Pay it forward: We’re offering young creatives free Extra Nice membership

UPDATE (1 April 2021): This offer has now ended. Please be aware that if you purchase an Extra Nice account from now onwards, we will no longer be matching this with a free Extra Nice account through Create Jobs and Creative Lives in Progress.

When we launched our Extra Nice membership last November, we explained how part of its mission was to help diversify our industry and support young creatives. One of its key pillars is the Extra Nice Fund, a pot of money that we’ll be putting each year towards meaningful creative projects focused on rectifying the lack of diversity in the creative industry. To launch that fund, we worked with Okocha Obasi, giving the recently graduated creative £1,000 to take his project, RaceZine, to the next level.

Today, we’re delighted to announce a new initiative centred on Extra Nice. This has been made possible by a substantial donation from Nalden, one of the original co-founders of WeTransfer, now the head of Adelee, and someone we at It’s Nice That have collaborated with many times over the past 14 years. Thanks to his donation, we’ve been able to set up 150 free Extra Nice accounts for 150 young creatives from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the creative industry and young people who are currently trying to build careers in the industry.

We can also announce, starting this morning, a new offer for anyone who has seen Extra Nice over the past few months but who hasn’t yet signed up. For the next six weeks, until 31 March 2021, for each person who joins Extra Nice through the regular channels on our site, we’ll set up another account free of charge for a young creative.

For both of these new initiatives, we’ve partnered with the wonderful folks at Create Jobs, an employability programme for young Londoners from underrepresented backgrounds who are interested in working in the creative and digital industries. Create Jobs runs a wide range of programmes, including courses on photography and masterclasses on what it takes to become the next startup founder. The team there has been helping us get in touch with alumni from their programmes who are keen to join Extra Nice and who would benefit most from the initiative.

Our sister company Creative Lives in Progress (formerly Lecture in Progress) is also a partner on this scheme. They are offering Extra Nice memberships to the young creatives who join their free monthly portfolio reviews, which are open to those in their first year of a creative career but not currently in full-time work.

So, if you want to support the next generation of creative talent, if you’ve worked for a while in the industry and want to pay it forward, then join Extra Nice today or at any time before 31 March 2021 to make the most of this offer – and we’ll do the rest.

As an Extra Nice Supporter, you’ll also have access to all of the benefits that regular Supporters enjoy, including access to Extra Search, an inspiring new way to explore the It’s Nice That archive. You’ll also get a ticket automatically each and every month to our flagship event Nicer Tuesdays Online, and receive a newsletter once a fortnight, written by our editor-in-chief, highlighting important trends from across the creative world. You can find more information about Extra Nice on the dedicated Extra Nice pages of our website.