ICG member Stuart Knapman has set up an innovative collective – Future Studio – with his ex-colleague from The Sound, James McLintock. Stuart and James have received a great deal of interest in their collective via LinkedIn, and if any ICG members want to get involved, they can fill in this form here.
Here Stuart describes the aims and nature of Future Studio.
“Future Studio is a happy family of experienced insight, strategy and innovation specialists who come together to design new ways forward for brands.
We’re not an agency. We’re not a consultancy. We’ve said goodbye forever to presenteeism, sales targets, management meetings, expensive offices, daily commutes, appraisals, passive-aggressive emails, designing things by committee, sandwiches at the desk. And bullshit.
So what is Future Studio?
Future Studio helps freelancers and independent consultants get together to support each other intellectually and emotionally. We all love our independence, but we heard a lot of stories of talented freelancers reluctantly going back to full time work because they found the experience too isolating. We wanted to find a way to give independents back some of the of camaraderie that they were missing, and build a more supportive community.
Secondly, we enjoy working together on things, and Future Studio provides us with a legal entity through which to do that. Our structure keeps our work firmly outside IR35, which makes it easier for clients as well.
Because we’re a network of individuals, Future Studio is able to work with both agencies and clients.
Because we’re not an agency, we don’t have targets or ambitious growth plans. We don’t have any organisational drag so we’re able to devote much more of our time to thinking about the things our clients have asked us to do, and much less of our time and energy (almost none of it in fact) in meetings about the business.
Future Studio doesn’t make any profit, so any retained cash is spent on development and fun for our Family.
We’ve already been working on brand challenges with blue-chip clients in the UK, US and LATAM and we’re working together to identify and attract the clients we really want to win.
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