My name is Eleanor. I’m an artist, writer, poet and performer.
And I’m a coach and mentor for people like you.
I’ve been having big creative dreams since I was a little kid and I’ve achieved every one of them.
I wanted to go to art school. I went to art school. I wanted to move cities and study history of art. I moved cities and I studied history of art.
I wanted to work in marketing. I worked in marketing for big clients like Marks and Spencer, Lloyds TSB, Unilever, New Look and BMW. I wrote, pitched and won a £1.5m communications strategy for a national telecoms provider. I was 25. I wanted to share my research with people. I shared my research at academic conferences in New York, Milan and Stockholm. I wanted to have more time. I got more time when I quit my lucrative marketing job to go self-employed. I was 28.
I wanted to teach. I taught fashion marketing at a red-brick university and supported more than 130 students with their final year projects. I wanted to travel. I got rid of all my belongings and bought a one-way ticket to South America.
I wanted to write poetry. I started writing poetry and in the first six months my work was exhibited at London Design Week. I wanted to perform. I performed and in a year I went from a basement pub to the opening night of Leeds International Festival.
Since 2015, I’ve been helping people like you achieve their big creative dreams.
I have met so many people who gave up on their creative dream. Even little creative dreams, like drawing every day or running a blog.
They just gave up and something in them died.
I realised I don’t want people to die like that. I don’t want creative dreams to die like that.
When I think of how many people left something behind, something that would’ve changed their life, changed the world and brought them so much joy, it crushes me.
It crushes me because there have been many points in my life where I could’ve given up and that creative joy I’ve experienced would’ve died.
My parents didn’t want me to go to art school. I didn’t know anyone in that new city. I didn’t know anything about SEO or copywriting when I got my first job. More senior people in my agency thought I was naive and ‘bossy’.
I wasn’t sponsored to go to those conferences. I didn’t have a PhD. I had to save up every month before I went self-employed. I called 200 people in the first three months and got two jobs.
I’d never taught 18-year-olds before. I didn’t know how to deal with university politics. My friends and family didn’t want me to get a one-way ticket. I’d never written poetry before. I’d never performed before.
But I believed I had the capabilities to plan, execute and achieve my creative dreams. So I set out to learn how to do that. And then I did that.
When I think about giving up at all those points – all those times when I didn’t know what or why or how or when, all those times when I felt I couldn’t do it any more – I feel crushed.
That’s because the happiness and joy simply holding on to my creative dreams has brought me is immeasurable.
Holding onto those dreams and actively working towards them is what has made my life worth living.
