OPENING DOORS through VOICEOVER

Sitting in a coffee shop in Turnpike Lane, I ordered a juice AND a coffee, and wondered why I felt so nervous. I was about to meet someone for the first time. It was my first mentoring session with D and, whereas I have before been in the position of ‘mentee’, I was now officially a ‘mentor’ for a 15 year old girl. What did I really have to offer? Would she be disappointed by me?

When she came in, she was obviously nervous too, and we bonded over baked goods and talked about the weather (proper British).

Now that our sessions have come to an end, it makes me smile to think back to that first meeting. We met once a month for a year, for an hour or sometimes more, and always in a coffee shop. I’d signed up to be a mentor via The Girls Network, an amazing charity with a mission to break down barriers, boost girls’ confidence and improve their access to opportunities. They provided a lot of session material, which was a handy way to structure our sessions and make sure D got some core material and insights, on anything from confidence and self-worth to CV guidance. We talked about a range of professions and I was able to give her a flavour of what it’s like in the corporate world, but when I talked about my acting and voiceover work, it was clear that this really piqued her interest. We ended up spending a lot of time talking about how to get into acting, how to stay safe as a young actor, how the industry works, and even wrote a script together.

A few other mentors contacted me to say that their mentee was also interested in acting and voiceover, so I joined a couple of other sessions to answer some questions and talk to them too.

It seemed like there was quite a bit of interest, and perhaps a good opportunity to open up Voiceover to a wider, diverse group who might not otherwise consider that they could do this. So I asked The Girls Network about running a webinar. Roll on to April this year, and with a lot of organisation from Leisa… we were very honoured to have Rachael from The VoiceOver Network deliver a fantastic presentation to a group of young women, with a brilliant turnout and feedback! Thank you Rachael and Leisa! It was so great to hear the level of engagement and for the wonderful world of Voiceover to be opened up to the next generation (which makes me feel a bit old, but also happy).

If anyone else would like to find out more about being a mentor, I can highly recommend it! And one hour a month is very doable. https://www. thegirlsnetwork.org.uk/become-a-mentor

The Girls Network meets The Voiceover Network. A match made in heaven!

Be apart. Create together.

Source Elements was born in 2005 with the mission of connecting timebased creative-media professionals from different parts of the world and we have come far in our journey to support different people, from different places, with different religions, genders, races and economic opportunities.

As a global company with presence in more than 100 countries, we know that if you want to connect professionals in the world, you have to know who everyone is, what their needs are, and who their communities are. We know it’s not possible for one company to speak to everyone directly if you don’t know who your users are. So, to foster Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we empower people to empower others; together we grow stronger and together we make a more diverse industry.

Source Elements D.E.I. mission is to support time-based media creatives from diverse backgrounds to obtain a successful and sustainable career in our industry. No matter where they are born, what their context is or what challenges they may face, Source Elements aims to create the necessary structures to bridge the exclusion and inequality, within our ability to do so. Therefore, Source Elements is committed to providing:

Access to the industry-standard software for remote collaboration

Training in remote workflows and certification in our software

Belonging to a global, diverse and creative community of timebased media professionals.

We understand that individuals from different backgrounds and different frames of reference face their own different challenges and opportunities; further, we believe that in the fields of the arts and technology, social inequality in education and the economy leads to unbalanced representation of how we see ourselves on-screen.

Ultimately our vision with our D.E.I. strategy after so many years of experience is to achieve diversity, equality and inclusion in the media industry through community building, education, equity of access to technology and visibility of underrepresented voices, creatives and professionals.

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