A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Melissa Castan  ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

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November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

Mel Castan is a Mexico City-born, Barcelona-based animator, illustrator, and community builder whose creative journey has taken her from advertising school to motion graphics to founding two community projects for creatives. ~

She talks with Radim about growing up in a military family with a spiritual streak, discovering illustration as a meditative practice, and building spaces where creatives can process burnout, imposter syndrome, and identity beyond the usual networking event.

Takeaways

• Mel is a Mexico City-born, Barcelona-based animator, illustrator, and producer who's spent nine years building a career across advertising, motion design, and community-building
• Growing up in a military family — her grandfather a retired army general who turned to spirituality after retiring — shaped her comfort holding contradictions together
• She describes creativity as a lifelong practice tied to her ADHD, and drawing as a meditative practice since childhood
• A mapping show by Amon Tobin reshaped her sense of what creative work could be and pulled her toward studying motion graphics in Barcelona
• She spent her first days in Barcelona intentionally getting lost in the Gothic Quarter, without a phone or map, as her way of learning the city
• She co-founded Frames by Friends, a five-year community for Barcelona's animators and motion designers that grew from an expected 20 people to 75 at its first event
• Her current project, Side Project, builds spaces — Honest Conversations and Work in Progress — for creatives to process burnout, imposter syndrome, and identity beyond networking
• She describes "vicarious learning" — the idea that sharing our struggles with others makes them feel lighter and less isolating
• Her guiding philosophy is that ideas have home, and her role is to be that home for others
• She's letting Side Project's future shape itself without attachment to a fixed outcome, trusting that showing up consistently will reveal the next step

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Pep Salazar from OFFF Festival  ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

Pep Salazar, director of OFFF — the design and creativity festival he's shaped since 2007 — joins Radim to unpack what it really takes to build a "city for three days." ~ 

Pep traces his own unlikely path, from a teenager who dreamed of being an actor in a small town near Barcelona, through his formative years building Sónar, to the moment he realised passion alone can blur your vision and every idea needs a manager to make it real. 

They talk about why OFFF shows unfinished work instead of polished portfolios, how a team of seven becomes thirty-five once the doors open, and why Pep would rather rebrand the festival every five years than let it stand still. This is a conversation about risk, honesty, and the invisible, exhausting, joyful work of building a community that actually means it.

Takeaways

• Passion can blur your vision — every big idea eventually needs a manager to protect it and make it real
• A festival isn't a finished portfolio piece; showing the process and the unfinished idea is what builds real trust with a community
• Location does double duty — the city gives you context, but the venue has to speak the same language as the event itself
• Curating without a fixed theme keeps a lineup honest and lets creativity stay wide instead of narrow
• Saying no to most people who want the stage is one of the hardest, least visible parts of the job
• Deliberately rebranding every few years keeps a design festival credible — you can't ask others to embrace change if you won't
• Growth doesn't have to mean franchising — co-producing with local partners builds real community instead of a copy-paste event
• The job is made of a thousand three-minute conversations, and learning to actually enjoy them is its own skill

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Lidia Scarlat  ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

Lidia Scarlat is a Moldova-born producer who has built a career spanning animation, motion, VFX and live events — from stage visuals for the Swan Lake Ballet to screen visuals for Jurassic World theme park, often in the very same week. ~ 
Raised in a family of artists during Moldova's turbulent post-Soviet transition, she talks with Radim about how "everything is temporary and it will be fine" became a defining philosophy, why producing means jumping off the cliff before the artist ever can, and how showing up — not waiting to be discovered — built her entire career. 

They also get into AI's growing role in creative pipelines and why taste, direction and storytelling remain the parts no machine can touch.

TAKEAWAYS

• Growing up in post-Soviet Moldova, Lidia's family shielded her from real instability while instilling the belief that everything is temporary and will be fine
• She comes from generations of artists — a polymath great-grandfather, actor grandparents, ballet-dancer parents — yet chose producing as her own way into the arts
• Producing means saying yes before anything exists — no team, no roadmap, just the intuition that you'll figure it out
• Nobody gets discovered by waiting; showing up to conferences and communities, starting with Motionographer and later OFFF, built her entire network and career
• She deliberately gives opportunities to artists without polished portfolios, because desire and hunger can't be faked or bought
• Learning to ask "stupid" questions early, instead of pretending to understand, became one of her most valuable production skills
• Every project is treated as its own "mutant" — pipeline and pace are built around the people and personalities involved, not a fixed process
• On AI: she's watched teams move from fear to curiosity, using it to iterate concepts faster, while believing taste and storytelling remain irreplaceable
• Her real measure of a good project isn't the outcome alone, but whether she'll love looking back on the process of making it

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Dan Woodger  ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

Dan Woodger — freelance illustrator, animation director, and returning Daring Forever guest — joins Radim to unpack Run London Draw London, the project he built alongside training for this year's London Marathon. ~

Starting from a blank canvas in January, Dan invited people to donate £5 to add a hand-drawn character to a sprawling crowd-scene illustration of the marathon route, turning strangers, club runners, and eventually Paula Radcliffe, pro athletes, and podcast hosts into part of the artwork. 

The conversation ranges across the collision of running and illustration, the frustration of NDA'd client work going unseen, the highs and lows of a data-obsessed relationship with Strava, and the sheer force of just asking for what you want. It closes on marathon day itself — cramp, crowd energy, and a mid-race bottle of water from Mo Farah — and on what comes next for the project.

Takeaways

• The project raised over £5,000 for Oxfam, well past the initial £2,000 target, entirely self-funded and self-run
• Dan built the crowd scene in public on Instagram, showing the process rather than only the finished piece, as a deliberate response to AI in the industry
• Two hundred characters were needed to fill the scene — a number he set himself before a single donation came in
• Getting Paula Radcliffe, Mo Farah, pro athlete Julia Paternain, and the Ellis James and John Robins podcast involved all came from cold, slightly odd, direct asks
• Frustration with NDA'd client work — and the resulting quiet in his inbox — was part of what pushed him to make something fully his own
• Running and illustration turned out to share the same trap: comparing your own work-in-progress to everyone else's highlight reel
• On race day, cramp hit from 30K onward, but the crowd — and strangers recognising their own drawn characters — carried him through
• He's already thinking about a second edition, ideally with a brand or sponsor covering the printing and shipping costs he covered out of pocket this time

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Eliza Williams from creativereview.co.uk ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)

Eliza Williams, editor of Creative Review, joins Radim to trace a career built without connections, without a plan, and — by her own admission — a fair amount of terror. ~

From selling popcorn at the Clapham Picturehouse to writing for free on '90s art blogs, to landing at Creative Review and eventually taking the helm, Eliza's path is a masterclass in slow, unglamorous accumulation. 

This is a conversation about leaving exclusive worlds for more welcoming ones, learning that interviewing is just "speaking to a lot of people at once," and what it really means to steward a trusted industry title through AI anxiety, brand nervousness, and a generation that expects success to arrive fast.

Takeaways

• There were no obvious career opportunities at school for creative writing — Eliza found her way in through a school magazine, a degree in English and art history, and years of low-paid, connection-less hustle
• Working in a cinema or bookshop isn't wasted time — some of the best creative instincts are built while doing something else entirely
• The art world's exclusivity pushed Eliza toward advertising and design, which she found far more welcoming, open, and friendly
• Confidence with public speaking and interviewing wasn't innate — it came from repetition, and from realising interviews are just natural conversation at scale
• The most interesting part of any story is rarely the polished end result — it's the process, the mess, and the moments things go wrong
• AI is real competition for entry-level creative work, but the bigger barrier for young creatives has always been the unglamorous, unpaid gestation period nobody teaches at university
• Brands are increasingly refusing press coverage out of fear of backlash — a shift that means the industry is failing to document its own good work
• Genuine daring in the industry comes from outliers who keep pushing, not from the safe, competent mid-level work that now dominates
• Creative Review's biggest challenge isn't relevance to its existing audience — it's finding a way to matter to creatives who are 20 years old right now

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

daringcreativity.com |  [email protected]

Books by Radim Malinic Paperback and Kindle > https://amzn.to/4biTwFc
Free audiobook (with Audible trial) > https://geni.us/free-audiobook
Book bundles  https://novemberuniverse.co.uk

Lux Coffee Co. https://luxcoffee.co.uk/  (Use: PODCAST for 15% off)
November Universe https://novemberuniverse.co.uk (Use: PODCAST for 10% off)