If you are just starting out, have been a freelancer for a long time, or are working in the arts and want to be part of a vibrant and creative community, then the Creative Women International is for you. We are excited by every connection that is made and positively encourage collaborations!
Creative Women International is a woman only community with meet ups, training, and support, for creative professional women around the world- currently over 30 countries and counting.
Women often have lower capability perceptions than men when they start up their own businesses. They often feel intimidated to ask questions at work in case they stand out as ‘not knowing enough’. The Creative Women International is here to offer support and create a space where there is no such thing as a ‘silly’ question. We aim to help each other through support and advice to achieve our goals.
Creative Women International provides opportunities for women around the world to come together on-line, and in person, to support and inspire one another. We love the conversations that members and the Creative Women International community have with each other. We hope that you will be inspired to join us too.
The story of Creative Women International
Creative Women International was founded by UK based Philiy Page. Philiy is a working creative professional herself. She found that she was feeling isolated and lonely working from home and coffee shops. She believed that there must be others feeling the same way. Having delivered creative business start up training around the world she wanted to create a support group for those participants, but also felt that women in the UK would benefit from it as well. Philiy formed Creative Women International to create a global, supportive network, for other creative professionals and has had so much pleasure and inspiration from it ever since.
A bit about Philiy
Philiy has been a freelancer for over 25 years, with her first professional photograph published in the press when she was only 19. She has a career that is now politely described as a portfolio career.
She has worked as an award winning photojournalist for The Guardian and Marie Claire (to name a few), a writer and publishing assistant, a documentary assistant producer for the BBC, a camera woman, a teacher of design and technology for 11 to 19 year olds, a Teaching Fellow of entrepreneurship at the University of Bristol, a trainer for the British Council delivering creative business start up courses around the world, and a feature film production manager. She was also invited to become a RSA Fellow for the work that she does for the CWI. You can read more about that here: RSA Fellow
All of this experience and enthusiasm Philiy pours into the Creative Women International. Philiy continues her work with the British Council and as a film production manager, and as a teaching fellow; these skills inspire her to continually develop Creative Women International.
Philiy also mentors creatives from all over the world via Zoom. If you would like to book a session please go to the contact page here.
And she has a podcast show, sharing tips and tricks to help your own creative business with international guest experts. Listen to it here: CLICKYou can see Philiy training creative entrepreneurs in this video from the British Council.
Here are some of our values
We believe that the arts, creativity and collaboration are at the heart of everything we do. We believe that everyone has the potential to create a life that they are proud of, and we strive to thrive, not just survive!
We have felt isolated and lonely ourselves as we created our businesses and creative projects. Creative Women International is the place where you can come and gain ideas, ask questions, share information and encourage each other.
We believe that respect and understanding is the base for all of our interactions.
Global conversations help us to be inspired by other creative practices and philosophies. Creative Women International is a safe space to discuss these topics.
We love that women have an intuition and this is something that we try to listen to ourselves. Our guts love to tell us if something is the right thing to do or not. It might give us less work, but we are happier for it! Creative Women International was formed on a gut instinct that it was the ‘right thing to do’.
Our aim is to dispel the myth that all creatives have to be starving artists. You can be a successful creative entrepreneur!
If you would like to get in touch you can reach Philiy here at CreativeWomenInternational@gmail.com
Please allow 48 hours for her to get back to you, as she often works out of the country.