8 Years On, We’re Still Making Space for Young Leaders
Photo by Sinag Yuson at ‘Let’s Talk About Climate Justice Lab’ 2024
WE’RE STILL MAKING SPACE FOR YOUNG LEADERS IN RISING
This is a really exciting and crazy time at Rising. We are starting to think about what the agency needs for when Jess and I step down and hand over the directorship of the agency in 2026 to two new young leaders. Our commitment to a transitioning leadership model every 5 years is an active commitment to creating more opportunities for young people to lead and making sure that our agency remains as young and diverse as the community we serve.
We’re currently holding two tensions; the feeling that there’s soo many things we want to do before we step down, but also knowing that everything that will be, will be. It’s a good feeling; being excited for the future - especially during a time when that is rarely the case. We’re currently working on shoring up the agency with a new team member to lead on our community engagement work and new board members who will help oversee the transition and support whoever steps into the role of Co-Directors. 🎉
Taken by Sham Phat in 2018 at our Whose Culture lab.
STILL THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT
The agency has changed so much since I started at Rising back in 2018. The breadth of the work that we do has grown and shifted; we’ve been able to professionalise the work we do and package it in ways that make sense to us and our community. We still support our community through workshops, training and commissions, but our consultancy work now is more ambitious; spanning place-making, training for sector professionals, campaigns and research too. We still love the agility of being independent; earning our own income through commissions that energise us as well as receiving grants from trusts and foundations who really get us and want to resource the radical work we want to do.
Our community has changed too. They’ve shifted and grown around our projects, campaigns and their general life / circumstances. It feels like our community is more intentional about what they want from life and the sector (many of them can’t afford to not be) and it’s a privilege to be able to witness that and advocate for them alongside them.
When I joined Rising’s core team, as Engagement Producer, my role was focussed on supporting our community to shape Rising in ways that felt good for them, nurturing the sense of community between us and being a general hype-person. When the agency was smaller, cheerleading felt like a vital currency between. Then, when Jess and I stepped up as Co-Directors, we merged our former roles, Development Manager and Engagement Producer, into one role; Agency Producer, and hired (the amazing) Sid Boyer to take this forward. Sid has been integral to creating visible systems for getting our community paid work and supporting them to build their practices.
IT’S RELENTLESS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
It’s still a relentless time for young people. The challenges that we have to navigate feel all-encompassing and insidiously interconnected. We’re seeing more of our community being priced-out of the city, community members struggling to get to our meet-ups and events due to unreliable and expensive public transport, and becoming more reliant on already over-subscribed health and mental health services. It’s tough. Now that we are turning our attention to the upcoming transition, we want to dedicate more time to nurturing the leadership skills within the community whilst growing our agency work to ensure we can create even more paid opportunities for them. We’re hoping to see more young people stepping up as board members, to hold us accountable and hopefully, younger people excited to step into the Co-Directorship in 2026. In our last community survey, 51% of our community said they would be interested in potentially stepping up in this way or were interested to find out more - which is amazing. Bringing a new Community Producer into the team will be part of shaping that and deepening our engagement work across the city so that more young people feel truly empowered to lead. We will continue to shout ‘Young people are leaders NOW, not just in the future’ from the rooftops. It’s important that we never stop trying to make space for them. Watch this space! Exciting times ahead!
To find out more about the Community Producer role or Board Member roles, please check out our job descriptions here, deadline is 11:59pm on 17th November 2024
