Grow Collective was is inviting new members. If you’re a freelancer in or around Bristol, UK then we might have had something interesting for you.
Sat, 4th Aug, 2007: We’re bursting at the seams trying to assimilate everyone. Thank you to everyone who replied. Hopefully we‘ll be inviting members again soon!
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (about 50 miles and 4 years) Charlie Markwick, Paul Whitrow and I got together to formalise an idea that I’d first broached with Charlie in 2001. The idea was that mature professionals with specialist skills who worked for themselves might come together as a co–operative consortium to provide services. Grow was born.
The principles are simple: Everyone brings their professional profile and specialist skills with them but retains the right to claim any work done under their own name, company or site. Everyone is equal under the parent brand with agreement reached democratically. We would work to co–operative principles, and promote the kind of personal relationships with clients Charlie had been enjoying for over 20 years.
By allowing everyone to develop their careers personally and anchoring the organisation around personalities, the parent brand would benefit by association: The focus was on people and their skills, not the brand per se. However, everyone would share a common set of ethics and practices. Everyone would be customer facing, with primary project managers agreed jointly on a project by project basis. Project fees would be split based on contribution, agreed in advance between us, but reviewed at project close.
It was a heady time, forming an organisation that was completely different to the agency model that is so prevalent in our business where, in the worst examples, all the talent is white–labeled and all credit assimilated into the agency brand.
Since then, Jon Gibbins and Alan Colville have joined us; we’ve proven we can more than just compete with traditional agencies, and we’re going from strength to strength. So much so that we are turning down more work than we take in, by a ratio of five to one. That’s why we’re inviting new members from Bristol or the surrounds, especially interface and graphic designers with a special interest in Web standards, user centred design, information architecture and accessibility. Read the invitation post for more, or drop me a line directly using my vCard, below.
The Grow Collective model of a technical and creative Co–operative Consortium is something close to my heart, which I know has the ability to help budding and mature freelancers work on projects that may ordinarily not be available to them alone, yet still retain their independence. If you’re considering starting one, or just want to find out more about how they work, please feel free to drop me a line anytime, I’d love to help if I can.
