What four roles in four years taught me about finding a creative way in

After graduating during the pandemic, Grace Coscovic got her first step into the Barbican through an admin role. Four years and four internal moves later, she’s now an Assistant Producer for their Public Programme. Here, she reflects on how doing “the wrong thing in the right place” helped her move closer to the art – and why starting out in a non-creative role can still be a creative way in.

Grace Coscovic

I graduated in 2021 with an English and Film degree. It should have felt like the start of something exciting. Instead it felt like scarcity. I was entering the creative industries in the middle of a pandemic, alongside millions of others my age, and the entry points that previous generations had taken for granted just weren’t there. Work placements were cancelled. Summer schools didn’t run. Cultural venues were shut. Entry-level roles had disappeared almost entirely.

I’m from Swansea, went to the University of Sussex for uni and moved to South London once I became a producer. During my previous roles at the Barbican, I commuted from Brighton to London until I got my current role.

A year after graduating, at 22, I got lucky. I joined the Barbican Centre as an administrative assistant in the Audience Experience team. It wasn’t a creative role, on paper, but it was a way in.

I always say to friends graduating now that, when looking for a job, it’s ideal when starting out to either be doing the wrong thing in the right place or the right thing in the wrong place. Eventually, you’ll be doing the right thing in the right place.

Four years and four roles later, I’m now an Assistant Producer for Public Programme, helping shape programmes for and with young people. My four roles were Admin Assistant within the Audience Experience team, Personal Assistant to the Deputy Head of Audience Experience, then my best sideways move to Personal Assistant to the Head of Creative Collaboration, which is the department I now produce for, and now Assistant Producer for Public Programme. I think about that route a lot, because most of my peers didn’t get one.

Grace at work

What I lost in those pandemic years wasn’t just time on a CV. It was access: to rooms, people, conversations and the informal moments that help a creative career begin. The chance conversation that turns into a mentor, the friendship that becomes a creative partner, the network that helps open doors.

You build most of that between 19 and 25, in rooms and spaces, not online. When those spaces close, that part of a career stalls even if you’re doing everything else right.

Once I became an admin assistant, I realised I was meeting people every day who did the kind of job I wanted. I reached out to shadow them for an afternoon, go for a coffee, go to their events and generally make myself known as someone who was engaged with their work and wanted to do it one day.

Being a reliable, hard-working person in my admin role and becoming known for that helped a lot when moving internally. If you can care about the work you do even if it’s not quite what you want to be doing, it goes a long way, as people see your dedication even when tasked with the boring admin parts – which are a part of every job.

For me, one of the biggest shifts came through the trial club nights the Barbican started running in late 2023. They needed extra people to support the event, so I volunteered myself to help with the admin initially: writing contracts, raising POs – all the things I’d been doing in my other admin roles but now directly for and with artists.

Being closer to the art, even in an admin capacity, made me realise I had been building the right skills the whole time. I just needed to move closer to the art.

I then also supported the delivery of the club night, taking my knowledge from my time as Admin Assistant for the Barbican’s Operations team and creating a link with the creative producing team. After that first club night, I got a taxi to Victoria station and waited for the first train back to Brighton, exhausted but feeling I’d made a move in the right direction.

From the moment I started, my first line manager Freda always supported my development and interest in other areas of the building. I’m very grateful to have had such a supportive person give me my first step in the door and also support me moving onwards too. I know that’s rare, but so valuable, and it built a confidence in me to keep moving towards what I wanted.

I’d say prioritise relationships with people you work with who want to support you in your journey, even if they aren’t doing your dream job.

Grace with a poster for the Young Barbican Takeover

This is the gap I think about constantly in my current role, which is partly why I ended up helping deliver the Young Barbican Takeover Festival – an event built by and for young artists and audiences.

What’s obvious from talking to the people who come is that they don’t just want opportunities listed on a noticeboard. They want somewhere to go that doesn’t ask anything of them yet: no pressure to buy a ticket, subscribe, or already have a portfolio worth showing. Just a place to be around other creative people while you work out who you are.

A recent Roundhouse report found nearly nine in ten young people feel their chances to connect with others in person are shrinking. I believe that gap is also a career gap: fewer informal spaces means fewer accidental breaks, fewer people who happen to know someone who’s hiring, fewer chances to find out an industry exists before you’ve ruled yourself out of it.

Attendees at a Barbican event

At the Barbican, we’ve expanded free Young Barbican membership to everyone under 30, with future plans for monthly Young Barbican nights built around more access and more to do each visit. We’re also entering a listening phase – working with partners and gathering ideas and thoughts from young people we work with, in the industry and who live locally – to make sure what we build next is actually created by the people it’s for.

What I wish I knew at 22 is that you have power over your career. Seek out the people who see you and want to support you. Find yourself in rooms and meetings where you don’t know what’s going on and aim to understand it when you leave. Take advantage of being young and inexperienced; use your ignorance to ask questions. No one expects you to know anything, so don’t pretend you do.

And for those who don’t feel like a real creative, or are afraid to show up alone, remember you have full control over who you are or who you present to the world. There is so much pressure to pigeonhole yourself as a certain type of creative.

When you go alone to things, you can decide who you are for that night. Maybe one night you’re a visual creative, maybe the next night a musician. Being alone in those spaces gives you power over your identity for the night. Switch it up, decide on the day which creative muscle to flex, and see how the people you meet change and evolve as you figure out what kind of creative you want to be.

If you’re starting out in the creative industry right now, my honest advice is: go to the things that don’t ask anything of you yet. The free nights, the open festivals, the spaces designed to let you just be in a room with other creative people. That’s where the unplanned part of a career usually starts. Find freedom in the awkward in-between parts of your career. It’s where mine started too.