Review: Generation Slashie

Photography Scotland Drummond

Words Cait Sandercock 

After squeezing three people’s jobs into one person’s schedule, pouring all of your spare time and money into more and more creative pet projects and still managing to have some semblance of a social/love life, you’d think that the last thing any of the panelists at ‘Generation Slashie’ would want to do is talk about it!

Hope for the unicareerists among us yet

Fortunately for us mere mortals, however, Matt Levinson and his crew of slashies were only too happy to share their stories of duress and success.

Matt, himself a slashie of many talents, opened the platform for the panelists to show us exactly how they managed to wind up in multiple creative industries, the highs and the lows punctuated with insightful and valuable advice to those trying their hand at a number of different pursuits.

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“I’m sorry, what was the question again?” – I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that almost every slashie who was asked a question forgot what they’d been asked halfway through their answer – no doubt they had their hyper-active minds on other events ;)

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SHOCK HORROR! You can earn $$$ as a creative slashie

Carolyn Miller spoke about combining her successful career in advertising while branching off into music and television journalism. Humourously proclaiming herself as ‘the only capitalist on the panel’, Carolyn gave hope to the fact that you can work in the creative industry and indeed earn a decent salary! She also offered sage advice about the need to consistently seek stimulating and inspirational relationships from within your industry peers and the advantages of combining your creative pursuits to strengthen them.

Know which plates to keep spinning and which to let smash

Kate Armstrong-Smith candidly recounted her path to slashie-dom, which started when she was told that she would never be able to work in the performing arts. She took a detour and fell in to festival planning, describing her first gig as a ‘festival bootcamp’, and reminding us that one of the keys to being a succesful slashie isn’t being a perfectionist, but knowing how to sideline some projects in order to get the important things done.

Other panellists also espoused the benefits of having a talent with which to generate the funds to pour into various other labours of love, and the necessity of letting your hair down once in a while to keep things in perspective.

It’s NOT necessarily all about the Benjamins

The audience Q&A was by far the most interactive and interesting part of the night, with questions about how to avoid over committing yourself to too many projects and the value of working for free. There was unanimous agreement amongst all panelists that to get involved, get out there and get opportunities, working for the love of it from time to time is absolutely essential.

To top off the night the cool cats at Two Thousand distributed a zine they had made during the event (and a pretty slick looking one at that) featuring the panellists and a directory of other happening Sydney slashies.

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Check out some shots of the Slashie Zine…

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… and see if you were caught on camera at the event over at Two Thousand’s gallery of photos from the night.