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Creative Access Spotlight – Theo Perrin

We’re back with another Spotlight Series blog post! Under the spotlight, this time is our super hard-working Copywriter, Theo Perrin.

Can you introduce yourself?

I’m Theo! I’m a Copywriter and CRM Assistant at Creative Access.

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Could you describe your role in a little more detail?

My job involves populating our opportunities page with the hundreds of internships and jobs that we advertise through our networks, hopefully making them as informative and appealing to potential candidates as possible.

Part of my work is also making sure that these roles find their audience; I contribute to our Twitter page and put together our fortnightly email newsletter to candidates, offering a bitesize roundup of live roles in the creative industries to those who have signed up with us. I also liaise with our many employer partners to make sure we have all the right details for them.

What’s your favourite thing about your role?

With a background in creative writing, I’m always going to enjoy a chance to create or edit something so that it reads well for an audience. Hopefully telling them everything they need to know without putting them to sleep!

But beyond this, I find a lot of satisfaction in discovering better ways to work. I’ve joined the organisation at a time when it’s busier than ever and there is plenty of thinking about our approach to what we do behind the scenes. Finding even tiny solutions by myself or in conversation with colleagues is secretly my favourite part of the job.

Talk to us about your writing background, please, Theo.

I’ve been writing in my own time, mainly pieces of fiction, since I was 13. I also wrote a 50,000-word fantasy-crime novel with my friend back in sixth form. Although I didn’t think it would lead to anything, I knew I didn’t want to give up writing, so I went and studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham and kept pulling at that thread.

I would love to be able to expand and grow my skill set and put it to use across a broader range of mediums, like blog posts or video scripts. It’s hard to find the time to write for myself at the moment, but I make space in my life outside work to keep my hand in writing whenever I can.

Tell me more about why you joined CA. How do you feel connected to the company?

To expand on an earlier question, a big part of what makes my role enjoyable is that I’m invested in the success of CA’s work on a deep level and want to see the organisation keep growing. It was a priority for me when searching for a job that I would be in an organisation where I didn’t feel alienated from its goals.

This is also hopefully what Creative Access can offer to those who find new roles through them too. There is often a lot of focus on your specific daily tasks when searching for jobs, but I think ideally the bigger picture is also compelling and drives you forward.

But it’s not as straightforward to find that connection to your labour in an era of hyper-specialised work. When your ancestor fashioned a tool to make farming crops easier a few thousand years ago, they knew exactly how this was going to help their community. So, the chance to help a wider range of people find work they care about in the creative industries was really special to me and something I didn’t want to miss.

It feels strange to put it so bluntly considering what I look back on as a really positive and varied upbringing, but I was raised in a low-income household. This absolutely shaped my perspective on what opportunities different people can access.

Then growing up through the past decade, watching funding being squeezed from creative education and extracurricular activities, knowing that fewer people than ever are financially equipped to enter industries that were already known to be very insular and difficult for newcomers. All these things have a big impact if you value the arts and cultural sectors, and happen to feel a little edgy about your financial security.

And finally, if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?

This is quite a poignant question considering the past year and a half isn’t it! I would love to repeat a past holiday and go back to the south of Spain and spend more time looking at Moorish architecture. So Cordoba, Seville, Granada. Lots of very intricate and geometric Islamic art we don’t always think of when we talk about Europe.

Having said this, I think my most memorable travel experiences have been finding myself in unexpected places, doing things that aren’t necessarily on the itinerary. Like I once spent 30 hours sat on a train going through Canada because a freight train broke down on the same line. It wasn’t a sleeper train, so I spent 30 hours more or less sat upright, trying to read a book. The food carriage started running out of things that weren’t snacks. I was very bored and tired but these irritating details disappear when you’re looking back on dull experiences; memory smooths them over. I was staring at mountains and endless forests I’d never seen before. It was very peaceful in a way.