The Soapbox Newsletter
April 2024 Edition: Community updates, some useful information & The Story Sessions 🫧
Good Morning pals,
Welcome to The Soapbox Newsletter! Our next gather and blether is taking place on Wednesday April 24th (that’s one week today!) at Sierra Metro between 8am and 10am.
We’d love to see you there!
Updates:
Over the past few years I’ve been talking to a lot of likeminded folk about the importance of community and people coming together. Mainly because it stemmed from my desire to feel like I was part of a community again. But in these conversations I discovered that a lot of people felt the same way, and so by March 2023 Soapbox was born and our gather and blether sessions came to life.
Coffee, mornings, meeting new folk, sponsors (to keep events free to attend during the cost of living crisis); tick.
But, I’ve always wanted Soapbox to be more than just gathering for a blether. Along with appreciating the importance of community, I’ve also known how important connections are on a deeper level. In recent years I’ve been consistently inspired by events such as The Moth, The Do Lectures, CreativeMornings, and Letters Live, to name a few.
The thing that connects all these events is storytelling. People sharing their version of events, that aren’t always - and in the case of The Moth, rarely - focused around work.
Storytelling has been around forever. Adopted as marketing speak in recent decades, it’s been in folklore, and has been native to how we gather, for centuries. Sharing stories is about choosing connection, stories have the power to inspire; to draw us in and make us feel less alone; to make us cry, laugh, get angry, and become invested.
There are a few different types of events I have in mind for Soapbox, but I first want to introduce you to Soapbox: The Story Sessions. These sessions will be a little different; they’ll run in the evenings, are in collaboration with (and at) Tribe Porty, and taking place on June 28th with potentially a few sessions over summer (if things go well!). If you’re interested, and I really hope you are, please reply to this email and I’ll add you to the mailing list for the story sessions (there won’t be many of these, promise).
Furthermore, I’m looking for people who would like to share a story for our first session. This could be a story about an event in your life, something that’s happened over the course of your life, or how you came to an important realisation. If that’s you, or if you know someone who might be interested, please reply to this email and I can send you more information!
Our OG Soapbox gather and blether sessions will continue to happen on the last Wednesday of every month.
A Few Things From Our Community:
Looking for desk space? Sierra Metro has a co-working desk available from May (£180 pcm). These spaces would suit fellow creatives who are looking to be part of the community. For more information, or to check out the spaces, email Janine hello@sierrametro.org
Also taking place at Sierra Metro is ‘Collaging with Data - New works by Ploterre’ running from March 19th til April 28th 2024. Opening times: Tues-Sun 10am-2pm or by appointment.
Grab your tickets here for Hidden Door’s 10th Anniversary! Taking place on Friday 10th and Saturday 11th of May, Hidden Door will transform another secret mystery space into another immersive wonderland of creativity!
Looking for a photographer? Cameron Allan’s Folio Book is available as a download or physical copy! Check it out here.
Sponsor Section:
The Edinburgh Minute
The Edinburgh Minute Newsletter is a free daily roundup of links to local news and happenings.
In the month since The Edinburgh Minute got a shout-out in the Soapbox newsletter:
The number of people receiving the free daily local bulletin has passed 9,000.
The Edinburgh Minute also became Substack’s most-popular newsletter in the UK (for one day only, but still!)
The number of links clicked/tapped has passed 400,000 (it’s full of all the links you need and none of the clickbait you don’t need in your life)
And subscribers left nice testimonials, like this from Laurence: “It connects me with my home, and I think it’s extremely important to support alternatives to the low quality algorithm - and AI-driven ‘content’-isation of news”.
FreeAgent
FreeAgent is award-winning online accounting software designed specifically for UK small businesses - and based here in Edinburgh. The folks at FreeAgent are all about making business owners and freelancers happier and more successful by putting them in control of their finances.
This month, FreeAgent is highlighting some more great resources to help you, our community, with all your business and accounting questions:
A big hurdle to understanding your business finances is translating accounting lingo into plain English. Join FreeAgent’s Chief Accountant, Emily Coltman for a free jargon-busting webinar on 23rd April
What’s changed for small businesses for the 2024/25 tax year? Here’s a helpful list of all the rates, relief and expense changes that could affect your business
If you’d like to see more great resources, inspiration, and tips from FreeAgent, you can sign up to their mailing list from their blog homepage to receive more FreeAgent goodness in your inbox
Everyone in our Soapbox community can give FreeAgent a go with a 30-day free trial and get 50% off their first six months. Click here!
With Jack
We just posted this IG post about a customer who was looking for input on her payment terms. Whilst a lot of people have legal expenses insurance, it seems most forget to make use of the legal advice helpline! If you’ve added legal expenses insurance to your package you should make use of the value added services like the legal advice helpline.
You’ll phone with your question and it will be assigned to an expert in that area. Contract law, copyright law, payment disputes… A legal expert will return your call as soon as possible.
What’s great about the helpline is that it will help you quickly understand if you’re on the right side of things. This can influence the conversations you have with clients or equip you to go into projects more confidently.
Check out this story from a customer who used the helpline to take on a client through small claims court. Insurance doesn't always have to be about men in suits knocking on your door threatening legal action—there are a lot of value added services in there for freelancers. The helpline is one of them.
Something Interesting To End Our April Newsletter:
If you would like to stay up to date with more events, jobs and opportunities, do consider following us on Instagram!
If you have something you would like to share with the community please feel free to message us!
We hope to see you at our next event if you’re local, and in the meantime please feel free to share The Soapbox Newsletter if you enjoyed it.
Thanks for reading,
Ellie & Janine