Date
31 January 2023
Tags

Inspiring Creativity: Our new mission at It’s Nice That and what it means

We have redefined our purpose as a platform. Here, we outline what’s going to be changing – and, just as importantly, what will stay the same.

Share

Date
31 January 2023

Share

The eagle-eyed among you might have spotted a subtle change to our website’s masthead yesterday. Next to our logo is a new mission, which today reads “Inspiring Creativity”, whereas for the past 15 years it has read “Championing Creativity”. Now, we admit it’s not exactly the most profound alteration any of us have ever seen. Yet there’s a lot behind the shift from “Championing” to “Inspiring” – more than first meets the eye.

The most important thing to say upfront is that we will still continue to celebrate creatives, emerging and established alike, and to shine a spotlight onto their work. It’s what we started doing back in 2007, it’s part of our DNA, and that won’t be changing. But looking ahead at what we want to do as a platform over the next 15 years, it’s clear to us that we need to go beyond simply championing the creative community. We want to take a more active role in inspiring them, supporting them to make more fulfilling and more meaningful work. We want to help them make the most of their creativity.

Lofty words, right? But what does this actually mean in practice? Well, you might have already seen some of this new direction taking shape. For instance, earlier this month, we published The Lazy Report, a 47-page downloadable report taking an in-depth look at the importance of rest and recuperation in this fast-paced, productivity-obsessed industry. This report was put together by It’s Nice That’s Creative Insights department, a new team whose job it will be to publish deep dives like this one, supported by thorough research and original reporting. The idea is to give you, our readers and audience, deeper insights into the creative world, to help you carve out your own creative path.

Elsewhere, you might have seen Confession Session, our series of Reels over on Instagram, encouraging a more open and honest approach to creative work. There’s also our brand-new newsletter, The Index, which delivers visual trends and top creative talent directly to your inbox every other week, ensuring you’re always up to date and have fresh inspiration at your fingertips. Plus, we’ve refreshed the format of our monthly event, Nicer Tuesdays, introducing a longer Q&A to draw out as many insights as possible for our live audience. Very soon, you’ll also see some more educational content from us at It’s Nice That, because we know how important it is for creatives to continually learn and hone their craft.

Above

In The Lazy Report, we investigated whether the hunt for productivity might be hindering our creativity

Above
Left

Our flagship monthly event, Nicer Tuesdays, has had a makeover this year

Right

Our new newsletter, The Index, offers up fresh inspiration every fortnight

Above

Our new newsletter, The Index, offers up fresh inspiration every fortnight

However, this is really just the start. As we step into 2023 and beyond, we’re going to be launching a diverse range of new content strands, on the website and across our social channels, designed to inspire, offer insights and help you make the most of your creativity. Also, as you may have seen, we’re now a part of Residence – a global, interdisciplinary network of creative companies – which will allow us to reach even more people in the creative community worldwide.

Whilst we’re on the subject of our purpose as a platform, we also want to make it clear that there’s another part of our mission that won’t be changing – that’s our commitment to making the creative industry fairer and more diverse. Over the past three years, we at It’s Nice That have been focused on making sure we’re representing the breadth and diversity of the creative world across our content. We know that by far the greatest impact we can have is through using our platform and championing creatives from all backgrounds.

Our team has an ongoing target to ensure that 50 per cent of the creatives we champion within our Work category, and 50 per cent of the creatives we host as speakers at Nicer Tuesdays, are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds. Between September 2021 and August 2022 (when we last reported on this), we met both of these targets. Moving forward, we are now looking to expand our impact within the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion space to focus on other communities and areas as well, from disability to socio-economic background, class and much else besides.

It’s really important to us that, while we’re now looking more than ever to actively inspire creativity in you, our readers and audience, we’re also at the same time sticking to our core values and purpose. After all, we believe that creativity should be for everyone, which is why we’ll never stop looking to improve our industry, making it fairer and more diverse.

Of course, at the end of the day, you will be the judges of how we do against any mission, purpose or target. We’re excited for what the future holds for It’s Nice That, and we hope you join us on that journey. But we’re always keen to hear your opinion, too. If you have any thoughts on how we can improve what we do or if you have any other feedback, then please get in touch with our editor-in-chief Matt at ma@itsnicethat.com.

Thank you.

Above

Our new mission

Share Article

Further Info

About the Author

It's Nice That

This article was written by the It’s Nice That team. To find our editors and writers, please head over to our Contact page.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.