I look at this photograph taken Wednesday evening and almost can’t believe the circumstances that led us all to here. This isn’t a company or a family per se, this is a collective of people who, in a big part due to timing and sheer luck I expect, found their way to You Are The Media.
There’s a fair percentage of local folks who may have met had YATM never came to be, but I don’t imagine those interactions would have been quite as authentic, more likely firm handshakes, business cards and guarded conversations. Then there’s the wider reach, our friends who have travelled across the country and in a few cases, continent to be a part of this.
We all have our own stories, backgrounds, hobbies, commitments, struggles and successes. We couldn’t be more different and yet somehow we’re all the same.
Matt King’s excellent opening video for YATM Creator Day 2026
Some time ago I noted how You Are The Media “represents authentic companionship in the world of work”.
You’re never safe from appearing in comms for future YATM events when you make an observation verbally or appear in a photo. Far better that than some tacky generated image though and I don’t mind being mildly spooked by seeing my own words played back, particularly in this case, because it may have been my best attempt so far to summarise what all this about, or at least what YATM has given me.
When I first subscribed to Mark Masters’ weekly newsletter in early 2018 and began hearing about the Lunch Club events locally I had been in a ‘marketing’ role at Grapevine for about two and a half years. I had a good relationship with my colleagues and part of my reason for joining the company was that the dynamic had already been established during my time working at Bournemouth University. Despite having a degree in Advertising and Marketing Communications, I didn’t have a grand ambition to be a marketing manager.
In those initial years at Grapevine I was a department of one. I still am in much of my roles and responsibilities, but time and our transition to employee ownership has seen me far more integrated than I once was. Prior to this, whether I quite realised it or not, I really needed folks in my profession (or other “misfits” as we now term ourselves) who I could just be around from time to time.
Eight years of such occasions has resulted in me having made countless authentic companions who have definitely helped me navigate the changing world of work.
It dawned on me while listening to Mark at last week’s Creator Day launch event at Evolve that if I hadn’t discovered YATM when I did, or put the time in to get the most of this community, that I’d probably be feeling so much more anxious about my profession and employment in general. We’ve seen folks fall down, we’ve picked folks back up, I’m confident there’d be a safety net for me too.
I felt the need to share another observation between songs at last night’s YATM Creator Day after party karaoke session in the back room of Da Vinci’s restaurant on Poole Quay.
We are so lucky to have all this.
I didn’t have a lot more to say than that in the moment to elaborate. It was past midnight and we’d all been talking since the conference started at 9am the morning before. Said conference had finished at 3pm, and yet here a group of us were 9 hours later, yelling at Matt King for one more song two more songs because we still weren’t ready to go home.
The scene was one that people might be nonchalant and play it cool about, yet in true British fashion, secretly crave to have some version of in their life. I could well be describing a past version of myself here.
On reflection, I think the majority of nights I spent in clubs were shit. Something about them bled the fun out of partying, whether it was the uber pretentious DJs or slightly sketchy characters, the overpriced drinks or the inevitable anti-climax. Did they ever really capture the spirit of a school disco? Pushing the benches aside in an assembly hall for a makeshift dancefloor.
As we grow up, drifting further from the shore of our adolescent years and the stories those times provide, something is lost. For some it’s reborn in starting families, for others they might have even managed to maintain a friendship circle or have a tight knit group of relatives. In most cases I often see folks longing for a wedding announcement / invite and the promise of stag and hen dos as an acceptable excuse to have fun again.
Do we really have to live our lives holding out for the chance of that?
Mark actually used a related analogy speaking to the audience at Failed Nights, the event that takes place the evening before Creator Day. “Imagine this is a stag or hen do and I’m the maid of honour” (Fair play on not defaulting to ‘best man’). “Everything’s sorted, I’m here to take care of you, enjoy yourselves”. Culturally, there’s a shared language based on experience being spoken here.
Creator Day and the associated events are of course far more than a boozy sing-song. The new tradition of karaoke only began by chance last year, and an after party didn’t appear on the official schedule when Creator Day first took place in the freshly post pandemic world of May 2022.
I had planned to write about each of the great speakers (and I really believe that, as a set, it was the strongest year so far) but I wouldn’t do them justice in a brief summary and I did that format for an earlier iteration of a YATM annual conference event, when I first went to one in 2019. I’ve dug it out, here it is.
The key to all of this is the balance. Again, I mentioned in passing previously without realising it might be a thesis statement (though it’s mighty handy to have that to utilise here and now) that Creator Day without community is just a conference, but a social without a programme is just a piss up.
In a professional sense we need to learn, to be inspired by guest speakers, to have the constructive criticism of our peers. In a personal sense we need to have fun. As You Are The Media has evolved it’s become equally about each of these for me and I know that’s true for a lot of others too. Both deliver at the same high level as the other in 2026.
Kudos to Mark for his determination to prove that these two factors can co-exist harmoniously and for never throwing in the beach towel on his concept during the times when the viability was inevitably tested. Mark benefits from the results of this long game. Each of our own benefits have the potential last an even longer time, should there ever come a day the project concludes.
If these companionships are authentic, I believe they’d continue in some way and I’m extremely grateful to our maid of honour for having created the circumstances that have gifted us all that.
This year is both the 10th anniversary of You Are The Media events and Grapevine’s 35th year in business. To recognise this we’re pleased to be supporting the YATM Summer Party taking place at SBomb in Poole on Thursday 16th July. Tickets are available now from youarethemedia.co.uk
Liam Toms 