20 Oct CLOCK News: CLOCK Arrives in Australia
Earlier this year, CLOCK teamed up with the Melbourne based Victorian Music Development Office (VMDO) to introduce the CLOCK boot camp experience to the Victorian music business community. CLOCK first connected with VMDO in 2019 when Bonnie Dalton, VMDO General Manager, arranged to meet Denise while in London for the NY: LON conference. The impromptu meeting sparked the idea for a CLOCK VMDO pilot.
CLOCK and VMDO launched the pilot at the 2019 Music Cities Convention in Chengdu, China where Bonnie and Denise were guest speakers. Denise facilitated the boot camp with Bonnie and her colleagues Chelsea Gough (Native Tongue) and Siobhan Kranz (Mushroom Group) achieving CLOCK Sector Expert status and becoming the first CLOCK Sector Experts in Australia. For Siobhan, the CLOCK programme was a chance to reflect on her career away from the demands of work. ‘…I was able to assess my skills retrospectively and reflect on what expertise I had built in my career thus far. It was amazing to be able to take this time to look back at my work which is difficult in such a fast-paced industry.’
For February’s boot camp five music business professionals were selected by VMDO to take part in the three-day session, facilitated by Denise with CLOCK Sector Experts Michelle Escoffery, Paulette Long and Claudia Matera. For Anna Jacobs, a freelancer on festivals and events, the impact on her work was immediate, ‘Back at the grind, I feel different, with a newfound clarity and validation of my work and approach, skills and competencies.’ Bonnie agrees that the validation gained from CLOCK is incredibly valuable, especially for professionals with portfolio careers: ‘validating those skills, recognising within yourself that ‘gut feelings’ and even ‘common sense’ were often actually high level, expert, embedded learning and that knowing and understanding how you work and why could only be of huge benefit.’
We’ll update you on CLOCK and VMDO’s future plans in our next issue of our Community Quarterly.