The Grey Rebellion

Grey Model Agency has launched The Grey Rebellion, which officially begins on 1st May 2018. What is it?
Briefly, it is an accelerator programme to help  kickstart the modelling career of anyone thinking of  taking up modelling professionally. Though Grey is a model agency specialising in men and women over the age of thirty-five, the Grey Rebellion is NOT ONLY for older models, it is for anyone who is seriously thinking of turning modelling into a full fledged career.
Grey is not your run-of-the-mill model agency, it represents models and talent in the arts and in sport, writers and influencers, men and women who are recognised as having reached the top of  their field eg the Olympian Tessa Sanderson CBE,   People who can model,  but can also speak and  be fashion and lifestyle icons.  Models of today are neither manniquins nor clothes horses, they tend to be role models - the unprecedented success of someone like Adwoa Aboah, recent cover girl for Vogue UK,  with her Gurlz Talk, is representative of this shift.
Grey's MD, Rebecca Valentine, is a formidable woman. With a background as expert curator for photographic work, graphic illustration and street art, a past judge of the prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, and an award winning photography agent, not to mention her accolades as talent spotter (she discovered Morgan Silk ), her pivotal role as Creative Director of the Cancer Research UK Sound and Vision and her experience as consultant and tough negotiator for  usage licence, copyright transfer and global print usage of images, Rebecca started Grey in 2015, after running for a while a supporting artists agency.
She realised that models over the age of thirty -five were under represented and there was a need for a professional  agency that would help these models build a career and reach the top of their profession, in so doing changing perceptions and cultural expectations of age.
However,  there is a problem with modelling in general in that, unlike other professions,  there is very little in terms of preparation for it. Shrouded in glamour, real or fake, models of all ages are often clueless about what they are doing. Traditionally, the modelling business has been full of cowboys and pseudo agencies, that would extract extortionate fees from wannabes to get them  a mediocre portfolio and then, having taken the money, would vanish. Many years ago I fell for that, a young woman  asked me for £250 upfront to put me on the books of her  agency, and more money for a portfolio that was nothing of the sort, she had just started the agency, I was new and inexperienced and  fell for it.  I never got even a call for a casting from that agency, which unfortunately still operates, under a revamped name.
So, understandably, everyone who embarks on modelling is rather wary of parting with any sum for the purpose of training.  What kind of training anyway? You do not need to know much, you just have to be photographed or filmed and smile, right? You just have to be beautiful and that is genetic.  Wrong, very wrong. There is a lot more to modelling than that and not all agencies are equal. Some will select a handful of models on their books, the ones they deem to have real potential of making it  and provide what is called 'development' (and they are never the older ones)  others will just fill up their websites (it's all done online now, the days of physical books are over) with photos of hundreds, even thousands of models who in fact will never do a day's work. They are just 'fillers', many of them living abroad and most unlikely to be booked for jobs, as clients tend to go for locally based  models - there will always be exceptions, but exceptions only confirm the rule.  Older models are never thought to be worthy of any development. They just come and go.
There's the nitty gritty of the business. Image rights that need to be negotiated. Some models will often agree to a minimal fee and be effectively shortchanged when it comes to how long and where their images can be used.  Many models and many people in the industry still think of it as an 'honour' when their image appears somewhere, they are being seen - oh my god I am a model!  So the practice of unpaid editorials is growing. We don't have a budget for the model is a common refrain. Imagine using that as an excuse whenever you are involved in any other business transaction.
 Models are always promised  'amazing' images, that should be enough - images which they do not even own!  The times I have been offered 'amazing' images by complete start-ups cannot be counted. The times images for which I posed (totally unpaid) ended up as art works in a photography gallery and were sold, with nothing given to me, also cannot be counted. The times when images of me were used and I was not credited or credited with the wrong name also cannot be counted.
Many models do not have exclusive contracts with agencies and sign up with more than one. This leads to serious problems and it totally devalues the model. The same job briefs go to all agencies. If more than one agency represents you, the client will choose the one that asks for less money on your behalf.
Models need proper training, like actors do, a training that encompasses the practicalities of the business and also the actual modelling - what is right for you, how to behave at castings and on set.
You may not want to sign up with an agency, you may want to manage your modelling career by yourself - I know several unconventional models who work without agency representation, think of someone like Ivory Flame, who has defied all odds and is most active in every field of modelling, standing at just 5'3  (thus throwing out of the window a common misconception, that you have to be super tall to model).
You may want to do the course to learn how to manage models and a model agency - in this industry we need capable, professional bookers and serious model agents. Or you may be a client or would-be client, new to hiring models and wanting to know how to do it properly and fairly, what can be expected, what can be demanded and what definitely cannot.  As a client think of it as part of your HR training and development and management of human capital.

Grey, whose professionalism is beyond doubt, has taken up the challenge and decided to provide proper training, inspired by the accelerator courses provided by Mastered with whom it has consulted. Before launching this initiative, Grey held two successful training days in -house, in September 2017 and, more recently, in April 2018 aimed at the many would-be models that had applied from all over the world to be represented by Grey.  It became clear that more was needed.  This is what really sparked this new and unprecedented Grey Rebellion.
What can you do? Come Tuesday 1st May  sign up website. You will not regret it.
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