For nearly five years, In The Studio has been at the forefront of the creative process - with extraordinary access to big names and exciting talent working in the creative industries around the world. Our reporters are right there as works are brought into being, whether that be in design, music, TV and film, photography, sculpture, writing, painting or performance. In this episode Laura Hubber delves into the archive to consider the enormous challenges artists face as they bring their projects to fruition. One of the major obstacles to all artistic endeavours in the last couple of years has been the worldwide pandemic. This programme features Turkish author Elif Shafak who tells how her writing life was shaken up during lockdown, Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company coping when Covid-19 closed the theatres and New Orleans’s oldest parading organisation, Krewe of Rex, working to keep the Mardi Gras Carnival flourishing despite social distancing and the wearing of very different kinds of masks. There are contributions too from producer Linda Wong Davies battling deadlines and culture differences to stage a western opera in Shanghai, Finland’s Kari Kola struggling in Ireland to mount the world’s largest illuminated artwork and animator Phil Tippett reflecting on the stress of making a film over the course of more than thirty years.