Creative Forces Podcast with Guy Kilty

Heather Greenwood is a senior executive at film and TV production company Fulwell 73, whose documentary production credits include the smash hit about the return of Bros, After The Screaming Stops, Sunderland Till I Die and I Am Bolt. After growing up in a small village in Lincolnshire she and her family moved to Birmingham when she was ten. While at school there she got involved in youth theatre production and loved it so much she decided that was what she wanted to do for her career. In this interview hear why Heather stayed in her friend’s living room in London early on, how her production career has taken in reality TV, drama, documentaries and feature films, and what it’s been like experiencing the huge recent success of the Bros documentary.

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This episode is brought to you by Right Angles.

Martin Newman is an internationally-renowned expert on customer experience and e-commerce who has been involved in multi-channel retailing for over 30 years. After growing up in Glasgow and starting out working for the family firm he went on to hold senior positions at Ted Baker, Harrods, Burberry, Pentland brands and Intersport before founding the multi-national consultancy Practicology. Now the author of a book, ‘100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience’, Martin is a regular contributor to Retail Week & Drapers and delivers keynote presentations around the world. In this interview, hear Martin describe his early career in the family firm and then as a holiday rep, how he worked his way up to senior roles at some of the biggest names in retail, and which bands he bunked off school to see in London when he was a teenager.

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Sulene Fleming is a singer/songwriter from Bradford. After starting out singing in competitions as a teenager she’s gone on to appear on countless sessions for all sorts of artists and producers – including Nowegian duo Stargate – and front funk and soul bands like The Brand New Heavies, The New Mastersounds and The Fantastics. In this honest and funny interview hear how a chance meeting at the age of 15 made Sulene believe a career in music might be possible, which hugely successful girl group audition she thinks she may well have turned down in the 1990s, and why she temporarily reinvented herself mid-career.

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Diane Brown is the founder and president of RxArt, a non-profit organisation which installs contemporary artwork in hospitals, particularly those that treat children. Now based in New York, Diane grew up in Ohio and originally started out in medicine before pursuing her lifelong passion for art, eventually running successful galleries in both Washington and New York before creating RxArt in 2000. In this interview hear Diane explain why art has affected her so much in her life and work, why she switched career from medicine, and why she believes artworks have the power to affect real change in people’s health and well-being.

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Tony Husband’s brilliant and funny cartoons are familiar to millions of people in the UK and beyond, thanks to regular appearances in publications like Private Eye, The Times, Punch, Playboy and many others over the last four decades. In that time he’s won numerous major awards, including the Pont Award for depicting the British way of life. Meanwhile, Yobs, which he draws for Private Eye, is one of the best-known comic-strips in Britain. Alongside his day-to-day career as a cartoonist, he’s also used his work to create several books, including two that feature very personal reflections; one about his father’s dementia and the other on his son’s drug use. In this warm and witty interview, hear how Tony worked out that drawing cartoons was going to be his main career, how he kept trying when he faced numerous rejections early on, and why he’s been called the ‘Keith Richards of cartooning’.

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Portia Jones is the creator of the travel and lifestyle blog Pip and the City. After growing up in South Wales with a passion for travel, Portia went on the first of many solo trips abroad as a teenager. More than ten years of extensive travelling later she launched her blog and has since been shortlisted for a Vuelio blogging award, become a brand ambassador for Euroventure Travel, has been listed as a Travelex top blogger and has collaborated with many tourism boards and travel brands. In this honest and often hilarious interview, hear Portia explain how she’s found herself in a number of sticky situations abroad over the years, why she loves comics and sci-fi, and why being in fancy dress can be helpful when you lose something on the train.Listen on iTunes

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In a special podcast looking back at some of the highlights from Creative Forces episodes 11 to 18, record producer Steve Levine talks about his friendship with Boy George, technology evangelist Dr Sue Black remembers what she did in the first few years after leaving home at 16, drummer Simon Allen explains how his band, The New Mastersounds, got started, PR guru Paul Blanchard recalls how an incident with a lobster in France changed his diet forever, obstetrician and gynecologist Felice Gersh talks about growing up in New York and the influence of her family on her career, and writer and director Jason Wingard remembers how he felt switching career after his time as a professional footballer came to an end.

Nick Johnson is a pioneer of property development and urban regeneration. After starting out as a surveyor he went on to become a director of the hugely successful city centre regeneration specialists Urban Splash, chair of Marketing Manchester and a teacher at Yale. In 2011, though, he went into “self-imposed exile”, leaving those and several other advisory roles behind to start again. That decision led him to take on the redevelopment of the market hall in Altrincham, Cheshire, with great success. Soon afterwards he and his partner Jen took their formula of semi-industrial style and carefully curated independent traders a step further by creating Mackie Mayor from a Grade II listed market building on the edge of Manchester’s Northern Quarter. In this fascinating interview, hear how Nick was heavily involved and influenced by the Factory records scene in the 1990s, why he likes to keep things just on the edge of falling apart, and why he never takes a meeting that involves more than three people.

Priya Lakhani is the founder and chief executive of the cloud-based education platform CENTURY. After training as a lawyer, Priya quit the legal profession in 2008 to set up the Indian cooking sauces brand Masala Masala and within weeks her products were being stocked in major retailers including Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Waitrose. She also set up a charity alongside the sauces business, which provided a hot meal to a homeless person in India for every pot of sauce sold. In recognition for her success with Masala Masala and the charity Priya was awarded an OBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honours List and later became a member of the advisory board to the Secretary of State for Business, before going on to set up CENTURY. In this fascinating interview, hear how Priya developed her entrepreneurial skills working alongside her brother while they were both still at school, why her parents and grandparents instilled in her a desire to help others, and why she loves having a dog in the office.

James Ingram is the chief executive of the e-commerce photography and video specialist, Splashlight, and host of the Creative Intelligence Podcast. After growing up in Chicago where he showed an early interest in creative design, James moved to Brooklyn at the age of 19 to start working in the printing industry. Over the next three decades he worked his way up into a series of leadership roles in graphic arts companies, before taking up his current role in 2005. In this frank and fascinating interview hear James explain how he overcame major setbacks in his career, how he completely reinvented his management style, how his work ethic came from his father, and why his grandfather tried to convince him to be a professional golfer.