The Never Not Creative podcast is back after a 2 year hiatus. Joining Andy for this new season is co-host, Rachel Zhang, a digital product designer living in Sydney and with experience working across brands and agencies including Telstra, R/GA, Accenture Song and now her own design consultancy Ro&Co.

Paul Balfe is no football expert. But he is a male creative who was willing to chat to us about his mental health and his experiences with anxiety. Paul is Creative Director and Founder of Pennybridge Creative, an independent design studio at home on the Gold Coast of Australia. 

Paul shares his battle with anxiety as a result of the recent Queensland flooding and the steps he took to improve his mental wellbeing. From hypnotherapist to psychologist, Paul tried a number of different ways to tackle his challenges. 

He's gone on to curate an exhibition about creatives' relationship with their own mental health, titled, Welcome to Yourself. Find out more about the exhibition at https://www.nevernotcreative.org/welcome-to-yourself.

Thanks to Streamtime. Project management for healthier creative businesses.

Nasya Kamrat is the Co-Founder of FACULTY, a certified, woman-owned spatial storytelling agency. After experiences working with multi-national agencies owned by the global holding companies, Nasya decided to start something new and do completely the opposite. Nasya is joined by Chief Creative Officer, Aaron Wolfe and both chat to Andy about the positives of building a company that is diverse, equitable and different to the status quo. Nasya also shares how she's gone one step further to co-found Komuna, a co-operative of independent BIPOC, women and LGBTQ+ led agencies and leading industry knowledge brokers designed to support the world’s most intrepid brands.

Show Links:

Komuna

In our latest episode, Ve Dewey interviews James Routledge, the co-founder of Sanctus. After starting Sanctus, a coaching business to help improve mental wellbeing in workplaces, James has gone on to author the Penguin Business Book, Mental Health at Work. He's always very transparent and honest in his own challenges and shares how practice was the key to opening up and helping people realise that we're all capable of talking about our mental health.

Links:

More about James and Sanctus.

James' book, Mental Health at Work.

Thanks to Streamtime, project management for healthier creative businesses.

In this episode, Ve and Andy join forces to chat to recent winners of the Deutsche Bank Awards For Creative Entrepreneurs – Jameisha Prescod, founder of You Look Okay To Me, an online space for the chronic illness community and Nahum McLean, founder of African Diaspora Dance Association (ADDA), an organisation that aims to expand the curriculum and training of dance under the African Diaspora.

Jameisha and Nahum share the importance of strong mentorship, community and not letting social norms stand in your way.

Since 1993, through DBACE, Deutsche Bank has overseen the launch of over 220 ventures, helping young visionaries bring their ideas to life as one of the longest running creative enterprise programmes. In 2018, MeWe360 was brought in as a new partner to deliver and help shape the new direction of the programme.

Every year, the DBACE programme provides support to 10 entrepreneurs (5 Winners + 5 bursary business support recipients). All entrepreneurs join MeWe360’s incubator membership to receive tailored 1-2-1 mentoring which looks at aspects of business support depending on the entrepreneurs’ individual needs.

Applications for the 2022 DBACE program are open now. You can apply here.

More about Mewe360

It's our third and final episode of the F Word Mini-Series. David and Ve sit down for an inspirational conversation around failure at an organisational level with the award-winning transformational change leader Eva Applebaum and Global CEO of Butchershop® Global, Trevor Hubbard. Within the episode, we go in-depth discussing failure, what the opposite of failure is (clarity), key leadership attributes, and what failure for women in a work environment means.

Thanks to Streamtime for their support. 

More at nevernotcreative.org

In our second episode, David and Ve sit down with Alina Mendoza Lopez, currently an intern at Dragon Rouge London, and Max Ottignon, co-founder of the London based agency Ragged Edge to discuss failure at the individual level. Within the episode Max and Alina discuss their experience of failure: Alina discussed her relationship with failure in university whilst Max elucidates early career experiences with failure as well as his current experiences running Ragged Edge.

Ragged Edge

Thanks to Streamtime. Project and studio management for healthier creative businesses.

More at Nevernotcreative.org

Based on the “The F word”, our latest mini-series focuses on "Failure." This first episode with Never Not Creative Co-creator, Ve Dewey and David Beare, Executive Creative Director of Dragon Rouge, come together to discuss what we mean by failure. Their discussion lays the foundation for future episodes exploring what failure is and what counts as small or large failures and how we deal with them on a daily basis.

Stay tuned for more in episodes 2 and 3 coming soon.

More about David – More about Ve

Thanks to Streamtime for their support - project management software for healthier creative businesses.

The final episode of our Creativity and Football mini-series rounds out with The Hallway's ECD Simon Lee. Simon has lived experience with the ups and downs of mental health, but has also been working closely with mental health charity, Gotcha4Life for the last 3 years. The result of this work is the quite excellent Boys Do Cry campaign – a clever take on The Cure's "Boys Don't Cry" from 1979. It's a powerful piece bringing together 30 men from all walks of life to unite in tackling the stigma of mental health – especially relating to men.

Andy and Simon discuss the rules of masculinity, the stiff upper lip and the power and relief that comes from opening up. 

You can find out more about the campaign at: Boys Do Cry. 

Thanks to Endel.io for background music. Check them out for one month free.

Support from Streamtime always appreciated and for joining us on the fight for a healthier creative industry.

Check out what's happening at Never Not Creative and last chance to take the empathy survey.

In the 4th episode of our Creativity & Football mini-series we head to Switzerland with renowned lettering artist Stefan Kunz.

Stefan is an internet phenomenon, entrepreneur and educator who is passionate about sharing his gift to inspire others.

But his quest for excellence and always doing how best isn’t free from the challenges of struggling to get out of bed, becoming bereft of ideas on how to excel further and everything in between.

Stefan shares his coping mechanisms and how his willingness to be realistic about what his ‘best’ is on any particular day, helps him through.

Find out more about Stefan and sign up for his courses at https://stefankunz.com.

Thanks to Endel for their support… Focus, relax, and sleep through the power of sound. The Endel app creates AI-powered sounds designed to support your everyday life. Backed by science, and enjoyed by millions worldwide. Endel is powered by its patented core AI technology. It takes inputs like location, environment, and heart rate, to create the optimal personalized soundscape. This happens on the fly and allows Endel to reconnect your state with your natural circadian rhythm.

Get a free 1-month subscription for the NNC Community here 

And Streamtime… always on the mission of creating healthier creative businesses and helping create a healthier creative industry. Find out more at Streamtime.net.