Welcome to Northern Beaches Creatives your online directory. As the name suggests, this is the new home for creative professions in the Northern Beaches of Sydney.
We are here to increase creatives visibility to locals, businesses and other creatives. The goal is to help locals buy from locals, and to help you build new creative connections within the Northern Beaches.
The Northern Beaches is known for its exquisite environment, but its people are just as vibrant. The local creative sector is awash with talent, but it’s a sector that is often hard to discover in the vast oceans of the internet. We’re a hidden gem, so to speak, with no easy way to explore all the local sculptors, writers, musicians, artists, graphic designers, videographers and more.
The creative sector in the Northern Beaches is not to be ignored. It generated $1.6 billion in output and $790 million in value through 2018/19, 6.5% of the total Northern Beaches economy*.
Every day, the people of the Northern Beaches are creating, but it’s only by chance that consumers might know about it.
Until now.
Northern Beaches Creatives will allow consumers – or creatives looking to collaborate – to easily search by area or by profession and find amazing talent. Potentially even in your street. The power and the promise of greater discoverability and growth for all is very exciting!
I’m Kate Stead (nee Parslow) and I run Old Mate Media, a local publishing company, based in Mona Vale. I grew up in Palm Beach and after travelling the world, returned to Mona Vale with my husband Chris Stead, another born and bred local, to build our family life and our business here in the Northern Beaches.
I am all about the power of connections and working together to help each other grow. As we created and published our books, I struggled with the frustration that came with trying to find other local authors and artists in our area. Or indeed, expose our work – often based on our area – to neighbours that wanted to buy local and support locals.
Google was not my friend, as the types of creatives I was trying to find rarely showed up in a location based search. In much the same way they would not be listed on True Local or other directories. My only option was to scroll through Facebook groups or haphazardly search on Instagram by location.
And so the idea for Northern Beaches Creatives was born. What if you could drop a pin and find like-minded creative souls around you? What if you could easily find other local creatives? What if supporting local businesses was that easy? I knew amazing creative projects could come to life if we could help locals collaborate across different industries.
I was delighted when the Northern Beaches Council saw the merit in my plan, awarding Old Mate Media an Arts & Creativity Grant.
It’s a simple idea on paper, but it’s taken a lot of work on the back end to get right. Already that’s seen us find and collaborate with local creatives, utilising Newport-based web designer Digital Styling, Church Point graphic designer Six Onions and communication guru Street Smart Social.
I am so proud of Northern Beaches Creatives.
Northern Beaches Creatives and Old Mate Media would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and elders past and present. We recognise Aboriginal people as the original custodians of the Northern Beaches and we wish to pay respect to their Elders past and present and to emerging community leaders. Aboriginal culture is integral to our understanding of belonging, community and care of the land.
All of the team behind Northern Beaches Creatives are creative professionals from the Northern Beaches.
Northern Beaches Creatives is supported by a 2021 Arts & Creativity grant as a Creative Sector Innovation Project from Northern Beaches Council.
*Data from https://www.ideconomicinsights.com/northern-beaches-cultural-creative
