This indie agency is helping staffers work from art galleries
As agencies across the industry reimagine what work looks like, we explore how one indie is paying for staffers to work remotely in art galleries across the UK capital.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
One of the great promises of flexible working, or remote working, is the freedom for workers to set up shop anywhere: from a co-working space, over a latte in a nice caf or sprawled on the beach. But it‘s a freedom that‘s often hard to take advantage of, hemmed in by costs, dodgy wifi connections and – in the case those hoping to work from the seaside – the weather. Not many creatives would swap the warmth of the home office for a bracing conference call next to the North Sea.
London indie agency Here Be Dragons has come up with a solution that can help its untethered staff find better spaces to work around the capital – an annual National Arts Pass, which grants them access to hundreds of museums and galleries across the country.
The agency‘s leadership hopes the initiative, called ‘Work from (any) art gallery‘, will encourage them to work from one of the capital‘s many arts venues and draw inspiration from the work surrounding them.
Agency founder Paul McEntee tells The Drum: “Our studio used to be an old gallery, and creativity and culture are inherent to our everyday jobs. The best work is done when you’ve been exposed to the outside world and not tied to a desk. If you can work from anywhere, why not an art gallery? Creativity isn’t sedentary and we need diversity of thinking more than ever in our industry.”
McEntee points to research from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the PRCA, due out later this year, which has found 90% of PR professionals experienced poor mental health over the last 12 months. Art and culture are known to boost people‘s mood, so the agency argues that exposure to the odd oil painting (perhaps Georges Seurat‘s Bathers at Asnières, on display at the National Gallery) or monumental sculpture can only help their staff.
Here Be Dragons isn‘t the only agency looking at this problem with a critical eye. New York design firm Technology, Humans and Taste, and Alt Labs (the marketing division of strategic advisory Altimeter Group), recently launched a cheeky campaign called ‘Work from wherever‘.
With the idea of sparking a conversation about what it means to unplug working life from the workplace, they created a campaign exploring the blurry lines between working behavior and the rest of workers‘ lives.
In addition, they commissioned the Work From Wherever Collection, a series of commemorative objects such as posters, engraved wooden gewgaws and real-life ‘mute‘ buttons made from hand-poured concrete.
Julia Gorbach, a director at Technology, Humans and Taste, says: “No one has an answer for the future of work. So, we approached it as a question: what if we could bring all of the digital tools we’ve been using during Covid into the physical work space? That led us to these beautiful objects meant to provoke conversation to help bosses, employees, entrepreneurs and freelancers alike collectively decide what the future looks like.”