‘A two-way street’: A Saffron mentor and mentee reflect on their relationship

The world of music tech can feel overwhelming at times, but seeking out supportive connections can make all the difference. 

One way we’ve been working to facilitate this is through the provision of 1-2-1 mentoring via our digital community, Saffron Members Club. The mentoring programme, which is now also available to non-members on a pay-per-session basis, matches participants with an approved music industry mentor, who can share their skills, knowledge, and experience.

To delve deeper into some of the unique benefits that mentoring can bring, we caught up with one Saffron mentee, Briony Addey, and her mentor Cherelle Grant.

EARLY DAWS

A relative newcomer to music production, Briony only started making music a few years ago, when she started experimenting with an online DAW (digital audio workstation) in lockdown. “Just through messing around, I got super into it. Then it snowballed and suddenly I was in this position where I didn’t have anybody to talk to about music production. I was just sitting alone in my bedroom and needed to get a bit of critical input, which is when I decided to join Saffron Members and become part of the mentoring programme”. 

Briony was matched with Cherelle Grant, a music mentor for over 15 years and founder of ACE (Aspiration, Creation, Elevation), a social enterprise that uses creative arts activities as a vehicle to nurture, educate and inspire.

“It began with me just splurging what was in my head for a while,” Briony says. “Due to COVID and life getting in the way, we didn’t have our first session until a couple of months after being matched, so Cherelle just got this flood of stuff I’d been thinking of.”

Cherelle laughs. “I think it was really good to get you to do that process though because it painted a great picture for me. Then I could pull the pieces back together and give it back to you, and kind of shape it for you a little bit.” 

ONE STEP BACK TWO STEPS FORWARD

Once Briony and Cherelle kicked off their mentoring sessions, the creative learnings started coming in thick and fast.

“One of the big headlines that came out of our first meeting was that, because I was self-taught, there was lots of basic stuff that I didn’t know. At this point, I had already made an album, but through working with Cherelle I realised that I had kind of missed a step, and that actually it would be valuable for me to rewind a little and think about working on an EP to kick things off. An EP that could introduce who I am as a human, before putting out an album with a very specific theme to it.”

“That first session also helped me to identify that I have a block around performing. So we decided in the second session I’d perform one of my tracks, and we’d record it. As a vocal performer, I carry a lot of nerves in my voice, so that was really useful for me, because, even if I never perform live, I’m still going to have to develop the confidence to perform around other people, like sound engineers for example. So, that felt like a good starting point. I now feel way more prepared to go into studio spaces.”

“I really liked how that session was so different from the first one,” Cherelle chimes in. I think it was great to be able to change each session, depending on what you needed. And that definitely happened throughout the process. We had three very different sessions.”

FINDING FOCUS

The pair chose to use their third and final session to work through Briony’s marketing plan. “Having not really used social media in a creative context, it can kind of feel like there’s no rules,” Briony says. “Whilst that’s great in some ways, it can also be hard to know where to pitch things. So it was really useful to get a sense check from Cherelle.”

“Marketing is one of those areas where you can have a million thoughts flying around. Having the mentoring framework gave me the discipline to go ‘right I have this meeting, I need to be prepared’ and that motivated me to get everything down in one place.”

“In that third session I could definitely see that you had it figured out,” Cherelle says. “You came to me and were like ‘this is who I am, this is where I want to be represented, these are the channels I want to be on.’ I felt she was very confident in what she wanted to do going forward, compared to the first session where she came with all these ideas and thoughts.”

DIFFERENT STAGES OF CONFIDENCE

A few months on from having completed their mentoring, Briony and Cherelle have been reflecting on what they’ve each taken away from the process.

“I feel like mentoring is often associated with building confidence,” Briony says. “I am clearly someone who had the initial confidence to go, ‘Right I’m writing a concept album. I’m going to try this thing that I haven’t tried before.’ So where the mentoring really helped was with that second wave of confidence that I needed to take this thing I was doing in a very safe, contained way and do it in a much riskier, scarier way.”

“I guess there are a lot of different stages of confidence that people move through. If your career is growing, or if your artistry is growing, then there are always going to be new challenges. And so I really feel like mentoring can play such a big part in that.”

“I’ve traditionally done a lot of mentoring work with young people,” Cherelle says, “so it was great for me to mentor someone a bit older, who already knows who they are. It really highlighted how important it is to work within the mould that’s already there, rather than shaping someone into something totally different. I always have to bring myself back and say to myself ‘this is not about you Cherelle.’”

TIPS FOR MENTORS AND MENTEES

Based on their experience, we asked Briony and Cherelle if there’s any advice they’d give to other mentors/mentees looking to start off on the right foot.  

“I was really aware of how precious Cherelle’s time is,” Briony says. “She’s got such a broad wealth of experience and I was really aware that I wanted to respect that in how I approach it. So I did try to be as prepared as possible.”

“I think that being quite clear about what you think you might want to get out of your mentoring is key, but at the same time, it’s important to be open to the fact that this isn’t just some generic person who’s switching in as your mentor. This is somebody who is bringing their specific expertise and experience and therefore you need to come in with an open spirit and be prepared to receive what they give.”

Cherelle agrees. “You’re both potentially going to come with totally different ideas and backgrounds. So, in order to grow and to get to places, it’s really important to understand where the other person is coming from, with their experiences as well. You know, I could have a wealth of knowledge in a certain area, but my mentee might not, or they may have more knowledge than me in some areas. Just being open to the fact that they may come with a different viewpoint, or they might even teach me something as well. That’s really important.

“The industry is changing really quickly,” Briony adds. “That’s really exciting in lots of ways, but really challenging in others, because rules that were established 10 years ago might no longer hold. So I think there was definitely bits of us learning together and I think it’s really useful to remember that as a mentee, you’re also coming with bits of experience that maybe your mentor doesn’t have. So it’s a two-way street – and so I hope that whatever energy I took, I also gave back to Cherelle in our interactions.”

THE POWER OF MENTORING

As we draw our chat to a close, Briony shares a few final thoughts on the value of mentoring for creative people.

“A lot of people like me have this really strong drive to create and make amazing things, but then, you know, possibly, no one gets to see them.  

“Apart from a private SoundCloud account,  the only place that my music currently exists is on my computer, and when I think about all the art that’s sitting in people’s homes, unshared, it makes me a bit sad.”

“I don’t think that in our culture at large, we’re raised to be artists in any real way, so I think so much of getting mentored is covering really basic things that in a better world, we’d get taught as kids. By that, I mean the joy that’s to be found in both the creation of art and the sharing of it. I feel like everyone who’s making art needs a mentor to at least explore the idea of sharing it.”

ABOUT SAFFRON MENTORING

If you’re interested in being mentored, there are a couple of ways we can help.

• Become a Saffron Member: We offer three hour-long 1-2-1 mentoring sessions per year to anyone with a Soulmate subscription to our digital community for no extra charge. After four months of membership, we’ll personally match you with a Saffron-approved music industry expert whose experience aligns with your music goals. You can meet on Zoom or in-person depending on where you’re both based. Our members club is open to women trans and non-binary people across the world. Find out more here.

• Pay-per-session: Non-members of any gender can now register for mentoring on a pay-per-session basis. This service is spearheaded by the co-creators of our Mix Nights initiative, so will be most appropriate for DJs, promoters and electronic music producers, but we’ll be expanding our roster to cover more areas of the industry soon. Sessions cost £60 per hour, with 40% of sessions being offered on a free or pay-what-you-can basis for those in financial hardship. Find out more here.