In this episode, Claire Bridges sits down with Jody Orsborn Medina, experiential creative director and founder of Recess, a global creative community and incredible resource hub. Jody shares her journey from in-house and agency life to freelancing, and how the need for authentic connections inspired her to start Recess. What began as monthly internal inspiration sessions has blossomed into a worldwide network and the must-have Creative Playbook, championing collaboration and open access to creative resources.

Jody and Claire discuss the realities of creative life: battling “inspiration overload,” embracing your nontraditional path, and how everyone from producers to designers to strategists can lay claim to creativity. They dive into global creative trends from the Playbook, practical hacks for working smarter, battling imposter syndrome, and the importance of breaking down gatekeeping in the creative industries. This episode is packed with actionable insights for anyone looking to stay inspired and build a creative community, whatever your job title.

Here are the highlights:

• Introduction: Why Jody started Recess  
• Anatomy of a Recess session and what makes them work  
• The Creative Playbook: How it came about, what’s inside & who it’s for  
• Favourite creative hacks, daily tools & tips from the Playbook  
• How Jody curates the playbook, and why diversity of resource matters  
• How freelancers can beat isolation & build community  
• The creative power of producers and challenging creative ‘gatekeeping’  
• Nonlinear creative careers: permission to claim creativity  
• Imposter syndrome: lessons from creative leaders  
• What Jody’s experimenting with next, making space for personal creative work  
• Quickfire: Jody’s two top suggestions to spark creativity right now.  

Do you have a creative challenge or dilemma for a future episode? Email [email protected] or join our weekly email for free creativity resources and worksheets at nowgocreate.co.uk

About Claire Bridges:

Claire Bridges is Chief Spark and Founder of leading creative training consultancy Now Go Create, whose philosophy is that everyone can be creative.

Claire worked as a PR agency Managing Director and Creative Director working with global brands including Starbucks, Kellogg’s, Unilever, P&G and Danone in her previous PR career. Upskilling individuals, teams and organisations with practical creativity tools is Claire’s mission. 

She’s one of only 250 people globally to hold an MSc in Creativity, Leadership & Innovation, and authored an Amazon best-selling creative handbook In Your Creative Element based on her academic studies.

Claire and her hand-picked team of experts have worked on thousands of creative projects and trained over 40,000 people around the world since starting Now Go Create in 2011.

Connect with Claire:

Website: https://nowgocreate.co.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nowgocreate/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NowGoCreate

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/claire-bridges-b6205b14

About Jody Orsborn Medina: 

Jody Orsborn Medina is an Experiential Creative Director who has worked on projects for Shopify, Canva, Vice, Live Nation, Intel, Google and more. 

As a freelancer, she missed having a time in the day to connect with other creatives and share inspiration. So she created one and RECESS was born - an online gathering bringing creatives, designers and strategists together to share what’s currently inspiring them in the world. She also releases a yearly free-to-download Creative Playbook featuring tips, tricks and insights from global creatives.

Get the playbook: https://www.cometorecess.com/playbook2025 

Connect with Jody:

Website: www.cometorecess.com (download the Playbook for free!) 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cometorecess/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodyorsborn/ 

Produced by winteraudio.co.uk