For your younger team members, or yourself if you’re fresh-out-of-college see this new opportunity to get creative. It’s a fantastic way to retain enthusiasm, share inspiration and grow confidence.
Award-winning and renowned educator Paul Falltrick believes that young professionals starting out in hairdressing need to feel inspired right from the off. Whilst some of the jobs assigned to new starters can be mundane, Paul thinks there should be creativity mixed in with any more routine tasks from day one. We agree! How important to excite young professionals, show them the career they’ve been aspiring to and prevent them from losing interest.
What is CROP?
Paul has created CROP – a programme to inspire creativity in beginners. He says the name conjures an image of ‘growth and productivity’, and it’s an acronym, too.:
C = Creativity: give a creative experience early and consistently
R= Resilience: it builds boldness and opportunity to put your creative self on display
O = Opportunity: a chance to experiment, to grow confidence in creative expression
P = Purpose: to find our sense of purpose as a hairdresser and feel the creative excitement early on
CROP is a chance to provide a positive, encouraging environment and to spend time with their peers who are also putting themselves out there, in order to learn from each other.
Personal experience
In his own early career, Paul remembers being exposed to creative opportunities early on too; “I believe this really lit the flame and it’s something I want to find a way to pass on to others,” he says.
“Every hairdresser is acutely aware of how little in-take there is within the industry, and I feel strongly that we need to look at ourselves and take responsibility for this in terms of really owning up to why we are not meeting the needs of today’s intake of hairdressers.”
One of the key reasons that Falltrick believes the industry is ‘getting it wrong’ is that aspiring, young hairdressers are not getting the opportunity to step into creative work early enough and so their interest wanes and they leave. He believes offering a creative intervention and opportunity early can open up the excitement and feed the creative spirit in these young future hairdressers.
How does it work?
What happens at a CROP session? Well for CROP21 recently, six ‘newbies’ who have just left college were given the space and encouragement to work creatively using mannequin heads. They practised cutting, applying colour and adding extensions and they created mood boards to generate ideas and excitement. It’s the perfect environment to learn, inspire and be inspired. There will be more in the New Year. CROP22 could be for you!
Are you keen to take part in the next CROP session? Contact Paul directly on @paulfalltrick @gfchairdressing @ministryofhairacademy and get those creative juices flowing!
Looking for some more colour inspiration? Here you go: