Before going to art school Rory spent ten years street painting around Europe, was made an honorary gypsy and even exiled from Florence. We talk about fabricating an imaginary student on his Foundation course, being typecast as a joke artist, starting his own art fair and performing Beethoven without knowing how to play the piano.

George tells me about the significance of the local video store’s foreign language shelf when growing up, how much of his travels around the world have been a means to expand that shelf, and how spending time at the Jatiwangi Art Factory is making him re-think the potential of his hometown of Marsden.

Andy talks to me about not actually being that interesting, the awful experience of watching someone play a younger version of himself, embarrassment, self-financing public sculpture, truth humour, and not using art as an excuse to make less good versions of the things they are intending to be.

Nicola chats with me about her love of reading, libraries, and even knowledge itself; an artist being full of doubts, understanding not understanding conceptual art, self-flagellation being too easy, going against what’s expected of you, stubbornness, and also gives me lots of good advice on being a full-time artist.

Keith tells me about launching a full size Rover 75 made of clay through Cannock Chase forest, being banned from the ceramics studio on the first day of art college and still ending up studying ceramics, tripping the V&A’s electrical systems, collaborating with Napalm Death and embracing unpredictability.

Whilst on a brief return from Moscow, Sean speaks with me about his own seminal experience of doing a Foundation course in Carlisle, teaching painting through not painting, having multiple collaborative practices without necessarily having an individual one, and trying to capture the Loch Ness monster for the Museum of Modern Art.

Amanda talks with me about her scientific approach to art making, her background in biochemistry, family ties to Dolly the sheep, building a practice from volunteering at and now working to develop the creative mental health service Inkwell Arts, trees, finally getting a British Passport, and the many complications of working with fire.

Liar Hydrant and Ghoul Baby (aka artists Hardeep Pandhal and David Steans) talk with me about their rap personas and projects, the varying ways it is part of, or feeds into their respective practices, collaboration, not performing live, and it being an enjoyable, generative and sometimes uncomfortable thing to do.

Simeon recounts his journey from growing up in Huddersfield, clubbing around the country, spending sixteen years in industry before turning to art education, coming to find his past to be a useful resource, to ending up in Tate Britain. Along the way we talk masculinity, aspiration, peer influence, and Vogue magazine.

Emma joins me after a busy day running a pop up Playlab to talk about the influence of her pub landlady grandmother, realising she didn’t want to pursue an “artist’s life”, being nosey, the will to create, people having fun as being a higher pursuit, and the power of slime.