agreed a co-development deal which should see 'Cracks in the Pavement' - Natasha's first feature - made in the next twelve months.
The West Midlands is a region with a strong TV production sector (employing over a thousand people), but film production is limited to independent companies like Dreamfinder, supported by agencies such as Screen West Midlands. In this environment, success depends as much on collaboration as competition, and so Natasha has set up a Producers Forum to provide opportunities for her peers across the region to share information and provide mutual support. She and Dreamfinder colleague Tom Norton run monthly meetings as well as larger events, and the forum now has eighty members. As well as looking at Dreamfinder's internal training needs, Natasha was interested in whether Train to Gain would offer opportunities that she could promote to this network.
Like many micro-businesses in the creative industries, Dreamfinder's position is finely balanced. Natasha has built up a strong regional reputation and a high level of expertise - not to mention winning a BAFTA for the short film, 'Brown Paper Bag'. However, with only three staff, the company finds itself overstretched, undercapitalised and low on sales, so life continues to be precarious. For the future, Natasha intends to take advantage of the possibilities of low budget digital film, while trying to avoid the threat from larger companies which are moving into this field as it expands.
The Visit
A few minutes' walk from Birmingham New Street station and the redeveloped Bull Ring, Dreamfinder's office is in a Victorian warehouse built around a wharf on the Grand Union Canal. This 19th century industrial site has been redeveloped to meet the needs of today's cultural industries. There, Train to Gain broker Joan Smith and Amy Thomas, Skillset's Regional Manager, went to meet Natasha.
Over the course of an hour and a half, the visit gave Natasha a chance to talk through her thoughts and concerns about Dreamfinder's training needs, as well as learning more about opportunities from Skillset and Train to Gain. In the past year, Natasha had benefited from the Arts and Business mentoring scheme, which pairs arts professionals with senior business executives. She and Joan discussed the possibility of further leadership training.
The Outcomes
For a company of this size, where staff already have specialist skills, many of the options considered under Train to Gain are unlikely to apply. But Joan identified the opportunity for further high level training for Natasha, to build on her experience of the Arts and Business mentoring scheme.
What she suggested was the Director Development Programme. Run by the West Midlands LSC, this can offer up to £1000 towards the cost of training for senior management. While not specifically aimed at the creative industries, Natasha could see that this might benefit her - as well as others in the Producers Forum.
From Skillset's point of view, Amy believes this is an example of the benefits of the having generalist skills brokers deliver the Train to Gain programme. "There's a lot of stuff a broker can bring to these companies that I just wouldn't know about," she explains. In such a specialised industry, an employer will often assume that only sector specific training will be relevant. "What a broker like Joan brings is the ability to make connections - to see where a company might benefit from more generic offers of support that they might not have thought applied to them."