Only Artists

Tamara Rojo was a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet for more than a decade, before joining English National Ballet as artistic director and lead principal dancer in 2012. The company won the 2017 Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in dance,( and Tamara has been praised for her bold programming).

Osman Yousafzada was born in Birmingham, where his mother ran a dress-making business. He studied anthropology before turning to fashion, and he launched his own womenswear label in 2008. Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Emma Watson and Taylor Swift have all worn his designs. Last year he staged his first solo art exhibition, Being Somewhere Else, at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

The comedian Sara Pascoe meets the performance artist Bryony Kimmings, to discuss laughter, making a living, and the art of revealing the truth about yourself on stage.

Sara Pascoe is a stand-up comedian, writer and actor, appearing on shows including W1A and Mock the Week. Her first book, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body investigated sexuality and evolutionary history. Her current show, Lads Lads Lads, chronicles her efforts to be happily single after the breakup of a four-year relationship.

Val McDermid is one of Britain’s most successful crime writers, and has sold more than 15 million books around the world. Since her debut in 1987, she has written several series of crime novels set in both her native Scotland and the north of England, as well short stories, radio plays and a prize-winning children’s book. Her latest novel is Broken Ground.

Vin Deighan was born in Glasgow and draws under the name Frank Quitely. He is one of the leading artists in American comics, working for Marvel and DC on superheroes including Batman, Superman, and the X-men. He started drawing cartoon strips for the Glasgow underground comic Electric Soup in 1989 and continues to write and design his own short stories. An exhibition of his work was held at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow in 2017.

Producer: Katy Hickman

The sculptor and land artist Richard Long meets the musician, composer and producer Nitin Sawhney.

Richard Long is one of Britain's best known land artists: using natural materials such as soil, rocks, water and vegetation in works sited in rural landscapes. He lives and works in Bristol, the city of his birth and has been shortlisted four times for the Turner Prize.

Nitin Sawhney is a musician, instrumentalist, composer and producer with over 20 studio albums to his name. He writes music for film, videogames, dance and theatre and received the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award in 2017.

Producer: Clare Walker

The writer Joanne Harris meets the composer Howard Goodall.

Joanne Harris worked as a teacher for fifteen years, until the success of her novel Chocolat allowed her to write full time. Chocolat has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone, and became a film starring Juliette Binoche. Since then, Joanne’s work includes 15 more novels, short stories, screenplays and three cookbooks. She has written four books inspired by her long-standing love of Norse mythology.

Howard Goodall’s music has reached millions of listeners through his film and TV scores, which include Blackadder, The Vicar of Dibley and Mr Bean. His choral work Eternal Light: a Requiem has received hundreds of performances around the world, and his West End musicals include The Hired Man and Bend It Like Beckham. He was also England’s first National Ambassador for Singing, encouraging primary age children to sing together.

Producer: Clare Walker

The actor Katherine Parkinson meets the artist Roxana Halls.

Katherine Parkinson is best known for her role as Jen in the Channel 4 sit-com The I T Crowd, which won her a British Comedy Award and a BAFTA. She has also appeared in the long-running drama Doc Martin and the science fiction series Humans. Her most recent stage work was at the National Theatre, where she starred as Judy – an obsessive housewife stuck in the 1950s - in Home, I’m Darling by Laura Wade. The production transfers to the West End next year.

Roxana Halls is a figurative painter who has exhibited across the UK and around the world. Her work has been included five times in the renowned BP Portrait Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and has been selected for the Royal Academy Summer Show. She has won numerous prizes , and next year her art will feature in a touring show reflecting the life of Christine Keeler.

Producer: Clare Walker

The screenwriter Hossein Amini meets the playwright and director Conor McPherson.

Hossein Amini co-created and co-wrote the TV series McMafia, which focused on Russian gangsters and global organised crime. His screenplay for the film The Wings of the Dove, based on the novel by Henry James and starring Helena Bonham Carter, won an Oscar nomination. His other screenwriting credits include Drive, which starred Ryan Gosling.

Conor McPherson's play The Weir, first staged in 1997, was voted one of the most important plays of the 20th century in a National Theatre poll, and has been performed around the world. More recently Bob Dylan's representatives invited him to create a stage-work featuring Dylan songs. The resultant play, Girl from the North Country, was widely acclaimed in London, and opened earlier this year in New York, where the New York Times described McPherson as 'perhaps the finest English-language playwright of his generation'.

Producer Clare Walker

The opera singer Elizabeth Llewellyn meets the film director and screenwriter Amma Asante.

Elizabeth Llewellyn first won wide critical acclaim in 2010, when she starred in Jonathan Miller’s production of La Bohème at English National Opera. Her path to success was unconventional: she gave up singing at the age of 22, and worked as a project manager for an IT company for a decade before gradually returning to music. She has now performed in opera houses around the world, including leading roles in Tosca, Madame Butterfly, and Porgy and Bess.

Amma Asante appeared in Grange Hill as a teenager, and moved on to writing and directing. In 2004 she won the best newcomer BAFTA for her film A Way of Life. She went on to direct Belle, which was inspired by a portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle, a girl born into slavery, but brought up in the house of a British lord. Her film A United Kingdom, starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, opened the London Film Festival in 2016.

Producer Clare Walker

The poet Don Paterson meets the composer Thomas Adès.

Don Paterson received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010, but when he left school at 16 he was aiming for a career in music, and worked as a guitarist and composer for many years. In 1993, his first volume of poems, Nil Nil, won the Forward Prize for the Best First Collection, and since then his work has won every major British award. He is professor of poetry at the University of St Andrews.

By his mid-20s, Thomas Adès had won an international reputation as a composer, notably for his opera Powder Her Face, and his orchestral work Asyla, premiered by Simon Rattle in Birmingham. Since then he has written two more large scale operas, as well as numerous works for orchestra and for smaller groups. He is also a conductor and pianist.

Producer Clare Walker