This is a 'new style' conversational blog.....
Emma - well, its 2025 and I can't remember the last time I wrote a blog.
So much has happened, Craig left his full time employment in August, we were awarded funding from Tees Valley Rural Fund to start our £10 courses project in September and have stayed busy ever since!
From my point of view our work life balance is more work work than I would like but we aren't very structured with our time and if we created clear work times I would feel much more organised.
One of my targets for this year was to get our business to business offering off the ground and that started nicely with a promo video created with 'Like Us' Media company, Craig has just posted it onto Linked In today, I'm not expecting it to have a massive impact but we need to start somewhere with that side of the business.
I'm due to have an operation next week with an inpatient stay in hospital, the schedule gives me 5 days off so hopefully that's all I need until our holiday in a few weeks - its all go but a break in the sunshine will be very welcome!
Craig - Last time we did a blog was months ago , you are slipping !!!
This is a very unorthodox way of doing the blog but never mind I'm just doing as I am told!!!!
For me , since August my plan was to get as many artistic tutors to collaborate on this site as possible, that is way much easier said than done and I am still working hard each day looking for "the ones". I'm very picky when it comes to choosing artists, the main thing I would like is empathy when teaching , not everyone is Picasso or ...........(thinking )........................Tony Hart but giving people that belief that they can achieve anything with the help of you goes a very long way and produces better results.
As Emma says we are full on at the moment with workshops and some very exciting projects and collaborations coming up very soon , I do think and always have had that thought that if you love what you do you are never really working anyway so work/life balance is exceptional . I think we will eventually get to a point where we have a conversation of how much is too much but it's not even close as I love what we are doing.
Looking forward to the next 3 months or so apart from Emma's op of course, the funded classes are slowly coming to an end and for us as Side Burner , to get our name out there , have been hugely successful and we are so grateful to be given that opportunity, without that funding we wouldn't have met the people , who have offered us workshops, group sessions, projects and friendship , that is what this is all about , connections, feeling that you are a part of something great and feeling good about yourself.
Giving your time to someone is the most valuable thing you'll ever do because you'll never get that time back so for all these people giving us 3 hours , 4.5 hours, 2 hours of their precious time makes me feel great and I hope you also feel great after any of our workshops or courses because that is our aim!!!
Stay creative , we are only just getting started#
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e5WN1a3rzf41d26FIh6paHrpxYKB21ln/view?usp=drive_link
