Podcasts about Creative England

Welcoming Kiran Kaur, co-founder of GirlDreamer, to Purposely Podcast where she shares her founder journey. Kiran is a visionary leader who is dedicated to supporting and uplifting millennial women of colour. She co-founded GirlDreamer, a platform that provides training, mentoring, and opportunities for this underrepresented group to achieve their personal and professional goals. In this episode, recorded at the first Anthropy conference at the Eden Project in 2022, Kiran talks about the challenges and successes of her entrepreneurial journey, the importance of creating inclusive and diverse spaces, and the impact of her work on the lives of thousands of women. GirlDreamer has been recognized as one of the “top 50 most creative, innovative and disruptive companies in England” by Creative England, and Kiran also serves as the chair of the board at Home Girls Unite, an organization that supports eldest daughters from immigrant families. Kiran is a passionate advocate for social change and a role model for the next generation of leaders. Listen to her inspiring story and learn how you can join her movement. Anthropy is a conference that brings together changemakers from different sectors and backgrounds to explore how we can create a more sustainable, inclusive, and regenerative world. Anthropy aims to inspire, connect, and empower people who are passionate about making a positive difference. The founder of Anthropy, John O'Brien, is a past guest of Purposely. The next conference will take place in March 2025 at the Eden Project, described by the founders as a living laboratory for environmental and social innovation. If you are interested in attending or learning more, please visit www.anthropy.org for details. About Anthropy

On today's episode Sharmadean Reid is delighted to be joined by Karen Blackett OBE, President of WPP UK and all round media genius.We discuss how Karen established herself in media planning and buying, how she negotiated and created a position for herself, and lessons on how to scale yourself and map out your own career path.Karen is a business leader with 25 years' experience in the marketing communications industry. She holds several non-executive roles including Creative England and The MOBO Trust.Want more? Executive Realness is a community as well as a podcast and you can join us for live recordings and watch the past video interviews here: https://bit.ly/MoreExecutiveRealnessAre you a woman who wants to lead? Find out more about The Stack community here: https://bit.ly/thestackworldExecutive Realness is brought to you by The Stack World, a new media company for women at work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Beautiful Business Podcast, Yiuwin Tsang once again sits down with Tim Evans to dive into the ever-evolving landscape of the creative industry and the challenges faced by businesses. They explore how the market has shifted in the wake of COVID-19 and other global events, impacting the ability of creative businesses to raise funds and find growth opportunities.Tim shares insights into the post-COVID optimism that quickly turned into economic uncertainty, and the various challenges creative businesses are currently facing, from increased operating costs to Brexit-related issues. He highlights that while some sub-sectors, like games, have managed to thrive, many creative businesses are feeling the strain, hindering their growth potential.They discuss the decision-making process for businesses when it comes to raising capital. Tim offers valuable advice on assessing whether seeking investment is the right path, stressing the importance of seeking a wider community for advice and introspection. He encourages founders to evaluate their products, services, and ambitions to determine if investment is necessary for growth.The episode concludes with a discussion on lean validation methods and the need for thorough research before seeking investment, ensuring that businesses are well-prepared to take the next step in their growth journey.Tune in to gain insights into the creative industry's challenges and opportunities and learn valuable tips for making informed decisions about raising capital for your creative business.About Tim EvansTim has been with Creative UK for nearly a decade and oversees all investment activity at the organisation. Tim has spent the past 15 years helping entrepreneurs to take innovative and compelling creative products to market and is passionate about the power of business as an engine for positive social change.As an investment lead, Tim has secured over 50 investments across equity and debt, working with over 400 creative companies and supporting three exits. His key areas of industry focus are: SaaS, VFX, Games, Agency and TV Production.Tim's prior experience includes running his own production company, the management of Creative England's equity fund and the programme management of the South West Innovation Network programmes.The Beautiful Business Podcast is bought to you in partnership with:Krystal Hosting - the UK's premium sustainable web hosting provider

In this week's episode of the Beautiful Business Podcast, host Yiuwin Tsang is joined by Tim Evans, Investment Director at Creative UK. Tim has spent the past 15 years helping entrepreneurs build resilient and prosperous businesses, delivering compelling and creative content products and services to the market. The conversation begins with Tim discussing Creative UK's role as a strategic investment partner rather than just an investor. They only invest in businesses where they can provide value beyond financial capital. Tim emphasises that the kind of support they offer is unique to each business, tailored to their specific challenges, capacities, and ambitions. One of their areas of focus is supporting clients in raising finance through co-investment, equity propositions, and making introductions to their network of investor partners. Yiuwin and Tim discuss the three essential aspects that businesses need to consider when preparing to raise capital. Tim stresses the importance of having the right founder foundations, including a growth mindset, willingness to seek advice, and being mindful of their limitations. Secondly, businesses should have a product with a clear differentiator and a barrier to entry to stand out in the market. Lastly, they should offer a product or service that is essential rather than a mere "nice to have," demonstrating its meaningful impact on customers' lives. Throughout the episode, Tim emphasizes the importance of validation, proof points, and clear differentiation in investment pitches. He encourages businesses to back up their claims with evidence to gain investors' confidence and secure further conversations. In summary, the episode provides valuable insights into how businesses can unlock funding and navigate current challenges while maintaining their unique competitive edge. Tim's expertise as an Investment Director offers valuable advice to founders and entrepreneurs seeking investment opportunities in the creative industry.About Tim EvansTim has been with Creative UK for nearly a decade and oversees all investment activity at the organisation. Tim has spent the past 15 years helping entrepreneurs to take innovative and compelling creative products to market and is passionate about the power of business as an engine for positive social change.As an investment lead, Tim has secured over 50 investments across equity and debt, working with over 400 creative companies and supporting three exits. His key industry focusses are: SaaS, VFX, Games, Agency and TV Production.Tim's prior experience includes running his own production company, the management of Creative England's equity fund and the programme management of the South West Innovation Network programmes.The Beautiful Business Podcast is bought to you in partnership with:Krystal Hosting - the UK's premium sustainable web hosting provider

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2022 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the first digital benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends July 31st 2023. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/https://culturalenterprises.org.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kingston-myles-080088118/ Kingston Myles is Head of Commercial Development at English Heritage. He describes his role as “seeking out and executing opportunities to generate new income for the charity and improve on processes to reduce expenditure”. Kingston is responsible for a number of growing and emerging businesses that intersect the Charity and its assets (sites, collections and brand) with commercial businesses (Venue Hire, Licensing, Holidays and Compliance). Kingston has a varied background and prior to joining the heritage sector in 2017 worked in numerous venues and across several high profile events including Glastonbury Festival. Kingston has a passion for both sustainability and equality, he describes this passion as being a positive culture amplifier. He plays an active part of driving change from within – currently sitting on the Organisations EDI Steering Group and is the founding member and chairperson of English Heritage's BAME Staff & Volunteer Network. Kingston is driven by wanting to see more senior leaders that are representative of society across the arts, heritage and cultural sector. Kingston is also a Trustee for the Association of Cultural Enterprises – a sector supporting organisation focused on the advancement of commerce in the cultural sector. Transcriptions: Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world.  In today's episode, I speak with Kingston Myles, Head of Commercial Development at English Heritage. Kingston shares his insight into where the biggest opportunities lie for diversifying income streams and his top three tips on how attractions of any size can utilise these strategies. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on itunes, Spotify and all the usual channels by searching to Skip the Queue. Kelly Molson: Kingston, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I'm very excited to have you here. Kingston Myles: More than welcome. Kelly Molson: Hopefully you'll feel as excited after I've asked you the icebreaker question. Who knows. But let's go. Right, this is quite topical for today, so I want to know, what are you most likely to buy when you exit through the gift shop. Kingston Myles: Me personally, probably a bottle of gin or alcohol. That's probably my go to when I leave through the gift shop. Kelly Molson: Good choice. A gin man. A man of my dreams. Not going to lie. Okay. All right, well, this is another one that leads on from that, actually. Do you have or have you ever had a collection of anything? Kingston Myles: Yes, when I was growing up, I had a collection of the James Bond videos and used to put them all together on the shelf and they used to paint a picture and that one was missing. My nan used to buy them for me when I was a kid and, like, only one of them was missing right up until videos kind of got killed by DVD and DVDs got killed by Netflix. So, yeah, I guess that was probably the one thing I can remember having, like, a proper collection of. Kelly Molson: Did you ever get the missing one? Kingston Myles: No, it was like number 13, I think, from memory. Not that it's bugged me for all these years. Kelly Molson: Look, someone listening to this is going to send you that now. They're going to hunt it down on ebay and be like, “Look what I found you”. Kingston Myles: And I'll be in the loft digging out the videos and then trying to find a video player. Kelly Molson: Have you still got them? Kingston Myles: I think they're still at my parents house and they're lost. Yeah, we don't throw stuff away easily. Kelly Molson: No, we're hoarders as well. It's really sad, though, isn't it. Because my mum did this when I was younger with Disney videos. So every new Disney film that came out on video, she bought, and I think she was thinking, “Oh, this is lovely. You know, one day I'll have grandchildren as well and they can watch them”. Kingston Myles: Yeah. And then streaming came along and now we've kind of just got everything at the click of a button. Kelly Molson: Disney+ mum, taken over. Right, good. I like this. Okay, last ice breaker question. What's the best attraction event that you've ever experienced? Kingston Myles: I went to the Ally Pally fireworks last year, which is the big fireworks show for London. And I'm not a Londoner, so you've got to imagine, first of all, I was in South London and I told friends I'll pop up and see them. There's no popping from South London to Ally Pally, as I found out the hard way. But I've just never seen a pop up one night fireworks show on the scale of that with like, the infrastructure and all the different bits that kind of make it what it was. I really underestimated it. I thought, I will turn up, there'll be like, a few burger vans and like, a bit of music and a bar. No, it's this just incredible pop up experience that takes over Ally Pally. Kingston Myles: So that was probably the one that surprised me most because I went thinking it would be like every other sort of local firework display and it was huge. Kelly Molson: Everybody rates this. I've never been to this. I can remember years ago, ice skating at Ally Pally, and I used to have to get three buses to get to Ally Pally to actually do that. But everybody speaks so highly of this fireworks attraction. Fireworks night. Kingston Myles: Never been. It's phenomenal. It's huge and there's literally tens of thousands of people go to see it. So it's definitely worthwhile going to. I think also it's one of those once you've been to it, you want to go and find something else because the magic will probably fade potentially relatively quickly and there's lots of other incredible displays around London, but it's definitely a worthwhile experience. Kelly Molson: Excellent. Good choice. Wasn't expecting that. Okay, right, your unpopular opinion. What have you prepared for us?Kingston Myles: I think my really unpopular opinion is that actually we over-index our focus, especially in the culture and heritage sector, on gift shops, on catering and on membership. And actually the future is way beyond that. So that's probably my unpopular opinion. We over-index on shops and cafes and forget that there are dozens of other ways that you can generate income. Kelly Molson: Oh, I like this. And very topical for the things that we're going to talk about today as well. It's an excellent lead into the conversation. Okay, well, we are going to talk about diversifying income streams today. Your role. When we spoke pre interview, we had a brilliant chat and I just found your role so interesting and so diverse. Can you just share a little bit of what you do with our audience and kind of what your tasks are with achieving?Kingston Myles: Yeah, sure. So my official title is head of commercial development, which is best summarised as being responsible for this kind of incubator of business growth and efficiency. So I'm responsible for four business areas within English Heritage: our brand licensing program, our portfolio of holiday cottages, and our venue hire business. And those are all income generating parts of this sort of incubator and then also responsible for managing a suite of national contracts. So the provision of services to all of our site operations teams and that's really about looking at efficiency opportunities, the chance to rationalise contracts and reduce perhaps the supplier debt that we have in terms of the number of suppliers we're working with so we can get better value for the charity. Kingston Myles: But all of those business areas are kind of unique in that they've got such scope to grow at a point they will eventually have their own, hopefully their own allocated head of department when they sort of graduate my care and then something else will fall into, I'm sure, my sort of pool. Kelly Molson: It feels quite entrepreneurial, your role, is it quite a unique role for English Heritage or is this something that you've kind of defined for yourself within the organisation?Kingston Myles: Yes, I'm the first head of commercial development. The role was created back in 2020 with an initial focus on looking at brand licensing and contracts and compliance and then there was sort of an opportunity to pull the holiday cottage piece in as well. And then various sort of personnel and structure changes meant that I inherited the venue hire business, which is exciting because it's kind of the closest thing to sort of my previous job roles, sort of pre culture and heritage, but yeah, it's definitely unique in a sense of various business areas rather than sort of one specific focus, that traditional focus of having either like ahead of retail or ahead of catering, which we do have all head food and beverage, but within the cultural sector, sort of heads of business development, heads of business innovation, change, transformation. Kingston Myles: I mean, they all sound very buzzworthy, but there are definitely more and more roles emerging as institutions say, well, actually, how do we diversify our income streams. Strike up more partnerships. We kind of need somebody who is almost like a paid entrepreneur and I'm so privileged in that. That kind of really is my job. I'm paid to be entrepreneurial without the risk of having to invest all my own cash and capital into an idea, Kelly Molson: It's the perfect role. Kingston Myles: Yeah, definitely. Especially because when it's successful and when we do great things, they contribute towards this sort of wider charitable purpose. So you get this real benefit of creating a business, but that business has this incredible sort of halo effect of doing good because we all work for a charity. Kelly Molson: Yeah. So it's the warm and fuzzy feeling as well. You mentioned just briefly there that your roles previously outside of the sector, what were those roles and how have they helped you with this role? That's quite an interesting thing to understand. Kingston Myles: So I used to work in bars and nightclubs, hospitality and events, sort of a real event and hospitality sort of butterfly as that industry kind of is. You kind of chase progression, opportunities, new openings, there's always something sort of shiny and new moving in the hospitality space and managers move around a lot. But I think the transferable skills from that, it's everything from just general business operations and financial acumen which especially if you're in an independent operator, you're really close to both the PNL but also the balance sheet and cash flow. And then also kind of innovation and that entrepreneurial spirit that sort of need to be able to grow a business, whether that's more people through a door, a higher transaction value or a more efficient control of your suppliers and contractors, kind of it's all transferable into the sector. Kingston Myles: And there's this kind of really interesting change in the sector at the moment in that more and more people are transitioning into the sector. Rather than kind of perhaps growing through the sector, it's becoming more attractive as a sector to work in, which is exciting because it used to really be a case of sort of join and you had to work your way up, whereas actually the sector is recognising those transferable skills, add value, especially in this current climate. Kelly Molson: Yeah, I like that take on it, actually, because we have a lot of guests that come on that work within the attraction sector that would start at quite a low level entry point and then work their way up. You're probably the first guest that's come in from a completely different perspective. It hasn't been your beer or endo. You haven't had this huge desire to work in it from the minute that you came out of school. You've transitioned from something that's completely different but really transferable. So I'm excited to hear where today takes us. All right, well, let's start. What I'd like to understand is how attractions start that process of diversifying its income streams. You talked a little bit at the beginning about we're quite tied to admission fees and membership and retail. How do they start to look beyond that?Kingston Myles: Yeah, I think part of it is taking stock of what you have. If you've got big open green spaces, then great. You could focus on large third party events, working with production companies and clients and promoters. If you've got this really interesting design Led collection, or if you've got a really interesting story to tell, then perhaps it's more around sort of brand licensing and leveraging the intellectual property. So I guess step one is asking, what do I have beyond my shop, beyond my Cafe, beyond admissions. What product could I create? Kingston Myles: And what product is going to be the easiest to create is probably the best place to start because I speak to a lot of colleagues within the sector or a lot of sort of commercial managers within heritage and culture institutions that are like, right, well, we want to do everything that your job does. And I'm like, well, you don't have a portfolio of properties that could be transformed into high quality lets or accommodation. Never going to have a holiday business. So don't try and squeeze glamping into this really small corner of your estate. Focus on something else. So, yeah, I guess it's taking stock is key. Kelly Molson: That's really good advice, isn't it. And I guess it's looking at what you already have and making the most of it, which is a message that is quite key at the moment, where we're seeing budgets being marketing departments all over. You don't have to necessarily start from scratch. It's just about making the most of what you already have and developing that into something that you've already got quite a captive audience for. Kingston Myles: Yes, definitely, 100%. Kelly Molson: Great. Okay, so what are the areas that look quite exciting at the moment. If we're an attraction. Where can you see some of the biggest opportunities?Kingston Myles: Yeah, I mean, so filming location hire. We've seen this huge boom in domestic filming location hire. Domestic film shoots, domestic productions, regional screen tourism offices are popping up. There are some incredible partners within the film sector. Film London, Creative England, Screen Yorkshire, sort of all these bodies that really drive trying to connect people with great spaces to production companies that want to film domestically. And I think as we see the kind of challenges of the cost of global travel and the strength of the pound in the sort of wider economic world, although I'm not an economist, sort of change, there's a real opportunity to capitalise on productions that say, actually, we can unit base. We can produce here, we can shoot here. We can shoot on location. We've got this tiny little island, the UK. Kingston Myles: And I predominantly focus, obviously, on England because of my role, but we've got this tiny little island. But there's so much in it, so much to see, so much diversity. So I definitely think there's an opportunity to unlock more spaces for filming a location hire, for sure. Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's a great one. I guess that's relevant. If you have a stately home, for example, it's a perfect opportunity. But it kind of doesn't matter what your attraction is, right. Because we've seen TV shows be filmed at places like Bembom. I call it Bembom Brothers. But Dreamland in Margate. We've just seen a film that's been released very recently that's been shot as part of that. And I guess so there's opportunities regardless of what the size of your attraction is and what it actually is as well. Kingston Myles: Completely. And I think it's about for each attraction, they'll have unique challenges. If you're a high footfall visitor attraction, sort of a theme park, for example, then yeah, you're going to have the conflicting challenge of foregoing admissions revenue to potentially reduce your operating capacity to shoot a film. If you're the custodian of a collection of national significance or an indemnified collection of art, then you're going to have all of the unique challenges of working in a space with all of the environmental controls required to protect pieces of artwork and historic collections. And if you're an independent stately home, you're potentially going to have the challenges of the knowledge base required to execute a filming location hire, sort of safely, efficiently. So I think each part of the attraction sector is sort of a whole when you sort of that really broad spectrum of attractions. Kingston Myles: Each will have their own unique challenges. There's a real benefit in networking and learning and working with those within sort of business specific areas that already do it and do it well. So, yeah, hopefully that helps. Kelly Molson: Definitely helps. We'll talk a little bit about sector collaboration later as well. So I've got a few questions around that. What does English heritage do. Can you share some of the examples of the diversity that you've been able to develop within the organisation?Kingston Myles: Yeah, so staying on the subject of filming location higher, as an example of an income stream that isn't purely based on what people might perceive, which is we've got historic properties, so they must just do period dramas. Actually, we make our properties available for blockbuster films. Obviously, I can't disclose what those are, but there are some that are in post production, which I'm really excited to see how they bring our properties to life in these really incredibly creative and thought through worlds and spaces. But it doesn't just have to be big major film shoots. We work with fashion houses, brands and editorial magazines to provide spaces for photo shoots. Kingston Myles: And then of course, within that same genre, we work with individuals, couples who might have a real affinity to a property that want to shoot an engagement shoot, or a wedding shoot, or a celebration of life shoot. So there's a real broad spectrum in that you don't have to suddenly close everything and have these massive film crews turn up with all these incredibly ginormous, almost intimidating pieces of equipment. It could just be a really lovely local couple that met at a property that are getting married down the road and on the day of their wedding, what they'd really like to do is jump in their wedding car, pop up, take some photos for a couple of hours and leave again. So it's that real spectrum of like two people in their camera person to two to 500 person strong film crew. Kelly Molson: I love that as well because that it means that regardless, again, of size of attraction, there's still something that you can offer in some way. And I think that's really important to point out is that these strategies, they aren't just for English Heritage is a very large attraction organisation, but it's not just for those. There's plenty that the smaller attractions can take from this as well. What other things does English Heritage do? Because I know that you've got partnerships. I know you mentioned holiday lets.Kingston Myles: Yeah. So we've got an incredible portfolio of holiday lets. So we're really unique in all of our holiday lets are situated within sort of the boundary of our properties and then when the properties close in the evening to guests that are staying overnight, so day guests leave and our overnight guests can sort of explore the exterior spaces and gardens and landscapes overnight. So they're really popular. We're really lucky to welcome sort of just over 1300 holidays a year across our portfolio, which is exciting, and that's an expanding portfolio. So we're imminently about to open a new holiday at the Head Gardeners House at Audley End in Essex, and that's been through a renovation process. So that was sort of bringing the property out back into use. Kingston Myles: And we opened a property at Rest Park, which is not too far from Audley End End in 2021. But it's not just sort of holiday lets and filming. You know, we've got the brand and licensing program. So it's really about rather than sort of doing something at our site, if you kind of, you know, generalise the holiday business and the venue hire and filming business as sort of something that's happening at site, there's an activity at one of our properties. Our branded intellectual property licensing business is all about unlocking the assets that we have in the collection to tell the story of England we're really uniquely placed as English Heritage. Our CEO, Kate May referred to us once as the sort of the Museum of England, which is a really nice way of looking at the stories that we can tell. Kingston Myles: So our brand licensing program will do the things that one would expect. We'll use an incredible archive of wallpapers captured from properties over the years in sort of design led work. But we also try to work with a range of licensing partners or licensees that adopt some of our core values. Are they established English business manufacturing in England with some really incredible conservation and stewardship credentials? Are they celebrating sort of traditional ways of working. Because we're not only this sort of steward of nearly 400 historic monuments and the blue plaque scheme in London, but we're really here trying to preserve the sort of art, the craft, sort of the true vibe of Englishness. So we get this real opportunity to play from sort of design led work right through to sort of culture, craft and Englishness as a brand itself. Kelly Molson: Oh, my goodness. I have so many questions on these, but also a statement. I live like five minutes from Audley End and I had no idea that you were opening the Gardener's Cutters as a holiday let. I actually had no idea that English Heritage had a holiday let side to its organisation. So this was all quite new to me when we first spoke. What I really love about it is it really drives into the message that we're hearing more and more frequently now as we come through into 2023, that people are willing to pay more for something that is a really unique experience. And when you mentioned there about the holiday lets and people can then walk around the gardens at night and get a completely different I just thought, “Oh my goodness, I had no idea that you could actually do that”. Kingston Myles: Of course. So there's like an added reason to go and stay book somewhere. That's beautiful. Obviously it's going to beautiful, it's an English Heritage property, but you have this unique opportunity to explore the place that you're in when nobody else is there at a time that you would never, ever be able to be in it. And I just think that's amazing. Kingston Myles: Yeah, they're phenomenal and we've been really lucky. We've worked really hard tirelessly to drive up the quality of our offer. So we started a refurbishment program of our holiday estate towards the end of 2020, 2021. We're sort of now sort of at phase three of what will probably be five phases of bringing all of those holiday lets up to standard. So at the moment we've got a suite that are being refurbished as we speak. When the Head Gardener's House opens up Audley End, that will be sort of kitted out with I mean, the kitchen is beautiful, but so is the interior. And it's not just a case of, well, actually if we just thrown a load of stuff in there, we work really closely with the business that won the tender for the refurbishment. Kingston Myles: So we're working with John Lewis on that property and we work with their interior designers. We're trying to create and I know we'll touch on it later, but we're trying to create these experiences where actually, if you really enjoy being in one of our holiday cottages, you can go away and you can buy pretty much anything you see inside. And as much as possible, as the licensing program evolves, those products will be English Heritage products. So you'll be sat below a wallpaper that's inspired by a clipping from a collections archive down the road that actually was in a building on. So we have this incredible piece of wallpaper from Great Ormond Street. Kingston Myles: So the same road as the famous hospital that's used on product, and you'll be able to go and buy that, but you also might be able to buy it on a cushion or on home furnishings or on a bed spread, but you get to experience the quality of it first and then you've really got this sort of continued storytelling. Like guests don't just leave because they've checked out, they kind of take a little bit of us with them, which is the aspiration, and I think it's what the Premier ended this years ago. They had this whole campaign where you could buy the hypnos bed that you slept on in a Premier inn. And they were one of the first brands to sort of say, all we are as a Premier inn right. Kingston Myles: But if you had a great night's sleep, have this great night's sleep at home, because you can buy the same bed that we have. So, yeah, it's just kind of trying to perfect that wheel, if you like. Kelly Molson: You described it as experiential shopping, which I think is a great term. And I just love how many facets are waving into this in that you're celebrating artifacts, artwork, craft that has come from, you know, all these incredible places, and you're allowing people to now stay in a beautiful holiday cottage, purchase part of that experience to take home with them. If that's not diversifying countries, I don't know what describes it any better, to be honest. Kingston Myles: Yeah, and I mean, you know, as a charity, we're on this incredible mission to be financially self sufficient. So, you know, we are an independent charity from 2015, so and then this financial year is the last year that we received sort of government tapering relief. So we're really out there to become much loved to connect with our members, our visitors and our audience. And what better way to do that than not only offer them a great day out. Because that's like a core part of what we do. Offer them a great day out that really tells the story of England, offer them this opportunity for a great stay out that tells the story of England, and then an opportunity to sort of take a piece of that. Experience home with them or to go and shop for that experience. Kingston Myles: Because we'll never be able to put a three piece sofa or a kitchen in one of our retail spaces. They're gift shops. They're exit through the gift shops. They're incredibly well run by my colleagues in our retail team. So how can we do that? How can we showcase those other products through our holiday laps, et cetera.Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's brilliant. If I can ask you a little bit about partnerships, I just think that this is so relevant to this part of the conversation. But what I'd love to understand is how you define what a good partnership looks like. How do you choose the products and how do you choose the organisations that you do partners with? Kingston Myles: Yeah, I guess the first thing to say is, and I can touch specifically on products because we have a real robust roadmap for how we choose who we're going to work with when it comes to sort of licensees. And partners to create product with in that aspect, but broader than that sort of partnerships for us. Touch on. Especially for me, on all of our business areas. So we've just closed a 30 night Christmas light trail at Kenwood in northwest London, which we run in partnership with Kilimanjaro Live Christmas at Kenwood. And we are hosting again Gardener's World Autumn Affair, and Audley End in Essex, that will be there for the second year this year. And we run that in partnership with the team behind Autumn Fair. Kingston Myles: I guess I bring those up because it really symbolises how partnerships work best for us, which is that there's an equal contribution where both parties are adding value. It could be really easy to mistake working with a charity or working with an attraction as potentially very one sided. We need, they have, or they have and we need, but actually it's not. We've got this real opportunity to grow combined audiences, add combined and shared value and celebrate sort of everything that stands true in both camps from a value perspective. With products, it's a slightly more robust roadmap because we are manufacturing something, we're creating something that's going to carry our trademark, our logo. So we have five core values that I apply to our licensing business. So we look for products of quality, we look for products which carry hallmarks of authenticity. Kingston Myles: Are they telling a story accurately? Because we are the storytellers of England, it has to be, right. Are they responsibly sourced? Is the organisation a responsible organisation. Is it fun? Because ultimately fun is one of our core values and it can sound really cheesy when you say one of our corporate values is fun with a capital F. But no, we are fun. We're ultimately a day out for lots of people, for nearly sort of pre pandemic, 10 million visitors a year and our 1. 2 million members. And then with products, we look at sort of, is there something imaginative here. Are we doing something different. Are we going to tell a really cool story of England in a way that people might not expect. Kingston Myles: Or is English Heritage as a brand going to appear somewhere that you might not expect but are sort of surprised and delighted by. And you could, I guess, engineer those values back over all the other partnerships that we have as well, because actually they're all of quality, they're all authentic. Everyone that we work with is respectful and responsible and lots of the stuff that we do, especially the events, are really fun and imaginative. So, yeah, I'm going to go away and add that into my own strategy now. Kelly Molson: I'm glad that you've been inspired by this conversation. What I really liked about that is that the way that you describe the products is that they're very unique to your values and very unique to your organisations. And that's what people are looking for, isn't it. They don't just want another cushion with something on it. They don't just want another thing that they can buy. They want something that they can only get when they visit your organisation. They can only get it if they go to Audley End. They can only get it if they go to it wherever else they go to. That's what's really important to people at the moment. That uniqueness completely. Kingston Myles: And I think one of the cool things about our brand licensing program is that we are loosely making products. We make the products available on site as much as we can and off site with retail partners, but you'd never normally expect to walk into. So I walked into Sainsbury. So I used my very first ever job, when I was like 18. I was on like I took a gap year and I guess a big regret. I should have just gone traveling it's in the world, right. But instead I was like, no, I'm going to work, I'm going to save, I'm going to go to university, I'm going to be really responsible. So my first average job was in Sainsbury's, and I went back to that Sainsbury store in Barnwood in Gloucester and I walked into the Beers, Wines and Spirits aisle. Shock. Kingston Myles: People are going to get a real perception of me here and they're hanging there on a Clip strip. I mean, I knew they were going to be there. Their hanging there was this chip shop, Scraps and Fries, a crisp product that we made with our partner, Made for Drink. So, you know, here I am, sort of twelve years on stood, you know, the shop still feels the same. You still recognise some of the colleagues stood in the Beers, Wines and Spirits are looking at this product that is made in partnership, crafted in partnership with Made for Drink. They're carbon neutral when they're produced, they're in recyclable packaging and they celebrate sort of flavors and stories of England through food. And it's an English Heritage product in a Sainsbury. Kingston Myles: It's not necessarily the type of product that people might expect to see our brand on, but actually when they learn about the story and then they learn about the partner that we've partnered with, they're surprised and delighted, and I always like to share. We had several different reach outs from prospective partners to create snacking products, crisps, et cetera. And we chose to go with Dan at Made For Drink because they best matched all of those values. I spoke about sort of quality, authenticity, respect, imagination and fun, rather than perhaps maybe a global snack manufacturer that, yes, we could have made tens of thousands of packs, but it would have been just our logo on just another bag. There wouldn't have been the depth of storytelling. Kingston Myles: And then when you look back to us being that sort of Museum of England with our sort of ambition of telling England's story, you kind of have to really stay true to those values to create a quality product and to create lasting partnerships and relationships. We don't want to feel like we have something. Our logo, they want it, great, have it. And then what do we get beyond that. Very little. Whereas with the partnership with Made For Drink, there's been lots of innovation. We're getting to work with lots of domestic food producers and flavor houses. So it's really exciting and it really kind of embodies everything that partnerships should for an attraction or a cultural organisation. Kelly Molson: A great story. So did you feel secretly pleased when you were stood in that same Sainsburys that you didn't go on that gap year and that you did save up and go to university to do all these wonderful things. Kingston Myles: Yeah, I felt a bit smug because I was like, from the shop floor to the shelf, this guy. So I had a little moment in the aisle and I took a little selfie and did that thing that everyone doesn't post it on LinkedIn, sort of with all of the sort of faux pas of the average LinkedIn post ending on a rhetorical question. But yeah, so it was a little moment of joy as I took it and I went through the self gang check out and bought it. And I was like, yeah, here we go. And I've got the receipt somewhere. It's nostalgic. It was fun. Kelly Molson: That's brilliant. And well deserved as well. Congratulations. Great story. Okay, what I'd love to do, we talked a little bit about how a lot of the strategies that you've worked through are they're not just for huge organisations. There are things that any size attraction can do. How can they utilise these strategies. Is there any way that you could summarise kind of like a top three tips for us. Kingston Myles: Yeah, so I have, like, I'm really a staunch believer in the working methodology, “Know, do and review”. So that'd be my first tip. Right. Know what you can't do. Because all the way back to sort of our first part of the conversation, like, know what you can't do, know what you can do. So take the time to look at, take stock, understand what you have, what you don't have, what you might need to be successful, then get on and do it. Because I'd say all managers at some point have definitely written or all leaders have definitely written a strategy that they've then done absolutely nothing with other than PDF it and shove it in a OneDrive or a folder somewhere. So get on with the doing, which is so important. And that means rolling up sleeves. Kingston Myles: You can't be a bedroom leader. You have to get out. Get out on the ground, stand there and really understand if, “Did I know everything or do I need to know more?”. So you're constantly learning through the due process and then review, right. Like, stop and wrap it up or think about it, perfect it, tweak it, don't let it just roll downhill, out of control. And equally, don't hold it at the top. Sort of afraid to let go, but yeah. So no do and review would be my first tip. My second tip, especially for smaller organisations, so the institution I worked in prior to English Heritage, so I worked for the University of Oxford in two different museums. One very big museum and one very small museum. My second tip really comes from there. Which is one meeting, one topic, one focus. Kingston Myles: When you're in a smaller institution stakeholders often have really wide reaching job remits and they're covering operations, commercial planning, health and safety, finance. You could be talking to the same person for all of those things. So don't sit down with that person and have a million different conversations. Really focus your time and energy one meeting, one topic, one focus. And I still use that to this day. I'm a real believer in like let's just talk about just this and then let's have a separate meeting to talk about something else. And then my final tip would be like the Power of no. I sound like I'm about to release three books, don't I. First book, know, do, review with Kingston. Second book, one meeting, one topic. Kelly Molson: And I would read these books. I would buy these books and read them. Kingston Myles: I'll brand license them and I'll put them in the holiday cottages. But yeah. The power of no. Right. It's okay to say no to things like if in the no process when you're doing all the research and all the groundwork does it not feel right. Do the numbers not stack up. We have human instinct and we've almost been programmed out of that. And there's lots of different analogies people run down and different avenues. Is it because actually we've got this hustle culture and we have to give everything a go. No, you don't have to give everything a go. If your expertise and skills and knowledge are telling you this is not going to work then just say no. And that's sometimes a really difficult decision. Kingston Myles: And I have lots of conversations with people recently I really want to do this but and I'm like if that butlist is factual and it's going to create a great amount of risk and don't do it. So yeah, the Power of no would be my third top tip. Kelly Molson: That is a great top tip for life in general, I think at Kingston. Weirdly. So every year I kind of set a word that I try to use as a guide for my year and this year's is reflect because I'm a bit of a people pleaser. So I say yes to many things and then run out of time and then end up not being able to do those things or just do them as badly. I do them to a level of degree that I could do better. So learning to say no I think is the most powerful tip that you've shared in that process and I'm going. Kingston Myles: To remember that and I've used it and I'm proud of the fact that we've said no to potential partnerships, we've said no to potential events. We've said no to certain activity types at certain types. Because when we take stock of everything we're trying to do there's already so much we say yes to that actually it's okay to say no because we can do really well over here. You know, the sort of the middle area. You know, sometimes the entrepreneurial spirit in you pushes the yes through. But a lot of time that sort of, “hold up, wait a minute”. Actually, no. It is so important and it saved us from going down in so many of my job roles.Kingston Myles: It saved me from going down like the rabbit hole of sort of you convince yourself that then you have to put all your energy and time into something and actually it doesn't yield the result that time could have yielded if you'd have focused somewhere else. Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's really important advice that everybody should listen to. Thank you. Brilliant tips. Thank you for sharing. You just touched on something there that I'd like to talk about because you talked about entrepreneurial spirit and I think there always is that element of wanting to do more and wanting to get stuck into doing the excited things. We talked a little bit about sector support at the beginning and you did mention that this role is quite relatively unique. Where do you go to find your kind of support network for the role that you have. Kingston Myles: So I'm really lucky in that I'm a trustee for the Association of Cultural Enterprises, so I sit on their board of trustees. I'm also a director of the trading company that we have. And the best way to summarise the association is that it's all about advancing commerce and business innovation in the cultural sector. So I appreciate that for sort of the wider attraction sector sort of culture and heritage is a swim lane sort of in the pool that is attractions. But that's incredible because all of the organisations that are members and nearly 400 cultural organisations are members sort of across the country, all of those organisations have got an appetite to do more. Kingston Myles: So you end up finding that actually this commercial manager in this really small museum somewhere has got this really incredible idea and we can help them with that, or I can help them with that, or one of my fellow trustees can help them with that, or this massive organisation wants to turn to a small organisation because they send something incredible. And I always think back to and I referenced the marketing of this, but there was the Museum of English Rural Life had this incredible Twitter explosion with some of their content, and suddenly everyone turned to their monsoor. How do you go viral? How has Murray gone viral? How can we go viral? And I guess the association is the best place to go and find the person likely to behind something commercially innovative. Kingston Myles: If you want to see something incredible that's happened at English Heritage, I mean, I'll shamelessly promote myself, but I'm probably likely to be able to point you in the direction of the commercial leader responsible for that. And everyone's really up for networking there. It's kind of the backbone of how it works is that willingness to share and support one another. And I think the culture and heritage sector within the attraction space is really good at that because we're quite comfortable with the fact that there's enough success there for everyone. I appreciate that. When you've got a competitor potentially down the road and you're a purely commercial attraction that's a little bit of a difficult conversation to have in the first instance. But actually it opens up doors and access to resources and also access to people's mistakes. Right. Kingston Myles: Like, what if people said no to. Or would they have said no to. Now that you can learn from and say no to yourself. Kelly Molson: Yeah. Again, brilliant advice. And it's so good that there are organisations out there that offer this level of support. What we'll do is everything that we've talked about today we'll pop links to in the show notes so you can access information about English Heritage. You can see some of the products and we'll pop the link to the ACE organisation as well. And if that is useful to any of our listeners you'll know where to go and find it. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Kingston. This has been a brilliant chat. I'm so grateful for your time, for your insight into this. We always like to ask our guests to share a book that they love at the end of the podcast. So what have you prepared for us today? Kingston Myles: Yeah, so I'm waxed lyrical about this book. It's called First Break All The Rules. It's a gallup study of what successful managers do differently. So First Break All the Rules is probably one of the most powerful leadership books I've read for a couple of reasons. One, it's backed by this phenomenal global study of businesses, their leaders, their people, their results. So there are some great books out there but they're theoretical, they're someone's opinion. This book is etched in statistical facts. So I quite like that. That pleases the inner nerd in me. And secondly, it really does force you to think differently about especially if you're leaders or a leader of a team. Really forces you to think slightly differently about how you can get the best out of your best people, how you can recruit for the best people. Kingston Myles: And at first read, it can read quite controversially because what's called First Break All the Rules so you would expect it but it can read quite controversially. It will force you to really think about Do Leaders Play Favorites. Is a really great chapter in that book and the difference between skills, knowledge and talent and coming to terms with the fact that you can teach people skills and knowledge but their talent, their behaviours. You can do your best to bring out what somebody has but you can never add to that in the book. So I would definitely recommend especially leaders of teams and leaders of leaders to read that book or listen to them. Kelly Molson: Great book choice. So that has not come up on the podcast in, what, 60 odd episodes. So that is a really good one to go on the list. And as ever, listeners, if you head over to our Twitter account and you retweet this episode announcement with the words I want Kingston's book, you'll be in with the chance of winning a copy as well. Amazing. Thank you so much again for coming on. It's been a really interesting chat. I am sure that at some point we'll get to meet each other at Audley End maybe as well. One of the next events that you're running there.Kingston Myles:  100%. We should do like an ad hoc episode live from  Audley End. Kelly Molson: Okay. Let's talk about how we can make that happen. Excellent. Thanks again. Kingston Myles: You're welcome.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

England claim seven Pakistan wickets with their imagination and unstinting attitude Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oscar continues his ongoing quest to "understand everything you wanted to know about #gamedev but never dared to ask" and in this episode, he talked to Chris Filip, Programme Manager at Creative England and Co-founder of GameAnglia asking whether prototypes are important or not. Find out more in this episode You can find a video clip of this episode at: www.youtube.com/gamedevlondon More episodes can be found by visiting: anchor.fm/game-dev-london Visit Our Website - www.gamedev.london - for meet ups, game jams, competitions and more! Join Our Discord - www.gamedev.london/join Follow Us On Twitch - www.twitch.tv/gamedevlondon --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/game-dev-london/support

I’m delighted to welcome you to our the first of our two special podcast episodes which accompanies our Defining Success report. For this first podcast we tackle a tricky subject for creatives: money. In search of expert guidance around what makes a creative venture attractive to financial investors and how we should plan for our personal financial future, Jodi Muter-Hamilton speaks to three incredible women for this podcast: Mehjabeen Patrick, chief financial and investment officer at Creative England and Creative Industries Federation Anna Sofat, associate director of wealth at Progeny Lottie Leefe, founder and director of DURA Private and The Dura Society Mehjabeen Patrick is responsible for the implementation and running of all operating functions across Creative England and Creative Industries Federation. With extensive experience as a finance director, Mehjabeen oversees all investment activity for the company and has a keen interest in growing its commercial activities and diversifying its income stream. Previously Mehjabeen worked as Director of Finance for the United Nations Association and Stakeholder Forum. Often referred to as “the voice of women’s wealth”, Anna Sofat, has been helping women invest their money for decades. Anna has changed the culture of wealth; by empowering women through advice & investment. As the pioneering founder of Addidi and now associate director of wealth at Progeny, we learn from Anna how to find your financial number. A number which creates a comfort point, been where what you need and want is sufficient. Lottie Leefe is a qualified wealth planner that advises UHNW/HNW individuals, as well as Next-Gen wealth, on their global assets and investments including art, real estate, wine, luxury goods and philanthropy. Lottie Leefe, who is the founder of DURA Private, a private client wealth consultancy, and founder of financial wellbeing platform The Dura Society. Both of which champion another kind of wealth. Each of these women has caved a path that is individual to them, but also one that supports others to gain an understanding of the many different ways in which we can create a more financially secure future for ourselves, our businesses and future generations. As creatives, we tend to leave money matters at the bottom of the to-do list. Maybe that’s because to us creativity comes first and financial reward second. Or perhaps it’s because throughout our lives we have not been taught how to manage our personal and business finances. However, we have the ability to gain knowledge and meet money matters head-on. “After all, as the saying goes, if you fail to plan, plan to fail.” Benjamin Franklin. This podcast is part of our Defining Success report and two accompanying podcasts. In our second Defining Success podcast we explore the less tangible subject of how to recognise and nurture creative potential with Sara Maino, head of Vogue Talents, deputy director of Vogue Italia and international brand ambassador at Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana.

Screenwriter Stuart Wright talks to writer/director Corinna Faith about her debut feature film THE POWER THE POWER is available exclusively on Shudder 8th April, 2021 - https://www.shudder.com The film was developed with the support of Creative England via the BFI NETWORK (awarding funds from the National Lottery) and received production finance from the BFI (awarding funds from the National Lottery) and Head Gear. The Power is presented by the BFI in association with Head Gear Films, Metrol Technology and Kreo Films. Credits Intro/Outro music is Rocking The Stew by Tokyo Dragons (www.instagram.com/slomaxster/) Podcast from www.britflicks.com You can support the @Britflicks podcast by pledging money via www.patreon.com/stuartwright and/or subscribing to it via iTunes

Welcome to Series 4 of Best Girl Grip! My first guest of the series is the wonderful Eva Riley. Eva is a Scottish director and screenwriter based in Brighton. She graduated from the National Film and Television School in 2015, whereupon her final year film Patriot premiered in competition at Cannes. In 2016, she was commissioned to write and direct Diagnosis by BBC Films and she was subsequently named a Screen International ‘Star of Tomorrow’. Eva's first feature Perfect 10 was developed and produced through Creative England’s iFeatures programme and later premiered at LFF. It tells the story of a young gymnast, played by Frankie Box, whose already difficult life is disrupted by the appearance of a half-brother, played by Alfie Deegan, whose existence she was unaware of. It’s a dazzling debut, just really assured and sensitive filmmaking and performances and it’s rebellious, summery vibe is perfect for these cold winter months and you can currently watch it on BBC iPlayer. I think Eva is a brilliant filmmaker, and she made for a wonderful interviewee. She didn’t sugarcoat any of her successes and I think she makes visible the hard work and effort it’s taken to arrive at this very well deserved moment.  We talk about working with young actors, what her filmmaking instincts are, giving less fucks about asking for what she wants, the physical demands of directing, the realities of pre-production and what she learnt from making her first feature.

GirlDreamer is the manifestation of Kiran Kaur and their best friends' passion for supporting their community with their journey through life - personally and professionally. They envisioned a space where young women of colour could feel understood and supported in their pursuits and overcome cultural and societal challenges. It's not something they could find so they created it. They started with no budget, no networks, no business plan and no community and in four years, have built a platform of over 12,000 social media followers, supported thousands of young women of colour directly through various programmes and initiatives and earned some awards along the way including: One of Creative England's top 50 most exciting, innovative and disruptive creative companies Most Influential Leadership Development Enterprise UK  Kiran has just been awarded Best Digital CEO 2020 After working with me in my Sell to Corporate course, Kiran has now developed an offer helping other organisations to utilise the power of social media to build and engage their target communities and authentically lead an EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) path within their organisation. In this episode we discuss: The challenges Kiran faced when she didn't pursue the path that was expected of her Creating the space and support she was looking for but couldn't find, so those behind her didn't have to face the same barriers The award-winning initiatives GirlDreamer has designed and led How my Sell to Corporate course helped her identify her unique gifts that she could sell to generate additional income How you can fill out your programmes and offers using social media Find out more about Kiran Kaur and GirlDreamer here:Connect with Kiran on Twitter here @heygirldreamer_ @kirannotkeiranOn Instagram here @heygirldreamerGirlDreamer WebsiteFollow KatInstagram: @katluckockcoachingFacebook: facebook.com/shareimpactpodSubscribe here to the podcast to receive weekly email updates of the latest episode. Free Resource: Achieve Your Monthly Income Goal Grab my 6-step BLUEPRINT for achieving your monthly income goal, month-after-month in your social enterprise; my MONTHLY INCOME PLANNING SHEET which I use to get focused on exactly what I need to do each month in my own social enterprise, and the EXACT spreadsheet template I use every month to budget, track my cash-flow and stay on track to reach my income goals.  Join The Impact Entrepreneurs Club for free hereLearn more about how to work with me here.

It's Day 4 of the 64th BFI London Film Festival and we have another couple of films for you, on today's festival @EchoChamberFP So we start things off with the quirky, odd and hilarious 'Sound for the Future' directed by Matt Hulse First time director Cathy Brady also wrote 'Wildfire' and it starred the tremendous talent of Nora Jane Noone and Danika McGuigan And we end things with a conversation with another first time director, Pete Murimi of the Kenyan feature documentary 'I Am Samuel' Sound for the Future London Film Festival Date: 10th - 13th October 2020 Director: Matt Hulse Cast: Toby Cartwright, Sarah Cole, Jamie Haughey, Matt Hulse Credit: Pinball Films, Aconite Productions, Creative England, Screen Scotland Genre: Documentary, Music Running Time: 102 min Cert: 12a Website: Here. Trailer: Here. Facebook: Here. Instagram: @thisismatthulse ------------ Wildfire London Film Festival Date: 10th - 13th October 2020 Release Date: Director: Cathy Brady Cast: Nora Jane Noone, Nika McGuigan, Martin McCann Credit: Cowboy Films, Samson Films, Tempesta Genre: Drama Running Time: 85 min Cert: 12a Trailer: Here. ------------ I Am Samuel London Film Festival Date: 10th - 13th October 2020 Director: Pete Murimi Cast: Samuel & Alex Credit: We Are Not the Machine, Mosaic Films Genre: Documentary Running Time: 69 min Cert: 12a Website: Here. Trailer: Here. Twitter: @IamSamuelFilm Facebook: Here. ------------ *(Music) 'London Calling' by The Clash – 1979

The ability to debate, to explore and to challenge has (some would say) been under immense pressure in these times. Today, I explore this with Nico Macdonald and how all of our role of society especially those in the creative industries can be more 't' shaped and diverse in consideration, thinking and action.[0 Min] How to access time with Matt on your project / sign up to the Daily Dose of inspiration[2 Mins]  An introduction to Nico Macdonald, Nico is a pioneer in innovation and entrepreneurship. He is a visiting fellow at the School of Arts and Creative Industries at London South Bank University, and teaches at the University of East London and CIEE (the Council on International Educational Exchange). In the early 90s built a digital media studio in Shoreditch, London; led digital design for The Guardian newspaper, and for the London office of Berlin-based MetaDesign; he co-founded the international consultancy business Ascendant Partners, and worked in Silicon Valley. Since, he has founded a media innovation startup, Media Futures; been Innovation Director of Creative England; and Chief Executive of the R&D Society, a professional membership organisation. For 30 years, he has forged strong links with industry contacts from established organisations as varied the BBC, the Design Council, the British Film Institute, Arup, and DigitasLBi, as well as a wide range of start-ups and SMEs in design, media and tech. He has also written extensively on creativity and digital innovation, including articles, papers and books.[3 Mins 30] Getting 'out of the bubble' and ensuring the ability to debate.[6 Mins] The limitations of the creative industries and diverse thinking.[8 Mins 30] Sustainability, and a ground where more success has been made?[10 Mins 30] Learning from journalism and following the facts Richard Saul Wurman's  CTA to 'listen'.[12 Mins 30] The ability to be exposed to others with different views.[14 Mins] The Internet = less the global village, more the place to reinforce our niche views via the 'filter bubble'[16 Mins] The Polemic Palace and Netflix.[18 Mins] Seeking more diverse arguments and looking for a healthy discourse. Seek that which you don't agree with.[19 Mins] Nuzzle, your social graph and aggregated varied points of view[20 Mins 30] Why no uncertainty in politics leads  us all to disbelief and distrust?[22 Mins 30] What can we learn from Andy Murray, Ed Balls and Michael Portillo?[23 Mins 30] What about  Jeremy Corbyn, Nigel Farage and Populism?[26 Mins] We are at the end of a political paradigm. Yes, it's uncomfortable.[30 Mins] The case of paradigm under-load.[35 Mins] Design Ethics, Microsoft to MIT and a convSupport the show (https://weareten.us12.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=4ed5154e0f1cdbad62b378156&id=dc1a8d24c1)

Joining us this week for the #BetterManagers Briefing are Terry Corby, Chief Commercial Officer, Creative England and Neil Constable, Chief Executive, Shakespeare’s Globe. Find out how more about Management Direct and how to join the CMI community: https://mgrs.uk/2CP

"Franchises are a way for the creator and creative to have long term sustainability in a crowded marketplace" Diana Williams In this episode we are delighted to welcome storyteller extraordinaire Diana Williams to the show. Diana is Executive Vice President of Creative at Maddison Wells Media's 'Universe' division. Twice been named on Fast Company's Top Ten Most Innovative Companies list, MWM have built their reputation in working across multiple formats including interactive, live events, television and, yes, even film! MWM Universe is devoted to developing IP and in her role, Diana is responsible for building creative content strategy, world-building, content production, and data analytics across multiple formats. In this episode we learn about Diana’s unique approach to storytelling, creative collaboration and developing IP with the potential to work on different platforms. This leads us to what Diana refers to as the ‘F word’ - franchises and she explains how this way of thinking can unlock new opportunities for independent storytellers in an increasingly competitive market. This episode was recorded as part of the free video series, Rebels of Storytelling (available at www.futureoffilm.live) and would not have been possible without the incredible support of Epic Games and Unreal Engine who are pioneering the transformation of storytelling on screen. We are also proud to partner with Creative England’s outstanding Creative Enterprise Programme. You can find out more about the Creative Enterprise Programme and the two new grant funds they have available for screen-based creative businesses at www.creativeengland.co.uk

In this conversation I chat to Tibo Travers, producer and founder of Sweet Doh! (https://www.sweetdoh.com).The short films Tibo has produced have been funded by BFI, Creative England, been broadcast by Canal+ and RTE and distributed by NiTV and Shorts International. They have screened at festivals around the world. His most short film release 'Contractor 014352', features Jonny Flynn, star of Netflix’s 'Love Sick' and amassed over 35,000 views in a week.We kick things off talking about the Last Dance and debate whether MJ’s mentality is transferable to a creative career. Tibo explains how a director is the MJ of the production world and the producer is the team manager. He breakdown his journey into filmmaking and how he became a producer. Tibo talks about why it’s so important to work with people he gets on with and can connect with creatively.He explains why it’s important for a director to have a producer and how they can help shape the project/film. Why it’s essential to give the right type of feedback to writer/directors and how and why feedback is so underrated in the whole process. Tibo also breaks down his process of applying and receiving funding for film projects with the likes of the BFI and Creative England. And the benefits of the funding application process. We discuss the challenge of striking a balance between working on corporate jobs and reinvesting money to produce shorts.Tibo covers the decision making that goes into short film selections at festivals. And breaks down the type of submission strategy to implement for your first short. Why it’s a good idea to release your short on a bigger online platform rather than your own channel. And why it’s not the right move to buy views for your short. He defines what the actual role of the producer is. We discuss how the role affects his mental health and why he tries to have a balanced approach to life. The importance of having time off and why deadlines are a must for any project. He also highlights the importance of having role models and remembering that those same people you aspire to, were once a beginner starting out. Tibo also explains why you should avoid comparisons on social media and loads more!Happy listening :)Steve - @offkeysteve See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sam Oakley is a Marketing and product strategist, one of Creative England's "50 most creative entrepreneurs in the UK". He is also the Co-founder of multi-award winning marketing tech company.  He has a deep understanding of the evolving fintech landscape and is now helping Bud, an Open Banking platform gain deeper penetration into leading banks and offer better deals to the consumer. We discussed: His move from politics to fintech His role at Bud the financial services success story Challenges and opportunities of open banking Choosing an appointing agencies in fintech The evolving fintech and open banking landscape Enjoy the chat. 

The iFeatures podcast is back with a brand new series and this year we have a new theme: Stories About Place. In this episode, we are in Birmingham. We hear from another of this year's iFeatures cohort, Producer Kurban Kassam and Writer/Director, Billy Dosanjh, to hear about their debut feature film. We also speak with Sindy Campbell, Head of Film Birmingham, as she takes us on a tour of the City, highlighting locations used for Steven Spielberg's Sci-Fi Adventure film, Ready Player One, as well as discussing how the film office arm of the City Council accommodates all kinds of international and domestic productions. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and this year's 12 filmmaking teams on the Creative England website here: creativeengland.co.uk This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by Andy Johnson. tonalitymedia.com

The iFeatures podcast is back with a brand new series and this year we have a new theme: Stories About Place. In this episode, we are in Manchester. We hear from Naqqash Khalid, writer/director of his debut feature "In Camera". We also hear from Screen Manchester's Bobby Cochrane, discussing all things filmmaking in Manchester and takes us round Space Studios. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and this year's 12 filmmaking teams on the Creative England website here: creativeengland.co.uk This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by Andy Johnson. tonalitymedia.com

The iFeatures podcast is back with a brand new series and this year we have a new theme: Stories About Place. In this episode, we are focussing again on the South East. We hear from Alannah Olivia, writer/director of her debut feature "I Don't Eat Meat!", set in Southgate, North London. We also hear from Creative England's Hayley Armstrong, head of the Filming in England team, discussing filmmakers from all over the world that use the UK as a filming location and why it's such an appealing place to come and film. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and this year's 12 filmmaking teams on the Creative England website here: creativeengland.co.uk This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by Andy Johnson. tonalitymedia.com

From Alice's website: "I was born in 1963 in the Edinburgh Infirmary. Six weeks later, just after my mum had successfully taken her law exams, my parents Jim and Fredi  boarded a ship and sailed to Africa. For the first 8 years of my life, I got to run free in the African Bush, roaming around the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda, hunting tadpoles and running away from snakes.At the age of 11, by now the family was living in Ghana, it was back to Scotland to St Denis and Cranley Academy for Young Ladies, where I had to wear two sets of knickers – under and over – and a velour hat to church. NO idea why the two sets of knickers but they did help keep the nethers warm in the freezing winters of an unheated school in Edinburgh!At Edinburgh University, I studied Arabic and Turkish and discovered the joys of the Poetry Society and the Socialist Worker’s club – both joined because I fancied the guy that ran them. Six memorable months were spent living in Damascus with my lifelong (now!) friend and fellow Arabist Martin, where we faced down the secret police and survived on a diet of bread, condensed milk and jam because I was a terrible cook.After university I spent two years teaching English in Cairo and exploring the country. Hitchhiking on military trucks across the Western Desert and spending afternoons sleeping with the stray dogs in the shade of the Pharaonic temples of the Luxor.Moving to London, I pursued a career in journalism which had started in Dubai at “What’s On in Dubai”. My first job was with Technical Review Middle East (there is nothing she doesn’t know about concrete decay). From there to Middle East Broadcasting, the original Arabic Satellite News Station, with my first assignment being to produce coverage in the USA for the Clinton Election.  My next step was to BBC News with jobs on BBC World TV and then BBC Arabic TV.  I rose quickly (ish) through the ranks in BBC News and was recruited to help launch the BBC News Channel where I went on to become co-Editor of the daytime hours which meant I was in charge of all the BBC News Channel output between 10 am and 8 pm. I was one of only three female news editors in the corporation at the time. My speciality was managing the complexities of live, breaking stories in the news gallery, and one of my abiding memories is causing higher ups to almost have cardiac arrests when I threw live to the George Michael arrest press conference in the USA when the details of his cottaging were revealed – apparently that was not what the British news-watching public wanted to watch at teatime with the kids.For the new millennium I moved North to Manchester and onto the internet www.supanet.com  where we built the ISP’s content from six pages to one million pages in two years; oversaw content deals with all the major players and attracted six million users. Happy days! I also started to break out into mini adventures squeezed into the holidays: the Snowdon Challenge, crossing Costa Rica coast to coast, Kilimanjaro, ice climbing in the Andes, climbing the Ruwenzoris….In 2002, I plunged into public service when I was appointed  as CEO of Vision+Media, a quango dedicated to growing the creative industries in the Northwest and remained there for nine years. I am proud that I managed – with my Board and my Team – to build the company from a modest start of £830k funding annually to £10 million, move it into brand new premises in Salford’s media city, work closely with the BBC Move North team and delivered 10x value to funders. However, following Tory government cuts in 2011 we were no longer viable, so I merged the company into Creative England and cast off my pinstripes for lycra."

The iFeatures podcast is back with a brand new series and this year we have a new theme: Stories About Place. In this episode, we are focussing on the South East. We hear from Fred Rowson and Sabina Smitham, writer/director and producer respectively, of their feature "Phil & Ian", set in Crystal Palace. We are also given a guided tour of the seaside town of Deale and the beautiful Kent coastline from Gabrielle Lindemann of the Kent Film Office. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and this year's 12 filmmaking teams on the Creative England website here: creativeengland.co.uk This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by Andy Johnson. tonalitymedia.com

Market Trader is back and taking applications for 2019! Apply here: https://www.creativeengland.co.uk/market-trader/ The deadline for applications is 12pm on Monday 14th October. Market Trader is part of Creative Enterprise, a programme created to make the moving image sector more sustainable by supporting screen businesses through training, mentoring and building of networks, developed with National Lottery funding from the BFI. You can find more information about Creative Enterprise on the Creative England website: https://www.creativeengland.co.uk/ This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This podcast was created and produced by Tonality Media (https://www.tonalitymedia.com/), and hosted by Andy Johnson. 

The iFeatures podcast is back with a brand new series and this year we have a new theme: Stories About Place. In this first episode, we are focussing on Bristol. We hear from Thea Gajic, director and writer of her debut feature "Surviving Earth". We also chat to writer/director Tom Haines, who tells us about his Bristol based project BOA Constrictor.  We'll hear from the participants: the writers, directors, producers, all about their films and how the places they are either set or filmed in, contribute to the stories they are telling.  This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and this year's 12 filmmaking teams on the Creative England website here: creativeengland.co.uk This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by Andy Johnson. tonalitymedia.com

*APPLY TO iFEATURES NOW!* In this episode, we learn more about the iFeatures application process, what you need to know when applying and what we are looking out for! This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by Andy Johnson. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and this year's 12 filmmaking teams on the iFeatures and Creative England websites here: creativeengland.co.uk ifeatures.co.uk APPLY HERE: applications.creativeengland.co.uk SUBSCRIBE on iTunes HERE: bit.ly/iFeaturesiTunes

This week I have a very special bonus minisode to share with you. Applications for the 2019 edition of iFeatures are currently open until 9am on Friday 29 March 2019, so Jude Lister, Creative England’s Film Project Manager came on the podcast to talk about the evolution of iFeatures and what they look for in an application. If you’re looking to apply to the scheme, which has incubated and invested in films such as Apostasy, Lady Macbeth, God’s Own Country, The Levelling, The Goob, Adult Life Skills and Pin Cushion then I definitely recommend you give this a listen.

Chi Thai is a Vietnamese born, British raised filmmaker. She has been a Cannes Lions finalist three times and her work has competed at Academy accredited festivals. She is part of the Guiding Lights alumnus & listed in Creative England’s Top 50 companies.  She is currently in production with Automat, a new film starring Sophie Wu.   Chi is one of the founders of BEATS: a not-for-profit organisation founded by British East Asians working in Theatre and across the Screen industry seeking to humanise British East Asians, increase the visibility of British East Asians on stage and screen, and advocate for the use of the term British East Asian.   Chi’s #FeministFave is White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality.   Recommendations...   The Ridiculous Darkness The Gate Theatre until Mar 23   Us Against Whatever Hull Truck Mar 27 - Apr 3   Homegrown Festival: Occupy Battersea Arts Centre Mar 19 - Apr 12   The Phlebotomist Hampstead Theatre Mar 19 - Apr 20   Pah-La The Royal Court Apr 3 - 27   Going Through The Bush Mar 28 - Apr 27   Small Island National Theatre Apr 17 - Aug 10   Waitress Adelphi Theatre until Oct 2019      

Today’s #EchoChamber is a blast, we start with @FightingWMyFam which follows the life of @RealPaigeWWE Then I hit you with the new #TomBeard film......PLUS a Q&A. You’re welcome! This week we have: Fighting with My Family Release Date: 27 February 2019 Director: Stephen Merchant Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Florence Pugh, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Vince Vaughn Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Film4, Misher Films, Seven Bucks Productions, The Ink Factory, WWE Studios Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama Running Time: 108 min Cert: 12a ---------------- Two For Joy Release Date: 25 February 2019 Director: Tom Beard Cast: Samantha Morton, Daniel Mays, Bella Ramsay, Billie Piper, Badger Skelton Credit: The Movie Partnership, BFI Film Fund, Blonde to Black Pictures, Creative England, Goldfinch Studios Genre: Drama Running Time: 90 min Cert: 15 RRP: £7.99 SD, £9.99 HD Release Platforms: iTunes, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Sony, TalkTalk, Vubiquity, BT *(Music) 'I Gotcha' by Lupe Fiasco – 2006 ---------------- Remember to check out: TIDES It's now out on DVD!! https://amzn.to/2E4SGhM and on-demand! Follow: @TidesMovie ‏https://twitter.com/TidesMovie Go to: http://www.ax1entertainment.com/films/uk-ireland/tides.html ---------------- Check out the 'My Film Club' app: www.myfilmclub.co.uk/ ---------------- WE ARE THE WEIRDOS is made up of: CATCALLS (Dir. Kate Dolan) UK A man cruises around late at night looking for something. He pulls in to ask two young girls for directions - only to flash them to get a cheap thrill. Unfortunately, he has picked the wrong girls. They are also out hunting tonight and they will stop at nothing to get their kill. Hair Wolf (Dir. Mariama Diallo) USA The staff of a black hair salon fend off a strange new monster: white women intent on sucking the lifeblood from black culture. Puppet Master (Dir. Hanna Bergholm) Finland A lonely woman allows a man to transform her into a puppet. Inseyed (Dir. Jessica Hudak) USA A girl hears mysterious noises and investigates, but the source isn't an easy answer. The Lady from 406 (Dir. Lee Kyoung) South Korea The woman in the upper floor is getting crazy because of the cigarette smoke coming up from the under floor. She finally visits the house below, but the man there says something unexpected. #EATPRETTY (Dir. Rebecca Culversome) UK Anna is a successful product photographer, striving for a life filled with perfect moments, inspired by a constant stream of social media feeds, sponsored blogs and fairytales playing on her computer. Blood Runs Down (Dir. Zandashé Brown) USA When a woman undergoes a frightening tran

This episode is all about the Film Sales, Distribution and Festivals Landscape, with a focus on Market Trader, a development programme from Creative England. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This podcast was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by me, Andy Johnson. Market Trader is part of Creative Enterprise, a programme created to make the moving image sector more sustainable by supporting screen businesses through training, mentoring and building of networks, developed with National Lottery funding from the BFI. You can find more information about Creative Enterprise on the Creative England website: creativeengland.co.uk

In this episode, we are exploring the role of a film producer... Interviews include Oscar Winning Producer, and Head of Film at ScreenSkills, Gareth Ellis-Unwin (The King's Speech) as well as film editor, Chris Wyatt (This Is England). This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by me, Andy Johnson. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and this year's 12 filmmaking teams on the iFeatures and Creative England websites here: creativeengland.co.uk ifeatures.co.uk Subscribe on iTunes here: bit.ly/iFeaturesiTunes

Our hosts sit down with indie producer Ian Sharp who talks about making indie thriller The Marker starring John Hannah, how he started in the business, his first feature film Kick Off and how he now finances films with his company Sharp House. Ian grew up in Scunthorpe with Van Damme and De Niro movies for inspiration. After training at the National Youth Theatre, his passion for film led him to London and a scholarship at the Arts Educational Schools. He founded Achilles Entertainments with Rebecca Sharp in 2009, merging entrepreneurial experiences with their passion for film and co-founded Sharp House in 2016. Ian's third feature, The Marker, was supported and co-financed by Creative England. Other film credits include Pleasure Island, theatrically released in the UK by Metrodome and KickOff, distributed by Peccadillo Pictures. LINKS The Marker - Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuFGkJwMdo0 Sharp House https://www.sharp-house.com/sharp-house Follow Ian on Twitter https://twitter.com/IanSharp RAINDANCE If you haven't heard of Raindance yet, you definitely need to check them out! They're a Film School and Film Festival based in London, and they've been supporting independent film for the past 27 years. The best way to find out more about what they do is to attend their upcoming Open House on Saturday 12th December at 11am at the Raindance Film Training Centre. You'll get a real taste of their world-renowned evening and weekend filmmaking courses and workshops about directing, screenwriting and producing, while gaining invaluable introductory knowledge and tips on how to break in the film industry. And, there's a networking drinks session at the end where you'll be able to start building your filmmaking contacts. Because you're listening to the Filmmakers Podcast, you can get all this for free! Just enter our exclusive discount code:  TASTERPODCAST20 when booking at checkout". Booking link:  http://bit.ly/RaindanceTasterDay WATCH World of Darkness https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07BS35KQ2?pf_rd_p=855cdcfd-05d9-474f-b84d-8286a3530ba1&pf_rd_r=G5Q5NNQZR9PRZNQ4ME5D WATCH Fanged Up https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fanged-Up-Daniel-OReilly/dp/B07F83JN6G/ref=sr_1_1?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1542670909&sr=1-1&keywords=fanged INKTIP https://inktip.com/ MARSDENS BEER TOWN FILM FESTIVAL - SUBMIT your short films here: https://beertownfilmfestival.co.uk/ Follow US on Twitter @filmmakerspod  @Food4ThoughtDoc @gilesalderson  @35mmdop @Cjamesdirect @FangedUpFilm @thedaremovie Part of the www.podfixnetwork.com

In this episode, we are back at another Lab for a series of workshops.  This time we are focussing on the many facets of a Director's role on a film. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by me, Andy Johnson. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and the final 12 filmmaking teams on the iFeatures and Creative England websites here: creativeengland.co.uk ifeatures.co.uk Subscribe on iTunes here: bit.ly/iFeaturesiTunes

The teams have now gone away for a couple of months to write their first draft scripts. We catch up with two of them to see how they are progressing as well as hearing from two previous iFeatures filmmakers about their development journeys. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by me, Andy Johnson. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and the final 12 filmmaking teams on the iFeatures and Creative England websites here: creativeengland.co.uk ifeatures.co.uk Subscribe on iTunes here: bit.ly/iFeaturesiTunes For more information on Retreat and Perfect 10 click here: ifeatures.co.uk/in-production1.html Full Transcript of this episode can be downloaded here: bit.ly/iFeaturesEp4Transcript

Our 12 teams are now in Liverpool at the second Story Lab, a 2 day residential workshop. We are continuing to focus on the importance of story in film development and in particular, exploring the stories specific to each of the 12 projects on this year's iFeatures programme. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by me, Andy Johnson. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and the final 12 filmmaking teams on the iFeatures and Creative England websites here: creativeengland.co.uk ifeatures.co.uk Subscribe on iTunes here: bit.ly/iFeaturesiTunes

In this episode, the final 12 teams are now in Manchester at the first Story Lab, a 3 day residential workshop, where they'll hear from a variety of industry experts as well as sharing their thoughts and ideas with one another. The focus at this first development lab, is the Story. The very foundation of each of their films, and the most important part to get right. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by me, Andy Johnson. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding) BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and the final 12 filmmaking teams on the iFeatures and Creative England websites here: creativeengland.co.uk ifeatures.co.uk Subscribe on iTunes here: bit.ly/iFeaturesiTunes

Welcome to the iFeatures Podcast. Over the next 8 episodes, we're going to take a closer look at this year's iFeatures programme, as we follow the journeys of 12 teams of emerging filmmaking talent , who successfully navigated their way through several rounds of applications, as well as pitching to a panel of industry executives who will help guide them through the entire programme, from workshop to workshop and all the road bumps in between. In this first episode we introduce this year's iFeatures programme and the changes that Creative England have implemented in order to widen the net further and increase the range of voices and stories being told. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by me, Andy Johnson. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by the BFI (with National Lottery funding), BBC Films and ScreenSkills. You can find more information about the programme and the final 12 filmmaking teams on the iFeatures and Creative England websites here: creativeengland.co.uk ifeatures.co.uk Subscribe on iTunes here: bit.ly/iFeaturesiTunes Screen Daily Article: bit.ly/iFeaturescreen

Welcome to the iFeatures Podcast in association with Creative England, BFI, BBC Films and Creative Skillset. Over 8 episodes, we're going to take a closer look at this year's iFeatures programme, as we follow the journeys of 12 teams of emerging filmmaking talent , who successfully navigated their way through several rounds of applications, as well as pitching to a panel of industry executives who will help guide them through the entire programme, from workshop to workshop and all the road bumps in between. This podcast is brought to you by Creative England, a national body that invests in creative talent and businesses across film, TV, games and digital media, to help turn ideas into reality. This series was created and produced by Tonality Media, and hosted by me, Andy Johnson. iFeatures is led by Creative England and supported by BBC Films, ScreenSkills, and made possible through National Lottery funding from the BFI. You can find more information about the programme and the final 12 filmmaking teams on the iFeatures and Creative England websites. creativeengland.co.uk ifeatures.co.uk Subscribe on Apple Podcasts here: bit.ly/iFeaturesiTunes

Prano is an award-winning director . Tipped as one-to-watch, Prano has worked with Film4, Film London, Sony Music, Atlantic Records and Adam & Eve DDB, to name a few. She is currently developing two feature films, supported by Ffilm Cymru Wales and Creative England, and produced bySilver Salt Films. Her short film NASTY screened at over 100 festivals to-date, was long-listed for the BIFA Best British Short Award and voted one of the Top 25 horror shorts of 2016 by Fright Meter Awards. Her film Shortcut was made as part of the Film4 Fright Bites series, broadcast on Film4 and is available to view on All4. Prano is on the Advisory Board for Underwire Festival. She has been on the selection or jury panels for the UKMVA's, Slamdance, Underwire Festival, National Cuts Awards and the European Independent Film Festival. She is a member of Cinesisters, Directors UK and is also an award-winning editor.

Caroline Norbury MBE is founding CEO of Creative England, whose purpose is to 'accelerate talent and ideas’ across the media industry. Funded by both public and private investment, the not-for-profit company emerged in 2011 after the government closed the UK Film Council; and so far has invested £40m to secure over 1,000 jobs - largely outside of London - across gaming, film, digital, and production services. In this in-depth interview, Caroline contends that Britain’s creative sector is at risk if we don’t embrace diversity, and passionately argues for supporting creatives who live outside London – because, "talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn’t."

This episode we interview Peter Stanley-Ward and Natalie Conway from Treehouse Digital. A couple of writers who are also an actual couple! They made their way via a low budget horror feature into launching a production company and making fantastic shorts. How did they do it? Who helped? What lessons have they learned? Is it better to make a feature and learn that way, rather than go to Uni? And we compare our self / crowd funded movie with their one funded via Creative England - which way is better? LINKS FEATURED: Treehouse Digital: http://www.treehousedigital.com Litterbugs (their short): http://www.litterbugsthemovie.com

  Throughout the year, Doc/Fest has been holding a series of Interactive Filmmaking Workshops around England, supported by Creative England and in partnership with Crossover Labs. These workshops have been investigating six different interactive storytelling platforms; Klynt, Racontr, Korsakow, Popcorn, Interlude Treehouse and Storygami. Reporter Gemma McKinnie will deliver the final verdict on each platform, and will be joined by a panel to discuss the pros and cons of each tool. Supported by Creative England With speakers Gemma McKinnie, Clare Tavernor, Florian Thalhofer, Maria Gemayel, Gerald Holubowicz and Philo van Kemenade. 

John Newbigin, chair of Creative England, who mentor, support and invest in the UK Creative Industries joins me to discuss creativity in education, how crucial it is and how the current system is outdated and cruel. We discuss what the arts bring to a rapidly transforming society in the digital revolution and break down Education Secretary Nicky Morgan's comments about children choosing arts and humanities limiting their careers... Looking for feedback on this one guys, big issues and real life content! Creative England official website: http://www.creativeengland.co.uk/ John's brilliant Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/jun/17/academic-subjects-alone-wont-set-every-child-up-for-life https://twitter.com/newbijohn John on Twitter

John Newbigin OBE, Chair of Creative England, reflects on the broad reach of knowledge exchange today, drawing on his extensive experience in the creative industries and the arts in the UK.