Appreciation

Actress Kate Winslet has been grabbing the headlines this week for her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes after winning two awards. Her gushing acceptance speech in which she forgot the name of fellow nominee Angelina Jolie has been seen the world over and it got me thinking about my topic for the blog this week – Appreciation.

To achieve great things in life we need a strong support group around us whether that be family, friends or colleagues. These people can help you in many ways from doing small jobs for you to save you time to focus n your goal to helping you improve in certain areas of your life or your talent.

The most important thing family, friends and colleagues give is their emotional support. When you are feeling down they pick you up and when you are doing well it is their encouragement which spurs you on and makes it all worthwhile. These people are there to offer support and advice when you need it the most and to offer it from a point of view which is one of wanting you to succeed. It is their love and belief in you and knowing that you have their love and belief which helps you handle going in to interviews, auditions or trials when they can’t physically be in the room with you, when you are alone or when it all rests on your shoulders.

When you are trying to achieve your dream some of your support network may put their life on hold for you or at least rearrange all their plans so they can help you. This is why it is so important that you show them everyday that you appreciate them. You may not be able to thank them on TV with millions of people watching but you need to find ways in which to know they are appreciated. Some people may not help you if they don’t feel appreciated but most will help you without the need of being appreciated however this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t show them that you appreciate them. Showing you appreciate someone can really make their day and help inspire them in their own life.

So go out and make someone’s day go and show them that you appreciate them.

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Starting the Year off Right

So you are now back at School, College, University or work and already one week of the year has passed us by. Gone are the parties and the fun of the Christmas / New Year period and if your like most you wont have a clue what you are going to do in 2009. You have probably already made new years resolutions with many people already breaking them and you may have put a few pounds on over Christmas but now is not the time to look back now is the time to start the year off right.

A lot of what you do in January can dictate how the rest of your year is going to go. Now is the time we need to get our attitude right for the year, get focused and get that determination going. We need to start setting ourselves goals and go about achieving those goals, forget about what you did or didn’t achieve last year just focus on what you can achieve this year and how you can achieve what it is that you want to achieve. If we can’t get that determination and that focus going now its going to be harder for the rest of the year and if you do manage to find it later on you will have already wasted so much time.

Now is the time to get your diary out and plan your year. Start putting in all the things you have planned and if you don’t have enough things planned start planning things. To succeed in 2009 you are going to have manage your time and make the most out of every minute you have.

As we start the year it is time to cast off all those things about us which are stopping us from achieving and making those changes in our lives and in our attitude that will help us become more successful. This is the year to make the changes in your own life that make a big impact.

What are your plans for the year? We want to know what goals you have set yourself and you can let us know by joining in our topic of the week which can found by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=631

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Christmas

In our final blog of the year before Talented Young People closes its doors for the Christmas break I thought it was only fitting this week that we talk about Christmas.

Now to me Christmas is a time of relaxation but deserved relaxation. If you put in one hundred and ten percent all year around to achieve your dreams your batteries need to be recharged with a week’s rest. With companies and a vast percentage of the population slowing down and closing up for Christmas it makes sense to get your rest and relaxation in when it is hard to get anything done.

Christmas is also a time for reflection. To think about what you have achieved this year and what you should have achieved. It’s only when looking at a year as a whole and matching we achieved against what we wanted to achieve that we can see if it has been a success or not. It is so easy to get caught up in the craziness which is the modern world and life so times like Christmas where everything shuts down are needed to get true perspective.

Christmas is about remembering what is important in your life. Spending time with family, friends and loved ones around Christmas can really bring home to us the importance of the people around us. It is a time where we make an effort to connect and reach out to people and a time where we can be overwhelmed by the generosity of others as well as feeling the warmth of making the time special for someone else.

If you want to hit the ground running in 2009 you need to make the best of this season to put to bed 2008 and to put you in a great position to start 2009.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us here at Talented Young People Ltd.


Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Miming

Britney Spears has launched a press and PR assault on the UK this weekend with an appearance on X-Factor and a 90 minute supposed bare all interview which was broadcast on Sky One this week. People should be talking about her new album which she is here to promote but this week many people have been left talking about her alleged miming on her so called live performance of here new track “Womanizer.”

People have been miming for years and this isn’t a new thing for music artists to do but when big names do it, it gets headlines. This week I ask when is miming acceptable and even is it acceptable at all? Should TV companies and music companies be doing more to make sure they perform live? And should we be told before an act performs if they are live or miming?

When people pay to see a concert are they paying for a show? Are they paying for entertainment? Or are they paying to see the act perform live? Now I can slightly understand if you are going on to a TV show at last minute and they can’t set the audio production up properly for you that you wouldn’t want to go on live. With sites like YouTube if you give a bad performance its going to be plastered all over the internet and through one performance could ruin your image but when it comes to concerts you play in venues which are designed for gigs and in which you have the whole day to set up and do sound checks so to me there is no excuse for miming at a gig.

When an act goes on to a TV show to do an interview and a performance do you just see this as a promotion / an advert for the music or should it be held in the same position as a performance at a gig? With a TV show no fan or member of the general public has paid anything to hear you sing live so is it acceptable not to?

You play a dangerous game when you mime and try and pass it off as a live performance. If you youtube Ashlee Simpson and Saturday Night Live you will see what I mean as on live TV her track started before she was ready and within a few seconds left the stage in embarrassment. Or if like Britney you have one of these headset mics and then when you have to be interviewed after the performance the interviewer has to put their mic in your face. As much as a bad performance can be bad for your image getting caught miming can be equally as bad just ask Ashlee Simpson.

The whole miming side of the music industry helps reinforce the belief that many people have that pop stars can’t sing and all there stuff is just edited to sound good. This is a reason why I think more needs to be done to make people perform live because as long as people continue to mime people will continue to have these thoughts.

I think the problem lies in the overproduction of tracks when they are released. When an artist can go in to a recording studio and spend days just recording one song and record it in small chunks having hundreds of attempts of course it is going to sound a bit different when you have one take to belt it out live. I think the quality of the production of some of these tracks makes it near impossible for some acts to recreate live and this puts them off performing live.

Britney picked the worst show to do a mime on as the show is all about people who have none or very little professional training performing live every week and this is what has brought this in to the headlines. If Britney had mimed on a daytime TV programme I don’t think there would have been as much talk about it.

What do you think about singers who mime on stage? Do you think it should be stopped? Or do you just want to be entertained and not care if the act is miming or not? We want to know your view points on miming and you can share your views by joining in our topic of the week:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=617

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Leadership

I haven’t done a blog on a sporting topic for a little while but this week my inspiration from this piece comes from the world of sport. If you like your football you will be able to guess what I am going to be talking about. I am a big fan of Arsenal Football Club and they have been all over the back pages this week following their Captain William Gallas making claims and statements to the press about trouble behind the scenes at the club. So this week it is all about Leadership.

In this world we will always need good leaders and leadership qualities are great to have. Now what does being a leader actually mean? Is a leadership someone who shouts the loudest and can get people to do things? Is a leader someone who leads by his actions? And should leaders speak out and act out on things which could have a detrimental affect on the group they lead?

To me a leader is someone who is considered but someone who can when it comes to crunch draw on their own experience and feelings to make a decision on how to lead. The important thing not to be when being a leader is a loose cannon. When some people think of a leader they think of someone who doesn’t bow down to anyone and leads based on their own opinions. A loose cannon is what William Gallas ended up being which is not the way to lead.

As a leader you need to put the group of people you lead before yourself and as a leader the way you act and behave will be seen as a direct reflection of your group by many people looking in. To be a leader you need to have the respect and the backing of your group without those two things even if you have the title of a leader you are not a real leader in the true sense of the word.

Even if you don’t want to a be leader when you grow up you never know when your leadership skills could be called in to question and when you will need other people to help you or do things for you so you always need to keep your leadership skills sharp. So when you are a leader never make a rash decision, always think before you act and always put the group first before yourself.

Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Accomplishments and recognition

We all like winning awards, trophies and recognition. Whether it’s winning the cup with your football team or being top of the class we all like to see a reward for our hard work. In a world which if you believe the press has an increasing amount of youth related crime happening it seems that more organisations are creating awards to reward young people doing great things in society whilst trying to get some good publicity for young people.

My question this week is this: Should we be rewarding young people for everything that they do? And if we do this are we just creating a culture of young people who will just expect to get an award for everything they do and then only do things if they get an award for it.

For me young people need to be empowered to achieve great things for their own personal satisfaction and not for an award. Young people should want to achieve in what they are doing first then if an award comes up it is a bonus. Someone shouldn’t be judged by how many awards they have won they should be judged by how good they are at something.

For me I want to win awards so I can show others what can be achieved through hard work as if you keep working hard at something and always want to get better at it somewhere down the line you will get the recognition for it.

So to sum up I am all for awards and recognising the efforts of young people as long as it doesn’t breed a culture of award hungry young people who lose focus on the long term goals they are trying to achieve in life.

What do you think? Do you like getting awards? Is that what motivates you? We want to know and you can share your views by joining in our topic of the week:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=605


Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com

Contracts - Are they worth signing?

Now many of us are aware of the lengthy and sometimes unfair contracts that music acts are signed to by record labels but nobody has really thought about contracts on the X-Factor. On the show each finalist is tied down to a contract which states that they can’t release any music until after the winner has released there’s and that they will have to take part in the X-Factor tour among countless other things I’m sure.

Scott allegedly wants out of his contract so that he can start releasing music now and not be restrained by the terms of releasing music on his contract. He obviously believes that his best chance of chart success is getting something out now before the X-Factor buzz dies down. If successful he would set a president and it would get other acts wanting to do the same so I a sure if he did attempt this it would be unsuccessful.

Ok the X-Factor contract may be restrictive but without it Scott wouldn’t have gotten on TV and had all the media buzz behind him so even if he does have to wait he still has a higher chance of success than if he hadn’t been on the show. The X-Factor tour is also great PR as he gets to perform to thousands of people up and down the country at the same getting paid a nice amount for doing so which without his contract he wouldn’t get the chance to do.

I think if this story is true then it is just another attempt to get media hype for being the first person to try this. I’m sure if Scott was still on the show he wouldn’t want to be released from his contract. Personally I think it is worth signing a contract like that for the opportunities that show can supply but it does bring back in to the spotlight the importance of reading a contract and thinking about the outcomes before signing one.

In this week’s topic of the week we want to know if you think contracts are unfair on the talent? Are the big record labels and TV shows wrong to tie people in to contracts> We want to know your thoughts. And you can share your thoughts by going to:

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=598


Adam Sibley
Founder of the Talented Young People organisation
www.talentedyoungpeople.com
"Envisage it, Believe it, Achieve it!"
”Shaking up the Youth of Today”

http://www.talentedyoungpeople.blogspot.com