Never Not Creative

Paul Balfe is no football expert. But he is a male creative who was willing to chat to us about his mental health and his experiences with anxiety. Paul is Creative Director and Founder of Pennybridge Creative, an independent design studio at home on the Gold Coast of Australia. 

Paul shares his battle with anxiety as a result of the recent Queensland flooding and the steps he took to improve his mental wellbeing. From hypnotherapist to psychologist, Paul tried a number of different ways to tackle his challenges. 

Nasya Kamrat is the Co-Founder of FACULTY, a certified, woman-owned spatial storytelling agency. After experiences working with multi-national agencies owned by the global holding companies, Nasya decided to start something new and do completely the opposite. Nasya is joined by Chief Creative Officer, Aaron Wolfe and both chat to Andy about the positives of building a company that is diverse, equitable and different to the status quo. Nasya also shares how she's gone one step further to co-found Komuna, a co-operative of independent BIPOC, women and LGBTQ+ led agencies and leading industry knowledge brokers designed to support the world’s most intrepid brands.

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In our latest episode, Ve Dewey interviews James Routledge, the co-founder of Sanctus. After starting Sanctus, a coaching business to help improve mental wellbeing in workplaces, James has gone on to author the Penguin Business Book, Mental Health at Work. He's always very transparent and honest in his own challenges and shares how practice was the key to opening up and helping people realise that we're all capable of talking about our mental health.

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In this episode, Ve and Andy join forces to chat to recent winners of the Deutsche Bank Awards For Creative Entrepreneurs – Jameisha Prescod, founder of You Look Okay To Me, an online space for the chronic illness community and Nahum McLean, founder of African Diaspora Dance Association (ADDA), an organisation that aims to expand the curriculum and training of dance under the African Diaspora.

Jameisha and Nahum share the importance of strong mentorship, community and not letting social norms stand in your way.

Since 1993, through DBACE, Deutsche Bank has overseen the launch of over 220 ventures, helping young visionaries bring their ideas to life as one of the longest running creative enterprise programmes. In 2018, MeWe360 was brought in as a new partner to deliver and help shape the new direction of the programme.

Every year, the DBACE programme provides support to 10 entrepreneurs (5 Winners + 5 bursary business support recipients). All entrepreneurs join MeWe360’s incubator membership to receive tailored 1-2-1 mentoring which looks at aspects of business support depending on the entrepreneurs’ individual needs.

In our second episode, David and Ve sit down with Alina Mendoza Lopez, currently an intern at Dragon Rouge London, and Max Ottignon, co-founder of the London based agency Ragged Edge to discuss failure at the individual level. Within the episode Max and Alina discuss their experience of failure: Alina discussed her relationship with failure in university whilst Max elucidates early career experiences with failure as well as his current experiences running Ragged Edge.

Based on the “The F word”, our latest mini-series focuses on "Failure." This first episode with Never Not Creative Co-creator, Ve Dewey and David Beare, Executive Creative Director of Dragon Rouge, come together to discuss what we mean by failure. Their discussion lays the foundation for future episodes exploring what failure is and what counts as small or large failures and how we deal with them on a daily basis.

Stay tuned for more in episodes 2 and 3 coming soon.

In the 4th episode of our Creativity & Football mini-series we head to Switzerland with renowned lettering artist Stefan Kunz.

Stefan is an internet phenomenon, entrepreneur and educator who is passionate about sharing his gift to inspire others.

But his quest for excellence and always doing how best isn’t free from the challenges of struggling to get out of bed, becoming bereft of ideas on how to excel further and everything in between.

Stefan shares his coping mechanisms and how his willingness to be realistic about what his ‘best’ is on any particular day, helps him through.

It's the 3rd episode of our Creativity & Football mini-series. Craig Elimeliah is an award-winning ECD at VMLY&R in New York. A native New-Yorker he gets his football analogies from the oval shaped ball rather than the circular one. A couple of months ago, Craig wrote a brave post on Linkedin sharing his experiences with many years of mental heath ups and downs. It's not easy to suddenly go from zero to a hundred in the transparency and vulnerability stakes, but Craig has taken it in his stride and now understands his own mental health in order to pull the right levers at the right time. He's also excited by the change our industry is destined to make with a new generation of talent and leaders who won't stand for the toxicity and culture of the past that has burnt out far too many of us.

Dr Zac Seidler knows a thing or two about football. Whilst he's scored many a goal from all over the pitch, his ultimate goal is to reduce the staggering rate of male suicide. In this second episode of our Creativity & Football mini series (psst, yeah the one on men's mental health in the creative industry) Andy and Zac discuss everything from mental health to masculinity and the one secret that just may give men the courage to speak up.

Welcome to a Never Not Creative podcast mini-series. Creativity and Football. We're talking to men about creativity, football and... who are we kidding? This is an essential listen. A mini-series dedicated to the topic of men's mental health in our industry. We kick-off our first episode with Pete Brennan. Co-founder of Heaps Normal, Electric & Analog and lucky for us, sharer of stories and experiences about his own journey with mental health.

We're publishing this series because its almost guaranteed that whenever we run something around mental health – we'll see max 10% of males as part of the audience. It's time to chat fellas (and everyone of course, but especially the men). The more open you are, the more honest you are and the more you realise that more than half of this world is feeling something similar, the more we can all help each other.

Thank you to Pete for sharing, talking and helping others realise it's good to talk and get to know yourself.

Find out more about Pete, Heaps Normal and Electric and Analog below.

Asher Oliver didn’t take the traditional ‘qualified’ pathway into the creative industry.

Blair Enns (author of Win Without Pitching and Pricing Creativity) joins Andy to discuss the challenges that creatives have when it comes to business. How our emotional attachment to work can hinder financial success and why we shy away from the grown-up stuff. We also discuss the pro's and con's of unpaid internships and whether mental health issues are naturally more present in creatives. 

Andy and Sarah are back with another episode on a Never Not International Women’s Day talk with Tom Tapper.  

Tom is the co-founder and CEO of B-Corp certified agency, Nice and Serious. In 2008, he co-founded Nice and Serious with a clear purpose: to make creative work the world needs. Since then, he’s exclusively worked with pioneering charities and brands to make creative work that amplifies social and environmental causes. From international brands like IKEA, Unilever, Innocent and Ben & Jerrys, to pioneering charities like Greenpeace, WWF, Rainforest Alliance and Parkrun.  

Constantly aware of being in the privileged position of the white male founder of a successful branding business, Tom is interviewed by Ve on the extra efforts to ensure that Nice and Serious delivers on being a business that strives for equality.  

Join Andy Wright and Sarah Nguyen in another episode to discuss two powerful talks from Never Not International Women’s Day - ‘Until your fear of me isn’t my problem’ with Tanarra Schneider, and ‘Until we flip the question’ with Andy Polaine.  

Tanarra is a Managing Director at Accenture Interactive, leading Design in the Midwest. She spills the tea about the outcomes of a system predicated on the fear of women’s success.   

Dr. Andy Polaine is a designer, educator, coach and writer who helps clients build and grow their own design and innovation capability, transform their organisations and themselves. Andy flips the question from “what should we do?” to “what should we stop doing?” and dealing with the underlying structural issues that create inequity.  

Somewhere around 2015, the first of the John genre articles arrived, trumpeting that there are more CEOs named John than women CEOs in their entirety.   In this episode, we have a well-presented talk by Jess Lilley, who focuses on this issue and talks through what we (John) can do about it. Jess is a co-founder at The Open Arms, a creative company that strives to weaponise empathy to help communities thrive.

After a near 20-year career as an award-winning writer and creative director in some of the world’s most renown ad agencies, Jess realised the culture of the ad world just wasn’t working for her (or her family). She joined forces with a couple of great people to create something a little different. Their goal is to make work with a social purpose that leaves their patch of the world a little better than they found it.

Jane Duru (Verbal Design Director, R/GA) and Sumita Maharaj (Associate Design Director, Re:) join Sarah and Andy to discuss their recent submission to Never Not International Women's Day. From having to bring a 6-pack to a meeting to get a seat at the table and a constant need to over-prove themselves Jane and Sumi share their stories and experiences from the world of advertising and design.

To make meaningful change in workplaces all around the world, we need to recognise that the gender inequity in our industry and society is a cultural problem. We need to show men what they can’t see all around them - the norm. The norm that has let stereotypes rule and anyone but a privileged white male suffer. 

Join this discussion with Daniele Fiandaca and Deborah Rey-Burns. By his own admission, Daniele is the very definition of privilege - white, male, straight, middle class and privately educated. As Founder of Creative Social, he often spoke about issues facing the creative industry including the lack of gender diversity. Daniele set up the Token Man community to create a safe space for conversation and get men to improve their education and get a better understanding of the challenges women face. Daniele is Founder of Utopia, a culture change business that re-wires organisations for the Age of Creativity.   

Deborah, Founder of Propela and Curator-at-large for ReDesign Business and the Future Of_, Deborah has built a global network of moon-shooting experts that can help companies thrive. She helps events and organisations connect with the superhero thinks of today - the thought leaders and change-makers working on the bleeding edge of business and culture.   

Dr Sally Fitzpatrick is a Clinical Psychologist and the Acting Program Manager, Mental Health and Research at Everymind, our partners in the Mentally-Healthy research study. In this episode she’s joined by Author and Creative, Alex Wadelton to tackle community questions about finding meaning and purpose through work, disclosing mental health challenges, taking better care of contractors and freelancers and managing expectations about working hours with your boss. 

After years of learning in the agency business, championing and doubling-down on a project-based model, Trevor Hubbard is on a mission to wipe out failure. The one thing standing in his way? Clarity, or lack of it. Having co-founded, and then bought outright, his agency Butchershop in California, Trevor's hit on a formula for a successful business, projects and client relationships. The Clarity Project. A concept that introduces us to the pre-mortem (over the post-mortem) and a way of looking at things to head-off failure at all costs. A methodology that so-far has proved successful at getting Butchershop through the pandemic and expansion to Europe.

Kelly Mackenzie founded White Bear in 2014. Since then it's gone from strength to strength. No surprise really, as when we caught up with Kelly it was clear that she doesn't let much stand in her way.
We chat about the challenges that women in the creative industry can face in rising to the top and how even, for all designers, this industry can sometimes feel like an extreme sport.

Kelly's story of how they continued to grow during the pandemic is also a great case study on how to grow a community (and in turn, client base) as a way of growing stable business opportunities.

LINKS:

Interview with Kelly - https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/interview-kelly-mackenzie-white-bear-studio-diversity-design

White Bear studio - https://whitebearstudio.com/about/

An incredible, far-reaching episode with experts on the future and our mental health. Prue Jones, Design Director at Fjord provides a unique perspective on where to from here in 2020. Dr Zac Seidler, a psychologist and specialist in men's mental health, who also works with Movember shares practical, respectable and relevant advice.  Hear advice and opinions on what will the future of our work look like? How do we build resilience? I'm at my wit's end... where to from here? and... how much vulnerability is too much?

18 months on from our first study into the mental health and wellbeing of the creative, media and marketing industry, we’re back with a deeper dive. The purpose of the second study was to evaluate what’s changed since 2018 and to further understand how people cope and what can be done to improve the situation. 

This episode includes a recording of the live presentation of the results with Professor Carmel Loughland, the Director of Everymind, our research legend, Ross Tynan, Nina Nyman, co-chair of the Mentally-Healthy Change Group and of course Andy from Never Not Creative. 

With guests, Jess Lilley, Creative Director of Leo Burnett and Aileen Alegado, Psychologist.

We discuss when's the right time to ask for a payrise. Is our industry ageist? And what's Survivors Guilt and how do we get over it?

Register for future Asking For A Friend events at https://www.nevernotcreative.org/asking-for-a-friend. 

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Andy first met Daniele Fiandaca in 2002. He was COO at (then) independent agency Profero. They were his agency and he was their client. Since leaving Profero in 2009, Daniele has gone on to co-author 3 books including 'Creative Superpowers: Equip Yourself for the Age of Creativity', become Head of Innovation at Cheil, co-founded Token Man, Brand Social, Creative Social, Culture Social and Innovation Social, hit the front page of a British tabloid, and co-founded Utopia, the culture change business. @weareutopians helps clients such as Coca-Cola European Partners, Google, Red Bull, Spotify and Universal Music build more purposeful, inclusive and entrepreneurial cultures and in 2019, they were named Inclusive Companies Consultancy of the Year.

Daniele's work is focused on how to build better work cultures. He helps people understand the value from creating more inclusive and diverse cultures in which everyone can thrive; how to create psychologically safe workplaces, and many other topics that help build belonging and joy in the workplace.

This episode was recorded in Daniele's London loft (luckily) before the pandemic and lockdown. 

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This episode is a fully loaded chat with Andrew Dobbie (Founder of Made Brave) and Peter Czapp (Founder of The Wow Company).  One's a creative founder, the other's an accountant – in fact, Peter is Andrew's accountant.

In this fascinating chat, they share stories of how they and other agencies are coping right now. There's lots of advice for how to get through everything that's happening in 2020 and how to plan to come out the other side winning.

This episode is from our April Asking For A Friend event.

We all know that “asking for a friend”is an easier way to ask a tough question. So once a month we’re going to allow anyone anywhere to “ask for a friend”, to an industry leader, and a psychologist, anonymously, and online.

Asking For A Friend is an initiative by Never Not Creative, Young Bloods Australia and Mentally-Healthy. It exists to make it easier for creatives to ask the unaskable. Wherever you are, tune in on the first Thursday of each month to get help, or just listen to the answers to your friends, colleagues and peers questions.With guests, Maria Devereux, Executive Creative Director of Colenso BBDO New Zealand and Katie Feder, Psychotherapist.

Sean Hall has seen almost every nook and cranny of our industry. From working in one of Australia's most iconic agencies to running one of Australia's most iconic brands, he now focuses on helping as many of us as possible to improve our energy levels and mental wellbeing. Energx is Sean's business and passion and it's taken him around the country and onto the stage of TEDx to share his unique insights into what makes us tick.

Sean has also been kind enough to share his time in the Never Not Creative community and the Mentally-Healthy change group. You can find out more about Sean below as well as links to resources he recommended in this episode.

Oh, and send him an email. He'd love that!

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In this episode Sarah and Andy chat to Mitch Wallis, the Founder of the Heart on My Sleeve Movement. Entwined within Mitch's story about his own Mental Health journey is solid scientific and strategic advice on how to tackle mental health at work. The difference between addressing performance and addressing mental health, and how we can all play a role in looking after ourselves and each other. Mitch is fast becoming one of the most recognisable faces in mental health in Australia and works with many businesses including creative agencies to improve their approach to a mentally healthier workplace.

If you'd like to find out more about Mitch and the Heart On My Sleeve movement, check out the links below.

We’re back. Season 3 kicks off with Chris Freel and Nina Nyman from Unltd. We talk all things mental health and how to do good in our industry. Perfect timing as we’ve recently launched the new Mentally-Healthy survey (got take it now - link in bio) and Nina is also the co-chair of the Mentally-Healthy Change Group with Andy.

This is a great chat about what happened behind the scenes with our work last year, but also shines a light on the great work that Unltd do helping to connect our industry with youth at risk.

Let us know what you think, and feel free to reach out to @unltdaus to find out more about the great work they do and how you might be able to get involved.

Thanks to:

In our final episode of Season 2 and 2019, Andy and Sarah catch-up with the formidable "Monty" AKA Sarah Montague, Creative Director at ooh! Media.

With her career as a Solid Gold dancer over before it even began, Monty got into the world of advertising. 23 years later and it's still all about the words, the pictures, the gold nugget of a human insight, where you're connecting with your audience and most of all, the emotion. Emotion is a suit she wears and taps into daily.

On a personal level, she cries over spilt almond milk, would happily swap a lung for a block of Whittaker's Jelly Tip (chocolate) and has quite the penchant for squeezing herself into comically small spaces. 

Last year however, saw Monty tackle her most complex small space yet, her personal Everest, her own head. Monty shares her journey on the mental health rollercoaster of which shame had not only kept her silent for YEARS, but had also seen her run the gamut of self medicating options. A passionate advocate for bringing about change in terms of the way mental health is perceived, understood and approached - Monty shares her tips and tricks on sticking it to shame, and why medication and therapy deserve their own infomercial channel.

If anything in this episode triggers difficult memories, experiences or emotions, please consider calling the numbers below for help and advice:

Lifeline Australia - 13-11-14

Suicide Helpline (US) - 1-800-273-8255

Samaritans (UK) - 116-123

We'll be back in 2020 with a brand new season. 

We caught lettering artist and typographer, Craig Black as he was whizzing around Australia for his national AGDA tour. But better than that, we also invited his wife Alison to bring her expertise as a mental health nurse to our conversation about mental health and the life of a creative.

Craig has shared a lot about his personal story, "and while he's the happiest he's ever been" he's inevitably endured the ups and downs of the creative's rollercoaster along the way.

This is one of the most personal episode's we've recorded... and we're so grateful that Craig and Ali could talk with us together.

If you're an independent creative, if you're struggling with work/life balance, or if you sometimes find yourself lost and not knowing where you want to get to, give this episode a listen. And then share it with whoever else you think would benefit.

Sarah and Andy catch up with Shruti Rai about designing for the edge cases and how to embrace audiences and use cases that we might not be comfortable with. Diversity becomes a major theme of our conversation and inevitably, the benefits that a more diverse team can bring to the perspective and solutions for a project.

Shruti is an experience designer that counts R/GA on her resumé among many other globally renowned brands and businesses.

This episode, Andy is in Tasmania for Foundry Live.

Foundry Live is a conference  by Foundry Creative School in Tasmania. Every few months they invite industry leaders to speak to their students and local businesses.

At the end of September, Andy attended alongside Todd Henderson, Director of architecture firm, Cumulus; Chi Ryan, Experience Strategy Director at pwc and Marcel Jacobs, Design Lead at Mentally Friendly.

Given the audience at the event, this episode is especially good for those of you looking to get a break in the industry. But even if you're looking to create a good first impression or network for a new role, there's some great advice in this one.

Professor David Alais is a psychologist and neuroscientist at The University of Sydney. Sarah and Andy caught up with David to understand better how the creative mind works, and how we can do a better job of looking after it.

David's research focuses on how we perceive the world through our senses, how we interpret and create our reality, and how we deal with ambiguity and imagine solutions.

This episode covers everything from mindfulness to mindlessness and how being productive with your creativity doesn't mean chaining yourself to your mac for hours on end.

Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review, and share with your friends 🙏

This episode is packed full of advice on running a business as a creative – get your notebooks out! Andy and Sarah caught up with Emily Cohen, creative business consultant and author of Brutally Honest.

We discussed the challenges facing creative businesses, changing models, how to deal with clients, and how to get serious about business. Emily shared why it's good to be transparent with your employees, friends with your competition, how the next generation of creatives are much more business savvy than their predecessors, and that honesty is definitely the best policy.

This is one of our most practical episodes yet, jam-packed with advice for creatives of all levels to help work better with clients and create more profitable businesses.

Andy and Sarah caught up with Chris Doyle who last year started an initiative called This Is Not University. TINU is a mentoring program that Chris started to help bridge the gap between education and career as he realised that he didn’t have the time / money to be able to commit to hiring interns. Almost a year in and Chris joins us with Wilson Leung, the first participant in the program and now full time employee of Christopher Doyle & Co.

We discuss Chris’ goals for the programme Wilson’s experience and what we can do to make interning in general, a more structured and positive experience.

Australian Design Radio and Never Not Creative hosts Matt Leach and Andy Wright found themselves in Brisbane together at The Design Conference. Therefore, it was a no-brainer to combine mics and interview the founders of Ustwo, Sinx and Mills about the ups and downs of running a business and what it's like to do all of that as best mates.

You can follow Ustwo and Mills at @ustwo or @millsustwo - thanks to the guys for such a great chat!

After a month of high quality events in the creative industry, Sarah and Andy unpack how important it is to get out to find inspiration, community and spend some time on your own self-development. Sarah attended Rare by Google, Semi-Permanent and The Design Conference (TDC), while Andy was also a co-host of TDC. We discuss the great job these events are doing, why it's important to take the time to attend and what we've learnt in the last month. This is also a great insight into the content and lessons from these events, so well worth listening if you're considering a ticket for next year!

Please review the show on itunes or wherever you're listening to this. We'll be back in a fortnight.

This episode was sparked by a tweet. On the 2nd April, Andy tweeted, "Sometimes it feels like we really don't want to create a better industry. When you look at what we do to the people trying to start out or get ahead it's simply baffling..." It was followed by a series of examples and stories that people had shared through the Never Not Creative community. Quite a few of you chipped in with thoughts and opinions, and some of the active participants of the conversation agreed to get together and discuss some of the issues.

So, joining Andy and Sarah in this episode are Jim Antonopoulos from Tank, Ngaio Parr from Make Nice, and previous guest, Gabby Lord.

We discuss everything from the role of leadership to basic human instincts. It's a great conversation across New York, Melbourne and Sydney. That meant the audio can be a little annoying at times (sorry for that). Please stick with it though as the conversation is important!

Big questions in this episode. Is the lack of diversity in the creative industry holding us back? Can we be more creative as a result? What's it like to be a person of colour in our industry?

Jane and G work in a Sydney creative agency. Both people of colour from London, they're certainly a minority in the Australian creative industry. What has their experience been so far? How can we help more people get into our industry?

We discuss everything from quotas to education and family expectations. It's a great episode about an important (too often ignored) topic. Feel free to continue the conversation in our Facebook group of tweet / insta us at @nvrnotcreative.

Maggie Tang (ex Frost, Houston Group and current Head of Brand at Ableton), and Christian Hewitt ex R/GA, part of InVision's Design Leadership Forum and current Head of Design at Streamtime) join Andy and Sarah to discuss what it's like to make the decision to go in-house as a creative. Will you compromise your creativity? Do you get bored working on one brand? Are the hours and your mental health better? And, why are more and more people crossing the line?

This episode Andy and Sarah discuss a recent Never Not Creative event –  The Future Of Internships. Should they or shouldn't they be paid? How do we make sure that internships aren't just accessible to those who can afford them? What stories exist around unpaid internships? What's the law? Why is our industry breaking it? What's the role of education in improving this situation?

Included on the panel at the event were: Beau Penton, host of The Design Kids, Sydney Bianca Jarvis, Graphic Designer Rhiannon Tuntevski, Industry Partnerships at UTS Lara Blumber, Career Coach at General Assembly.