0:00:04 My name's Diane Parker and I'm a creative career coach, a writer and consultant. I work with individuals on a one to one basis coaching them. I also write about careers in the creative industries. I write about the arts.
00:00:23 I made up my mind very early on, it sounds horribly pretentious now, but my career path was going to be...I was going to be a ballerina until I got old, say like twenty five, at which stage I was going to become a novelist.
00:00:40 When I went to dance school, yes I felt...I did feel an enormous sense of achievement. It was quite a big thing for me to do that. To move to London, leave all my friends behind, my family, live in a house-share and go to full time college, and it was hard work. We were doing ballet classes and dance classes from nine in the morning 'til six in the evening and any academic study had to be taken either first thing in the morning or in your lunch hour. It was very hard work.
00:01:19 I would say it was probably one of the most exciting and challenging times of my life. I look back on it now and think, ‘how did I get through that?’ Towards the end of my time at dance school, I think homesickness had got to a stage where I realised it wasn't sustainable for me to continue to live in London on my own and I needed to come home. I was too young at that stage to realise that there were other alternative routes into a career in dance, so I gave up on wanting to be a dancer.
00:02:02 What attracted me to the idea of doing a performing arts degree was that it would be more experimental than my previous experience of training which was kind of very narrow. I suppose the idea of...the possibilities were endless really. I could arrive as a dancer but leave as an actor or a writer or a drummer in a band or a stand-up comedian. That's what really attracted me to it.
00:02:34 I wanted the space to be able to experiment. A bunch of me and my fellow students formed a theatre group and we toured sort of fringe venues around North London for about a year after we graduated. And I continued to take classes, do workshops, just immersed myself in various projects really.
00:03:03 The last job I had I was working as a research editor for a careers website and one of my first assignments there was to do a big research project on coaching and mentoring for the creative and cultural industries. And as part of that research, I started learning about it and practising it and that led me to taking a course that was accredited through Leeds Metropolitan University, that actually accredited and qualified me as a coach.
00:03:38 I would say I've made my role my own and it's emerged from my passions, my life experiences, the various jobs.
Diane Parker
Diane Parker
My name's Diane Parker and I'm a creative career coach, a writer and consultant. I work with individuals on a one to one basis coaching them. I also write about careers in the creative industries. I write about the arts.
I made up my mind very early on, it sounds horribly pretentious now, but my career path was going to be...I was going to be a ballerina until I got old, say like twenty five, at which stage I was going to become a novelist.
When I went to dance school, yes I felt...I did feel an enormous sense of achievement. It was quite a big thing for me to do that. To move to London, leave all my friends behind, my family, live in a house-share and go to full time college, and it was hard work. We were doing ballet classes and dance classes from nine in the morning 'til six in the evening and any academic study had to be taken either first thing in the morning or in your lunch hour. It was very hard work.
I would say it was probably one of the most exciting and challenging times of my life. I look back on it now and think, ‘how did I get through that?’ Towards the end of my time at dance school, I think homesickness had got to a stage where I realised it wasn't sustainable for me to continue to live in London on my own and I needed to come home. I was too young at that stage to realise that there were other alternative routes into a career in dance, so I gave up on wanting to be a dancer.
What attracted me to the idea of doing a performing arts degree was that it would be more experimental than my previous experience of training which was kind of very narrow. I suppose the idea of...the possibilities were endless really. I could arrive as a dancer but leave as an actor or a writer or a drummer in a band or a stand-up comedian. That's what really attracted me to it.
I wanted the space to be able to experiment. A bunch of me and my fellow students formed a theatre group and we toured sort of fringe venues around North London for about a year after we graduated. And I continued to take classes, do workshops, just immersed myself in various projects really.
The last job I had I was working as a research editor for a careers website and one of my first assignments there was to do a big research project on coaching and mentoring for the creative and cultural industries. And as part of that research, I started learning about it and practising it and that led me to taking a course that was accredited through Leeds Metropolitan University, that actually accredited and qualified me as a coach.
I would say I've made my role my own and it's emerged from my passions, my life experiences, the various jobs.
Diane Parker is a creative career coach. Whilst working on a careers website she did a big research project on coaching and mentoring for the creative and cultural industries. She liked the ideas so much that she took a course and became a coach herself.
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