Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast: five honest questions, one guest at a time, for the woman who's lost herself inside her roles.

By Stephen and JuliaArts

Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast: five honest questions, one guest at a time, for the woman who's lost herself inside her roles. episodes

October 28Conversations for Kate: Michael Sells "Find the Joy" from the Flavel Arts Centre, Dartmouth, Devon
Conversations for Kate: Michael Sells – “If it makes you feel good, do it”
Kate is a woman in her forties who used to make things and knew exactly who she was. For years she’s been looking after everyone else. She isn’t lazy and she isn’t unmotivated. She’s stretched. Somewhere along the way she quietly stopped believing the creative spark was still in there.
Each week one guest answers questions from their own life, not as an expert but as a mirror, so Kate can hear her own situation described by someone who’s been near it.
This week Stephen and Julia are at The Flavel in Dartmouth with Michael Sells, who programmes and manages the venue. Michael comes from applied theatre and believes everyone is a creative. He started Dartmouth Creatives on a hunch that the town was full of creative people who simply hadn’t met each other. The first meeting felt, he admits, “like some dreadful AA meeting.” Now around 200 local creatives are in touch, and The Flavel is starting to become a producing house, with the Actors Studio working in the building.
The conversation goes further than a venue profile. Michael talks openly about the writing he loves and keeps putting off: home from work, dinner, feet up, bed, repeat. He’s honest that writing doesn’t come easily to him, and that he beats himself up for not doing it. Julia shares her mother’s advice: ten minutes, nothing else, draw something. She once drew her own toes in the bath. Together they ask whether people who work in the arts should have time to be creative built into their working day.
They also talk about the pressure on regional theatres, with rising costs, venues closing and the same number of seats. Michael explains why he wants to champion South West companies and invites listeners with a passion for a particular kind of music or art to come and help shape the programme. He tells the story of a music charity he ran in Brighton, where young men who had been written off found a studio, a community and a sense of their own brilliance. That story is why he champions the arts.
Looking ahead, Michael imagines The Flavel reaching beyond its 172 seats: satellite events around town, outdoor theatre in the park and on the river, and big celebrations when the weather allows. Stephen and Julia share plans for Hopebridge, their radio comedy-drama about a floating farm that divides a town, and a possible live show at Easter 2028.
At the end Michael gives Kate the advice he’d give himself. Drawing on the Eat, Pray, Love author’s book about creativity, he says to find the joy in the creative act. If you don’t enjoy it, don’t do it, and if it makes you feel good, just do it.
In this episode
04:41 Welcome from The Flavel, plus a morning with the Actors Studio
07:59 What Michael loves about his work, and how Dartmouth Creatives began
15:28 Worries for the arts: costs, closures and short-sighted funding
22:12 The writing Michael misses, and why it’s hard to start
27:14 Ten minutes a day, and creativity at work
30:12 Michael’s vision for himself and for The Flavel
35:24 How creativity changes lives: the Brighton music story
40:14 Outdoor arts, satellite venues and Hopebridge
49:37 Michael’s advice for Kate
It’s not therapy and it isn’t coaching. It’s 40 minutes of proper listening, without anyone telling her to try harder.
Conversations for Kate is a Listening Matters podcast. It goes out Thursdays at 10 on Waterwaves Radio and is then available wherever you listen.
theflavel.org.uk · listeningmatters.me · waterwavesmedia.org

Join the Movement:
Tune in weekly on WaterWaves Radio or visit waterwavesmedia.org to learn more. Because in the root cause lies the root solution.Connect With Us:
Website: waterwavesmedia.org
More about Listening Matters: listeningmatters.me
54 min
October 20“I Did That, So I Can Do This”: Jenni Trent Hughes on Confidence, Calm and Permission | Conversations for Kate
Five questions. Answered from a life.
This week Julia Olsen and Stephen Kearney are joined by broadcaster, life coach and author Jenni Trent Hughes, known from Perfect Match, Loose Women and Grumpy Old Women.
Jenni talks about learning to make herself feel safe as a child, and how that became the gift of making other people feel safe. She tells the story of the night the BBC rang at 10pm to ask her to explain Facebook to the nation, live, with zero friends. She explains why “happy, to me, is calm”, why you have to define happiness for yourself, and what social media is doing to all of us, adults as much as children.
For Creative Kate, the woman who holds everyone else together and has lost touch with her own spark, Jenni brings a practical tool: trigger photographs of moments you never thought you could manage. When something feels too big, you look back and say, “I didn’t think I could do that, and I did. So now I can do this.” And her central message: nobody else can give Kate permission to shine. She has to give it to herself.
Jenni also agrees to join Julia and Stephen regularly to talk through each episode of Hopebridge, the new community radio drama from the Actor’s Studio, Dartmouth.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome: Julia and Stephen
00:49 Who is Creative Kate?
01:21 Q1: What do you love about yourself, your work and your life?
05:09 The night the BBC called about Facebook
08:55 Q2: What concerns do you carry?
10:24 Happy is calm: define happiness for yourself
12:26 What gives you joy? “To thine own self be true”
13:40 Social media and Matt Haig’s Notes on a Nervous Planet
15:54 Q3: Your vision for the future, and reclaiming agency from AI
19:24 Permission to shine
20:16 Q4: How can Kate break out?
21:52 Trigger photographs: “I did that, so I can do this”
25:58 Q5: What do you really want to do?
29:35 Hopebridge: Jenni joins the team
31:05 “I am me”
33:40 Thanks and goodbye
About the show
Conversations for Kate is a Listening Matters podcast, hosted by Julia Olsen and Stephen Kearney. It isn’t advice. It’s five questions put to one guest and answered from their own life, so Kate can hear her own story told back to her by someone who found their way through.
Guest: Jenni Trent Hughes, broadcaster, life coach and author
Hosts: Julia Olsen and Stephen Kearney
Listen on Waterwaves Radio, Thursdays at 10, then wherever you get your podcasts.
listeningmatters.me · waterwavesmedia.org
If this episode helped, please follow, rate and review, and share it with someone who needs to hear “nobody else can give you permission”.
Hashtags
#ConversationsForKate #ListeningMatters #JenniTrentHughes #CreativeKate #SelfEsteem #Confidence #Wellbeing #WomenOver40 #Creativity #PositivePsychology #MentalWellbeing #Hopebridge #WaterwavesRadio #Dartmouth #Devon #Podcast #UKPodcast
Keywords
Jenni Trent Hughes, Perfect Match, Loose Women, Grumpy Old Women, broadcaster, life coach, relationships expert, self-esteem, self-confidence, confidence for women, women in their 40s, midlife, burnout, overwhelm, permission to shine, positive psychology, happiness, calm, feeling safe, trigger photographs, social media and mental health, Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet, AI and creativity, agency, creativity, Creative Kate, Listening Matters, Conversations for Kate, Julia Olsen, Stephen Kearney, Actor’s Studio Dartmouth, Hopebridge, Waterwaves Radio, Dartmouth, South Hams, Devon, community radio, wellbeing podcast, interview podcast
Join the Movement:
Tune in weekly on WaterWaves Radio or visit waterwavesmedia.org to learn more. Because in the root cause lies the root solution.Connect With Us:
Website: waterwavesmedia.org
More about Listening Matters: listeningmatters.me
34 min
October 14The Writer, The Machine and the Kids with Author David Hutter
Kate might say: "I miss who I used to be." "My mind is always full." "I don't have time."

This week we talk with writer and editor David Hutter. His satirical novella FAKE NEWS was published in October 2017, and his first full-length novel, a satire about hipsters, is in its final edit.

David answers the five Listening Matters questions from his own life, and we bridge each answer back to Kate. He reflects honestly on being a writer, and on how he keeps making things while raising a family. He also talks with us about what AI might mean for anyone doing creative work, and for our children.

There's no advice here and nothing to fix. We start from what's already whole, and we're interested in what's underneath. In the root cause lies the root solution.

Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast. Listen on Buzzsprout, or catch it on Waterwaves Media at waterwavesmedia.org.
Join the Movement:
Tune in weekly on WaterWaves Radio or visit waterwavesmedia.org to learn more. Because in the root cause lies the root solution.Connect With Us:
Website: waterwavesmedia.org
More about Listening Matters: listeningmatters.me
31 min
October 07Finding the Artist you already are with Artist Anjeli Marsh from Dartmouth in Devon
Anjeli Marsh works across stained glass, mosaic, print and textiles — building beautiful spaces inside and out, running community art projects like the crochet Christmas tree on Bayards Cove, and teaching others to find the artist in themselves. She's a working artist, a wild swimmer, and a mum — juggling creative practice alongside everything else life asks of her.

In this conversation, Anjeli talks with Julia and Stephen about building a working life around creativity — what it costs, what it gives back, and what it actually takes to keep making things when so much of your energy is already spoken for.

If you've ever felt like you lost your creativity after having kids, or found yourself wondering how to reconnect with yourself as a mum, this conversation will feel familiar. So many women describe it the same way: I miss who I used to be — not as a dramatic loss, but as a quiet, ongoing ache underneath an otherwise full life.

Anjeli's own practice offers a different way of looking at it — not fixing what's missing, but making space for what's still there, often in five or ten minutes at a time, fitted around family, work and everything in between. For anyone feeling invisible as a mother, or navigating that sense of midlife identity crisis as a mother that so rarely gets named out loud, this episode is a reminder that the creative self doesn't disappear. It dims.

Conversations for Kate is a Listening Matters podcast for midlife mothers who want to reconnect with the person they were before everything else took priority — exploring identity, creativity, and what it means to lead a family from strength rather than exhaustion.

Join the Movement:
Tune in weekly on WaterWaves Radio or visit waterwavesmedia.org to learn more. Because in the root cause lies the root solution.Connect With Us:
Website: waterwavesmedia.org
More about Listening Matters: listeningmatters.me
42 min
September 30Ceramics when I'm older.
Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast Thursdays at 10 on Water Waves Radio.
This week: Katie Brown.
Katie Brown never set out to be a councillor. She was working at the council when she was made redundant — and instead of walking away from the town she loves, she stood for election. She's now one of sixteen unpaid Dartmouth town councillors, and she isn't yet forty.
She sits down with Julia and Stephen for a warm, unhurried conversation about what it actually takes to make a difference in a small coastal town — and about how hard it is to be heard. Dartmouth's three layers of council, the business rates people shout at her about in the street, a council meeting where one person turned up, and Facebook threads of a hundred and fifty angry comments with nobody in the room. Katie is honest about all of it, and clear about the one thing that would change everything: people talking to her.
Along the way there's ceramics and social activism, the film studio that grew out of Southwest Cork, the cameraman everyone calls Nick the Hat who has quietly built a creative network nobody knew was here, and a new radio drama called Hope Bridge that the town itself will help write. There's an invitation to the schools, and a plan to bring the council into the conversation.
And, as ever, the five questions — ending on the hardest one of all: what do you love about yourself?
Conversations for Kate is made for one listener. She's a woman in her forties who used to make things, who knew exactly who she was, and who has spent years looking after everyone else instead. She isn't short of motivation. She's tired, and she's quietly stopped believing the spark is still in there. So we don't tell her what to do. We bring her someone who's been somewhere near it — a filmmaker, a farmer, a lad who's just started out in our studio — and after each answer we bring it back to Kate. Not advice. Recognition.
Not therapy. Not coaching. Just listening properly for forty minutes, without anyone telling her to try harder.
Listen at waterwavesradio.net, or wherever you get your podcasts. No notes needed — just press play when you have a moment.
Join the Movement:
Tune in weekly on WaterWaves Radio or visit waterwavesmedia.org to learn more. Because in the root cause lies the root solution.Connect With Us:
Website: waterwavesmedia.org
More about Listening Matters: listeningmatters.me
50 min
September 22The Astrophysicist who chose music
This episode: Stephen and Julia sit down with Felix Wood — a barista, singer-songwriter, and astrophysics graduate who walked away from a "safe" future to build a life around what matters most to him: happiness, creativity, and friendship.
Same five questions we ask every guest. A completely different life. Same honesty.
Felix talks openly about difficult times, what he learned, and the small steps he takes daily toward music, collaboration, and connection — instead of the corporate path he was expected to follow.
If you're watching your own teen or young adult wrestle with who they are — this conversation might open a door at home too.
Listening Matters — designed listening that changes behaviour, 35+ years in the making.
Join the Movement:
Tune in weekly on WaterWaves Radio or visit waterwavesmedia.org to learn more. Because in the root cause lies the root solution.Connect With Us:
Website: waterwavesmedia.org
More about Listening Matters: listeningmatters.me
43 min
September 15RADA. Then kids. Then nothing — for years. Then a feature film. Caroline Corrie answers five questions, no script. This week on Conversations for Kate. Just listen.
I can only describe Caroline Corrie, the maker of the movie Shalborne, an absolute star. She is determidly taking on the closed door world of filmmaking by creating incredible art. Shalborne is a must see and in the Actors Studio at the Flavel we were delighted to listen and learn. If you are interested in film and performance art this is a must. Recorded at the Flavel with Actor Studio Dartmouth members Noah Langley and Jude Marsh, Juila and I were honoured to host such a group of incredible people, determined to deliver art and determined to learn how to do it. I hope you enjoy this programme. "I miss who I used to be." If you've thought it — this one's for you. Caroline Corrie trained at RADA, stopped dead when her children came, and years later made a feature film. Not with more time. With five questions. Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast. This week on WaterWaves Radio, and wherever you get your podcasts. No notes needed. Just listen.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
I love a historical drama. And I am drawn to the early 20th century. My grandfather was born in 1901, my upbringing was founded on Victorian values, I love the art, literature and fashion of the time. I’m nostalgic for a life before machines and the world before the two world wars. I find this most recent history enables me to understand the origins of our exponential progress into post, post modern life.
‍
1905 and the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Saint Petersburg became the starting point for my story as a pivotal moment in the modernisation of Europe and the decline of traditional and patriarchal institutions. How might this period of revolution and social change impact an individual? Might it inspire an Edwardian woman, isolated by marriage and restricted by society to take action against her tyrannical husband and launch her own personal revolution against the conventions of her time?

In this retrospective look at the life of a woman fighting oppression I found universal relevance. The courage required to change a situation, however grave, is something everyone can relate to and at the time of writing, I was overwhelmed by stories of refugees fleeing warzones, travelling huge distances with their elderly relatives and children with nowhere to go and nothing but hope to push them forward. In spite of her class, my protagonist, Helen, is as powerless as a refugee, her sexuality her only weapon. By pushing against the injustice of established order she becomes disenfranchised, homeless and wholly dependent on the kindness of others. She moves from one vulnerable state to another.

I wanted to set Helen’s story in a beautiful but lonely world. I live in Devon, England, close to the moors and to the sea, where the natural beauty and wilderness is both liberating and constraining. There is dramatic tension here. Endless sky, water and moorland feel empowering but then the wind, the rain and the cold, barren expanses of space with no shelter are harsh. Helen’s connection to the natural world and her ability to survive its brutality give her strength and a sense of ultimate freedom, far from the confines of social order. The natural world and the seasons play an important role in the illustration of her emotional journey.

I used mostly natural light to enhance the raw, authentic textures in both the landscapes and the costumes to give a true illustration of the period. Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Albert Edelfelt, Vilhelm Hammershoi and William Merritt Chase inspired the imagery and the production design. This was a creative dream for me, to attempt to imitate the artists and writers I admire so much, to film in the landscapes I adore and create a story which I may well have lived through myself. All these components gave me a very personal connection to the creative process and became the perfect setting for my debut feature.
Join the Movement:
Tune in weekly on WaterWaves Radio or visit waterwavesmedia.org to learn more. Because in the root cause lies the root solution.Connect With Us:
Website: waterwavesmedia.org
More about Listening Matters: listeningmatters.me
1 hr 1 min
September 10I want to feel hopeful again with Ian Downing, Chairman of The Flavel.
About This Episode - The Prologue :
In the Introduction to Conversations for Kate Listening Matters, we sit down with Ian Downing, Chair of The Flavel Arts Centre, to explore the power of listening in building a thriving, creative Dartmouth. From the big environmental and social questions of the day to the role of the arts in fostering connection, this conversation dives deep into what it means to truly hear a community and how our actions can encourage others.What You’ll Hear:
How The Flavel is becoming a hub for art, dialogue, and change.
The five questions that can transform any conversation.
Why listening is the first step toward solving our biggest challenges.

Join the Movement:
Tune in weekly on WaterWaves Radio or visit waterwavesmedia.org to learn more. Because in the root cause lies the root solution.Connect With Us:
Website: waterwavesmedia.org
More about Listening Matters: listeningmatters.me
55 min

About Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast: five honest questions, one guest at a time, for the woman who's lost herself inside her roles.

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Every guest on Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast is introduced to Kate: exhausted, capable, caught in a loop of overload, reactivity and guilt. We ask them to answer five simple…

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Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast: five honest questions, one guest at a time, for the woman who's lost herself inside her roles.

Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast: five honest questions, one guest at a time, for the woman who's lost herself inside her roles. episodes

About Conversations for Kate — a Listening Matters podcast: five honest questions, one guest at a time, for the woman who's lost herself inside her roles.