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INTRODUCING CROP 21

A PROGRAMME TO INSPIRE CREATIVITY IN BEGINNERS

CROP21 is a creative move by multi-award-winning hairdresser and renowned educator Paul
Falltrick to help young hairdressing professionals to lend their creative essence really early in their
career. The thinking of this Essex businessman and educator is that in the midst of the tasks that
can be mundane and feel far away from the creative career that they aspire to, putting creativity
into the mix from day one can really excite. In short, the thinking of CROP can make way for a
veritable harvest of creative youngsters of the future who belong, stay and grow within the
industry. The word crop conjures immediate pictures of production and growth, and in this sense,
crop has been borrowed in relation to seeding, feeding, growing and ready for a bumper harvest of

keen, excited and cared for talent. This is how CROP was developed, and also forms an acronym
for:

Creativity: give a creative experience early and consistently

Resilience: it builds boldness and opportunity to put your creative self on display

Opportunity: a chance to experiment, to grow confidence in creative expression

Purpose: to find our sense of purpose as a hairdresser and feel the creative excitement early on
The idea of embedding creative values of hairdressing into young careers began to take shape as

Paul Falltrick considered the role that hairdressers can play in changing up the oering to young
hairdressers and shift the approach. In his own early career Paul remembers being exposed very
early to having creative opportunities, “I believe this really lit the name and it’s something I want
to pass on to others”, commented Falltrick.In light of this thinking, the Crop programme has been
thought through to plant the seeds of creativity, to provide a positive, encouraging
environment to experiment and the chance to be with peers who are also putting themselves out
there, so we learn from each other. The purpose of CROP is to connect youngsters with the life-
blood of hairdressing:

Creativity
“Every hairdresser is acutely aware of how little in-take there is within the industry, and I feel
strongly that we need to look at ourselves and take responsibility for this in terms of really owning
up to why we are not meeting the needs of today’s intake of hairdressers.” Falltrick added.
One of the key reasons that Falltrick believes the industry is ‘getting it wrong’ is that aspiring,
young hairdressers are not getting the opportunity to step into creative work early enough and so
their interest wanes and they leave. He believes offering a creative intervention and opportunity
early can open up the excitement and feed the creative spirit in these young future hairdressers.
The first intake creative session of CROP21 was in October 2021, where two immersive days were
spent educating 6 complete ‘newbies’, who have just left college. These six keen individuals were
given the space and encouragement to express creatively using mannequin heads (kindly supplied

by Zen Hair) and the days with the youngsters creating mood-boards, cutting, applying colour
artistically and even adding extensions. As a follow-up, the team of six were invited to the get the
chance to join the Essex hairdressing community of hairdressers at the Essex Hairdressing Event
on Monday 1st November.