Welcome to Front Row by Futureative
We wanted to create a space that felt like you get the best seat in the house to everything we’re building. If Futureative is to become the home of independent creative careers, then we needed a place to share all of our best work.
A space to give you a little of everything, in different formats so you can choose your own adventure.
A space where we can give you polished work alongside more scrappy, behind the scenes.
And a place where those who can support us, can get a lot more from us, too.
We needed to create Front Row seats. And so here they are!
This is the home for everything we’re building at Futureative.
So welcome, to the Front Row.
How it started
For maybe the first time in my life, the name for a project idea came to me in the space of a few hours. I added it, pressed publish. That’s how Front Row was born. It doesn’t usually happen like that.
To be fair, I’ve been working on Futureative for many years.
On one hand, I’ve been working towards this whole brand for somewhere around two decades, since I was a teenager wondering how to “be a creative person” full-time.
On the other hand, it only really came to life in my mind over the last 12 months, thinking about the state of creativity in the age of an AI revolution. Wondering how creative people will build careers in tomorrow’s world.
This is not my first go at building a publication, a community and a series of conferences either. And if you’re new here, yes, that’s what we’re up to at Futureative.
From 2016 to somewhere around 2020 I was doing this work. Building a community which grew organically to 10,000 people. We produced three online conferences (for our brand, and others) that welcomed 11,000 attendees. And then the world got weird. I was crippled with burnout and I stopped for what was meant to be a couple of months and turned out to be a six or seven year hiatus from social media.
One of the best things I ever did was to walk away from something I poured my heart and soul into, and spend time thinking, teaching, and working as a creative wherever I could. But it didn’t feel like it at the time, only with the benefit of hindsight does something like that really make sense.
So here we are, and here you are; getting your first taste of what it might feel like to be on the Front Row of everything we’re producing. Because creative careers can often feel like they’re permanently stuck on hard mode. And we’re here to do whatever we can to try to change that.
If we haven’t met…
Hello! Sorry for blabbering on before introducing myself properly. I’m Steve Palfreyman and I’ve spent the past two decades working across the creative industries as a musician, educator, and honestly 100 other different titles would propably fit too. Through all of it, one curiosity has stuck with me, day in, day out: “How will creative people build sustainable careers in the future?”
I’ve been curiously paying attention through this ongoing age of digital disruption. All the while playing in bands, working on creative startups, launching my own products and communities, burning out, freelancing, and now starting all over again with Futureative.
I hold two degrees in arts management and I’ve spent nearly a decade in academia. I’ll be sharing work here that I hope is both thought-provoking and balanced. At the same time, I kind of feel like we’re all at a new day-one together. The world is changing so fast, we need each other’s perspective and experience more than ever.
I don’t have a magic bullet and I don’t have a step-by-step path. Creativity isn’t linear. But I do think we can learn to create our own luck, and it helps to do that alongside people who’ve been where we want to go.
That’s what Futureative can hopefully do for us. Yeah, not just you, but me too. Every time I build something here, it’s a little for me, and a little for you. Thinking about it like that I hope it becomes something that feels like we’re documenting and building together.
You’ve mentioned Futureative, but what is it?
Futureative is my company, and it’s somewhat of an umbrella brand for all my work going forward. Our mission is to create a brand that can be a place of education and support for creative people.
Our mission is to help creative people navigate the next decade of change. Our first step is a series of online summits bringing together real-world practitioners to share what’s actually working across creative practice, launching work and future trends.
This won’t be our last initiative, but we hope it creates enough groundswell that we can turn our attention to solving more problems that creative people face.
I want to live in a world where creative people wake up each day and confidently choose creativity, knowing it’s a viable and respected path. That’s the world we’re building towards. All the answers are not here yet; that’s why we’ll start with online summits, so we can learn from experts, meet with creatives, get feedback, insights, share knowledge. And I hope I am able to soak in as much as you, so that I can use this as fuel to work out what else to build.
Futureative is being built by a 100% creative team. We’re based in Melbourne, Australia. Independently funded, focused on serving Australia primarily, but with a vision to connect creatives from around the world.
When it comes to industry insights, events & knowledge, Australia is so often an after thought and we hope to change that by working in Australian timezones, featuring a minimum quota of Australian speakers at our events and pricing in AUD.
With that said, the creative industries is global and so too is much of our existing network. Futureative is being built for everyone that cares about creativity and considers themselves a creative person.
What you’ll find here
Essays, conversation recaps, behind-the-scenes of Futureative, and the inside view of building a creative brand in real time. Subscribers will get more, of course, and it’s the best way to stay in the loop.
But most importantly, we’re on a mission to create a space the is both informative, full of deep thinking yet feels approachable and empowering. We on’t subscribe to the idea that a business can only built with hooks, soundbytes and endless messages to make you feel terrible.
We’re here because we think the opposite is true.
Who is this for?
If you’re a creative person figuring out what comes next, I have a feeling you’ll love what we’re producing.
Musicians, writers, designers, comedians, filmmakers. But also educators, journalists, content creators & organisations who serve the creative industries and independent creative people.
Whatever creative pursuit you call your own, or creative sector you serve, if you put creativity at the centre of your life and career, you have hard-won creative skills that you use day-today, this is being built for you.
What you get as a free reader
Essays and honest conversation about creative careers
Behind-the-scenes of building Futureative and our online summits
Early access to summit announcements & related content
Recaps, roundups & curation from the events we produce.
Most of what we create will be freely available. Stay free forever if that works for you.
How to support us
We’re building something that can over time hopefully gives back to the people in the creative industries. But I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be challenging, to create something that can stay truly independent.
If you want to help us get there, there are a couple of ways to back us. Your support goes directly to our 100% independent creative team and helps us keep our events affordable.
Paid subscribers get extra content, summit discounts & discussions and the good vibes from supporting something made by, for and with creative people.
Season Pass members get everything above, plus automatic VIP ticket upgrades to any Futureative summit while your membership is active. Alongside extra good-vibes for being a key part of our funding model, thank you in advance if you are ever able to help us this way!
We want to over time change the way some of the industry operates, and I doubt we’ll get it right to begin with. That’s why we’ll be publishing a Ethos Page to showcase how our business model works, how we’re funding Futureative, and when we’re fully funded, how we’ll be reinvesting those funds towards other initiatives.
There’s a lot of exciting things to come. We’ll keep adding value for the people who back us.
Where to next?
If this sounds good, welcome (again) to Front Row!
If you’re not yet subscribed, please consider jumping on board.
And you might like to find us on other platforms you frequent.
But rest assured, Front Row will be the home, so if you want a bit of everything, you’re in the right place.
Here’s where else to find us:
We’re @futureative most places you likely are:
YouTube → | Instagram → | TikTok → | Threads → | LinkedIn → |
For speaker or partner enquiries, you can connect with Steve on LinkedIn →
