Advice & Guidance
Page Navigation
Our clinics and workshops are open to all RCS Staff, Students, and Alumni. You can find out more about the advice & guidance opportunities we’re currently offering on the panels below, and book your place or sign up to our newsletter to hear more for each.
1:1 Clinics & CEDO Workshops
1:1 Freelancer and Founder Clinics
Creative Clinics are led by our Associate, Rachael Arnold. These open, friendly clinics are available to our whole RCS community, to chat about anything related to your creative career or life as a freelancer such as:
- Knowing your audience or customer
- Understanding your value
- Planning your projects
- Managing your finances
- Making the right connections
Clinics will take place twice a month with Rachael Arnold. Sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with Clinic dates.
CEDOxSU Workshops
CEDO is delighted to partner with the RCS Students Union to bring you a series of workshops that will help get your ideas, projects, companies, and collaborations off the ground and into the world. These workshops are co-designed with students to tackle the most vital topics for your career in today’s arts landscape.
Topics included in these online workshops:
- How to write strong funding applications
- Costing and pricing your work
- Managing burnout
- Handling your IP as a creative freelancer
All CEDOxSU workshops are welcoming, intimate, warm, and casual. No experience in the topic is necessary and our expert speakers will guide you through the basics, leaving plenty of space for questions and conversation.
The next workshop is Costing and Pricing Your Work on Tuesday 11 February 2025 at 18:00.
Keep up to date with other CEDOxSU Workshops by signing up for our newsletter
Career Clinics
These clinics are led by associate Briana Pegado. Briana is a former festival founder and producer who has made a creative career working for the National Theatre of Scotland, Creative Lives, Glasgow International, Custom Lane, Creative Edinburgh, We Are Here Scotland CIC, Fringe of Colour Films Festival, and others as a chief executive, co-director, producer, business development manager, and consultant. She has worked as a front of house manager at Imaginate Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, as front of house for Edinburgh International Book Festival, and as a producer for Visual Arts Scotland. She worked as a Community Engagement Producer running creative writing and movement workshops in Dunoon for OMOS, a short film exploring the untold Black history of Stirling Castle. She also recently published her first non-fiction book Make Good Trouble in April 2024 by Watkins Publishing. All of this to stay Briana has navigated carving out time for her own practice while building a creative career that has sustained her.
Meet with Briana to explore:
- Understanding your transferable skills
- enhancing and adapting your CVs for different roles
- planning a creative career that sustains you by exploring part-time, full-time, and freelance work
- creating a skills bank to better understand what skills you can apply to different types of work
- exploring how to find values led work that does not compromise on your needs
These sessions are neurodivergent friendly, queer friendly, and BPOC friendly.
Legal & Financial Clinics
Legal Clinics
Legal Clinics are hosted by Philip Hannay, Cloch Solicitors. In this half-hour long online clinic, you can ask Philip any general legal questions directly related to your creative career and practice such as:
- Legal and Employment Contracts – Are you contracting other freelancers or employing a small team to make your work with you? Have you been presented with a freelance contract that you are uncertain about signing?
- Intellectual Property – have you considered how to protect your creative work? Do you have work that you’d like to patent, take out trademarks, design rights, or copyright?
- Company Structures – what kind of company structure best fits the kind of work you want to make?
- Simple Procedural Actions – do you need to defend a court action related to your business? Or are you considering going to the Civil Court to claim money you’re owed by a person or a business?
In this clinic you cannot:
- Discuss things unrelated to your creative practice (e.g. a parking ticket, dispute with your landlord)
- Make confidential disclosures to Philip (A confidential disclosure is private information that is shared with another party, either orally or in writing, with the expectation that it will not be made public or with third parties)
Financial Clinics
Financial Clinics are led by David Nicholls, Brett Nicholls Associates. In this half-hour long clinic, you can ask David any general finance or accounting questions directly related to your creative career and practice such as:
- Company/business Structures – what kind of company structure best fits the the kind of work you are undertaking and will ensure effective financial processes without burdens?
- UK taxes for freelancers and small companies (HMRC related topics)
- Effective financial planning for your freelance work or projections for your company
- How the UK tax system might impact you and how best to plan for it
- General money management as a freelancer
- Self-employment: best practice and use of systems available to you
In this clinic you cannot:
- Discuss things unrelated to your creative practice
- Make confidential disclosures to David (A confidential disclosure is private information that is shared with another party, either orally or in writing, with the expectation that it will not be made public or with third parties)
Please ensure you read this disclaimer before attending.
Industry Guest Clinics
Throughout the academic year, we will invite a range of practitioners to host guest clinics to provide specialist advice and guidance from a particular industry, discipline, or practice.
More Industry Guest Clinics will be announced in January 2025.
