{"id":3224,"date":"2025-06-11T15:10:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T15:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/?p=3224"},"modified":"2025-06-11T15:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T15:33:14","slug":"stopping-making-sense-on-being-middle-aged-in-the-creative-industries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/stopping-making-sense-on-being-middle-aged-in-the-creative-industries\/","title":{"rendered":"Stopping making sense (on being middle-aged in the creative industries)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/paSczHpWC3I?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Next month will mark 20 years since my first design job (an internship at the Design Council in their now defunct <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designweek.co.uk\/issues\/november-2006-online\/red-disbands-as-key-staff-join-new-cottam-initiative\/\">RED team<\/a>). Looking back, I&#8217;ve done a lot of different things. I&#8217;ve started businesses, I&#8217;ve worked for others as a PAYE employee and I am both a Chair and a trustee. I&#8217;ve been on stage as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/speaking\/\">public speaker<\/a> and behind the scenes as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eventbrite.co.uk\/e\/papercamp-4-tickets-1027368325317?aff=oddtdtcreator\">curator<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.meetup.com\/iotlondon\/\">community<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/how-to-organise-diverse-events-a-production-checklist-36d2c14655d7\/\">organiser<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/on-project-managing\/\">producer<\/a>. I even figured out how to deal with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/a-beginners-guide-to-exporting-post-brexit\/\">post-Brexit imports and exports<\/a>. I&#8217;ve helped funds invest millions in research and startups and I&#8217;ve applied and received over \u00a31M in funding for various projects. I&#8217;ve written three <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/books\/\">books<\/a> and have more writing projects in mind. In my 50s, I&#8217;d like to start a <a href=\"https:\/\/lowcarbondesigninstitute.org\/2025\/05\/23\/principles-for-a-climate-informed-creative-curriculum\/\">school<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, (maybe because of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/services-or-interactions\/\">perimenopause<\/a> or the job search) I started to worry that I didn&#8217;t have a cohesive story to tell.\u00a0 I started making myself smaller on my CV. Took some things out. Flattened myself a little. But I&#8217;ve decided that life is too short to try to fit society&#8217;s ideal of what a middle aged woman in the creative industries should have achieved by now. I don&#8217;t work in accounting. I&#8217;m not supposed to make sense and the red thread is me. So I&#8217;ll continue with my <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Counterpoint\">contrapuntal<\/a> career and look forward to the weirdness of the next 20 years. As long as I continue to learn and am helpful to my clients or colleagues, i&#8217;m good. It&#8217;s all good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Next month will mark 20 years since my first design job (an internship at the Design Council in their now defunct RED team). Looking back, I&#8217;ve done a lot of different things. I&#8217;ve started businesses, I&#8217;ve worked for others as a PAYE employee and I am both a Chair and a trustee. I&#8217;ve been on&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/stopping-making-sense-on-being-middle-aged-in-the-creative-industries\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Stopping making sense (on being middle-aged in the creative industries)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-Q0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3224"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3231,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions\/3231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}