Tori West

0:06 My name is Tori West and I'm the editor and founder of brics Media and we of course publish brics magazine which is a community focused publication. That's passionate about social politics alternative education and offering opportunities to emerging creatives across fashion music and arts culture I'm also currently studying in Ma at media on media ethics and social change on scholarship at the University of Sussex and the majority of my work looks at how we can dismantle dismantle classism and elitism within the creative industry statistically this public publication shouldn't be my career and it's really hard to find a queer woman that owns her own Media company that's from a working-class background even now when people ask me how I got my job at bricks people are always shocked when I tell them I actually started it. And I'm not surprised because if we look at the publishing industry just five CIS male billionaires and 80 of the UK media and only 12 of the creative industry jobs are filled with working-class people that statistics actually dropped from 16 in 2020.

1:11 In journalism unfortunately these statistics don't get much better 80 of working journalists also come from financially privileged backgrounds making this industry wildly and representative of the majority of the population I believe you can't be what you can't see so I understand why people are shocked when I tell them that I started this whole thing I guess I started the magazine out of sheer frustration. But also as a oh gosh I don't know how to use Tech so sorry apparently I've just got a scroll what where was I yeah I guess I started the magazine out of sheer frustration. But also as a protective shield for myself as someone who wanted to work in the industry but I kind of felt too unsafe to do so in 2018 I was also diagnosed with severe anxiety and the fashion industry is just so notorious for Brewing it this does get a bit more positive by the way sorry if I'm starting on a negative but it's notorious for bringing toxic working environments and I don't think anyone should ever have to choose between sacrificing their mental health for financial stability and I quickly learned that this industry will often try and push you to sacrifice both at the same time I did work in House at a magazine once upon a time in my life. And I just had the worst experience and it really pushed me to try and find an alternative but I just couldn't so I decided to make my own and I feel like this industry isn't built for how my brain is wired but I soon realized that I wasn't the only one that felt those things.

2:42 So I'm proud since our Inception that we've nurtured hundreds of creatives and provided them with that alternative next slide did it work great okay.

2:53 I think background is really important to share and before covert hit I was a full-time cleaner and I was super lucky to grow a social platform which helped me get additional incomes we could save the money to get the business off the ground I hid my cleaning job from everyone for the first six months of doing it because I just felt really ashamed one of my family members actually told me not to tell anyone because it would look like if the business wasn't making enough money and that's why I had to have a side hustle so it would look really bad for me if I opened up about it but when I did open up about it it kick-started more conversations about not being embarrassed about your day job it's actually a privilege to be able to work and also being financially stable is one tool that will hopefully lead you to being able to invest in the other things that you love so if there is anyone here.

3:40 I did want to share that because you shouldn't be embarrassed about that during lockdown I lost all my cleaning work. And I ended up on Universal Credit.

3:50 And I think that time off really made me re-evaluate my career I basically took it as an opportunity to test out working on bricks full-time and really work on my relationship and attitude that I had with money I think when you're working class you just never feel like you deserve money if you've never had access to it. And I never thought I could be in a position where maybe this you know publication could one day just be my main focus because everyone would call it your side hustle or your passion project or insert whatever buzzword that everyone calls your side job or hobby but I think it's a creative you often led to believe that your ideas are simply just passed from products and not real job. And I think that societal Viewpoint is what's really failing us so at the start of 2021 the business picked up because me and my digital editor Maddie who's here give her a nice shout out because she I couldn't do this without her thanks [Applause]

4:52 thanks everyone so we kind of both together worked on the publication as a proper full-time job and whilst we were in lockdown.

4:58 But instead of taking a salary we then decided to put the money into opening and affordable photography studio I'm really proud that it's one of the cheapest highs in London and also comes with equipment I don't think that 12 is ever going to get any higher unless we actively make space for low-income creatives to create their ideas in return obviously the space would double up to help us create content for the magazine and our first cover that we shot in the space was with Bieber doobie shot by one of our regular contributors bricks family member Nicole Nye I felt so incredible to finally have our own space and be able to share it with our creative community and that really inspired me to create the family issue which was issue 10 which I think was a milestone in itself to be honest I never thought we'd get to double figures but here we are and I dedicated 90 pages of the print to those that are often working behind the scenes to make the publication happen bricks truly actually is called doesn't belong to me it belongs to everyone that puts their heart. And soul into it.

6:02 So this issue is really important to me as it celebrated the brics family past future and present and then another major product for us which I think is what a lot of people know us by after this year last year was such an incredible life-changing year for us. And I really wanted to end it with a bang and I had this wild idea that no one actually originally wanted me to do or think I could even pull it off.

6:26 But I really wanted to do a calendar with like one of our icons of the year which was obviously Bimini bamboo lot. And I sent the pitch through to them and thankfully they believed in like my weird extravagant idea which was surprising but great and it just did incredibly well and managed to raise almost 8K for mermaid standard which is a charity that accepted trans and gender non-conformant individuals and their families they're having a really crap time by the way at the moment because she shall not be named on Twitter is you know spouting transphobic abuse on there all the time.

6:59 So if you can and have the resources please do go and support mermaid surrender and their work. But also on the calendar it was really amazing to see just a calendar that was camp and fun and just Queer as hell and through a fashion lens rather than it being like a really CIS hatro gay sort of thing. So I was really proud of that project.

7:22 And then our most recent thing that we've done is that we just launched the art issue which is up for pre-order at the moment which celebrates who we think are the next faces of the industry we got to shoot Earth eater on top of a sports car and speaking from experience I strongly believe that to every bisexual's fantasy so we also made them as posters if anyone wants one another thing which I said at the beginning is that we're really passionate about alternative education methods and about 18 months ago we launched the brics Learners platform I feel often young creators have no idea where to turn to when they're experiencing things like geographical Financial social or even physical limitations so I wanted to create a space that offered alternative career advice and opportunities to these people.

8:11 And so every week we send out a creative opportunities newsletter which is created by us in-house and it includes over 50 freelance fixed term contracts open calls for collaborations and also available grants that you can apply for from all over the UK and then we also publish weekly guides and how-to content like industry interview professionals and things like that on our podcast hopefully to just kick start more conversations around like I don't I don't think our career paths is exactly linear and I feel when we leave school we're expected to like almost you do this.

8:50 And then you go to your a levels and then you go but I feel like all those things you need a lot of money and it's not always for everyone so I kind of wanted to build a space that for those sort of people that didn't feel like that was the structure that was built for their brains I wanted to make it as affordable as we possibly could it is a paywall.

9:09 But we do it for two pound fifty per month and it was super important to us to have like space for like low income and students could also afford it. And we also have a Pay It Forward option so you can gift it a membership to someone who may benefit from it but maybe can't potentially afford it the platforms honestly become a career milestone for me.

9:27 And it's so incredible when you get a message from someone when they're like oh my God I just got this job or you know it is it is actually incredible and it has been helping loads as I said I don't think that we're ever going to raise that 12 unless we put the work in and the system's in for like more low-income creatives to get these opportunities and you know being an audience funded has truly been the backbone of the publication for the last year. And we use the income to pay our in-house team a monthly retainer which has honestly been a dream come true for me. Actually we're still not on salary so if you are considering signing up please do I would also be really happy to be paid for my time even though it looks like we're doing amazing and it looks like you know a big Media Company I do work on it full-time.

10:14 But I'm currently unpaid and rely on freelance work to get by so and here's my lovely final slide of five ways that you can support us and hopefully become more involved with bricks as well.

10:30 So if you'd like to support mine or my community or in-house it seems important work. There are a few things you can do obviously if you can afford it please do consider joining the bricks learner platform you can also purchase of the art issue obviously and have a theater on top of a sports car in your bedroom if you like and then you can also donate to us monthly or you could just hire off of photo studio but if those things are still a bit too much just follow us on Instagram and share a couple of bits if you'd like to support the work of working class creatives convince your boss to hire more low income people and not to hold their wealth thank you [Applause]