Cloudburst Baby!

So I've been keeping this a secret (if you know me very badly) for a really long time now, but I was so thrilled to finally announce last week that myself and my partner Patrick have created our own company CLOUDBURST PRODUCTIONS LTD!!!

I'm going to be writing a series of posts about Cloudburst and sharing our development with you here as we build our company, so that we can support you too & hopefully help in some small way. In this particular post I'm going to talk you through why we decided to do this now and how that looks for us so, let's dive in!

If you've been following this blog for a while you'll know that throughout last year I became a freelancer and charted my journey in posts like this sharing my experiences, the highs, lows and everything in between. I got to work on some amazing projects and met a wide range of brilliant collaborators broadening my horizons and developing my skills too, something I am truly grateful for.

However, as the year went on, I realised that while I knew why I had taken on each project as a whole they didn't always advance me towards my goals of championing new writing, creating incredible work for stage and screen and supporting new artists to have sustainable and thriving careers. I found myself wondering what it was all leading to, if anything, and how I was going to use this project by project approach to really make the difference I wanted to make in the sector. In the end I realised that to do that I needed to do something different.

After speaking with Patrick I found he was asking the same questions about where his work was leading too. We also spoke about how we'd both felt at times how lacking in support the industry can seem if you're not part of a highly competitive artist development program or writers groups, which seem few and far between. We also talked about the difficulties artists have transitioning between mediums and learning the skills to write effective cover letters, CVs and manage freelance working and more. We both knew we wanted to somehow change all of that, so Cloudburst was born.

Here we can choose each project, develop new programmes of work from the ground up and use our skills to support not only the artists we work with on our projects, but the wider sector too. Big goals huh? More of that in another post!

Now to the practicalities.

One thing that I will always try to be on this blog is honest, so I also wanted to talk a little about why we did this now and possibly more importantly what has allowed us to. Setting up a company has been something that I have always felt called to do, but also felt very unqualified to do, but as they say 'God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called' however there were certain things I knew that I needed to do before taking the leap to go out on my own.

1. I knew I wanted to have experience working across the sector in different roles, for venues for companies freelancing etc so I could learn the skills I need first hand as well as explore different business models from the inside.

2. I wanted to work with a partner to build something new and different with the support of another person as we grew and developed.

3. I needed to be in a financial position where I could afford to take time out of paid roles to build the company from the ground up.

4. I needed to be mentored and supported to ensure I was going about this the right way.

All of these things came together in late 2023, especially when I found out I had the support of the incredible Stage One bursary. Without their support this really wouldn't have happened as it allows me the freedom to take the time away to develop our work, provides that financial stability while we begin to generate income streams and gives the support and mentor I needed to really thrive. We are also lucky to both be able to work part time alongside our company work to support ourselves and to have some wonderful supporters in and out of the industry who have helped us get on our feet.

I realise that it was luck as well as a lot of hard work that got us to the point where we could launch and begin our companies journey, but I hope this gives you a sense just how much has been going on behind the scenes across years of roles and chats to get us to this point.

I also hope that you'll follow along for our journey and come with us as we discover what Cloudburst can do!