In our last episode for this season, we took a trip to the seaside town of Bangor, Northern Ireland, to meet up with 21 year old magician and mentalist, Joel Mawhinney.

Graeme first saw Joel perform at a magic night in Belfast’s Black Box when he was just 16, and since leaving school, has been forging a full-time career as a creator and performer of magic. In this show, we delve into how Joel has been pursuing this unusual pathway in the age of Instagram and Facebook.

Small Town Big Dreams is presented by Karishma Kursurkar of Karishma’s World and Graeme Watson of The Infinite Jest, and was created by Karishma, Graeme and Christine James of Blick Shared Studios.

We’ll be back in the Autumn with 8 more episodes, so please follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, subscribe on your favourite podcast platform, and if you've enjoyed the first season, please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts from.

In this episode we interview Jane Larmour - co-founder of architectural firm Arigho Larmour Wheeler - in her stylish Belfast studio just off the Lisburn Road. With offices in Belfast and Dublin, Arigho Larmour Wheeler are a great example of collaboration and teamwork and Jane chats to us about how to make long distance business work.

Jane is passionate about heritage, conservation, sustainability and design education and she has some great tips and advice for design students and startups. We also talk about architecture as a perfect example of user-led design as well as the exciting but challenging process of designing a building.

A bonus episode recorded live with guests at Digital DNA in Belfast's St George's Market on 19th and 20th June 2018, in conjunction with Startacus, the go-to space for start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Over the two days, Karishma spoke with delegates from a whole range digital start-up companies and entrepreneurs.

Listen for wisdom and advice from Fab Lab Belfast, Excalibur Press, Pitchbooker, Pukket, Big Pixel Creative, Bright Ideas, Blue Sona, Clever Books, Revolve Comics, Continually, Bookaxe, and even Joanne Jarjue from Season 5 of the Apprentice (UK).

For our 6th episode, we interviewed Rebekah Johanson of minimal jewellery and accessories company Lines & Current. Lines & Current are known for their beautiful clean lines and aesthetic but they also have a social side to their company - they donate 10% of their profits to worthy causes all around the world. The company is run by both Rebekah and her husband Jon. Jon manages business strategy and commerce whilst Rebekah works on product design and brand. We asked Rebekah to tell us her best tips on how to find your Instagram style - and then maintain it too! We also chatted about work-life balance which can be a real struggle if you're an entrepreneur and are also raising a family - Rebekah's so chilled, we wanted to know her secrets!

For this episode, we peeked behind the red door at No. 25 Donegal Street in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter and caught up with Enter Yes™ - an animation, VR, motion graphics, VFX and gaming studio.

With a passion for storytelling, Enter Yes™ have created beautiful independent work as well as worked with high profile clients including BBC, HBO, Disney and Sony. We talked about the balance of creativity and commerce when running a business in the creative sector and how to scale up, become internationally renowned and build relationships with clients abroad.

Teamwork is an important part of the Enter Yes™ ethos. We tried to get to the bottom of how to maintain good work-life balance and your friendships and relationships at work as well as how to stay on top of it all.

On 27 March 2018, we launched the Small Town Big Dreams podcast with a live podcast event hosted at the Black Box venue in Belfast.

We were joined by four guests for a live interview and Q&A. They were: Simon and Lorna Mills from TACA, a photography and film studio specialising in documenting the creative process; Vicky Potts from Whitepot Studios, a game development and creative media studio based in Belfast; and finally, we were joined by a co-founder of the online ticketing platform Get Invited and 'location-independent' entrepreneur Kyle Gawley.

In this episode, Part 2, you can hear the Q&A, and in Part 1, the main interviews, available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

This live event was kindly sponsored by the Department of Communities as part of Creativity Month NI, and produced in associated with Blick Shared Studios.

On 27 March 2018, we launched the Small Town Big Dreams podcast with a live podcast event hosted at the Black Box venue in Belfast.

We were joined by four guests for a live interview and Q&A. They were: Simon and Lorna Mills from TACA, a photography and film studio specialising in documenting the creative process; Vicky Potts from Whitepot Studios, a game development and creative media studio based in Belfast; and finally, we were joined by a co-founder of the online ticketing platform Get Invited and 'location-independent' entrepreneur Kyle Gawley.

In this episode, Part 1 you can hear the interview, and in Part 2, the Q&A, available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

This live event was kindly sponsored by the Department of Communities as part of Creativity Month NI, and produced in associated with Blick Shared Studios.

In this episode we interview Wendy Ward of Wendy Ward Design in her ceramics studio on the family farm in Hillsborough. Wendy creates products that combine two seemingly different areas of design - ceramics and lighting.

She’s had international acclaim and recently collaborated on a special project creating ceramic products in partnership with Belleek Pottery to mark their 160th anniversary. In this interview we discussed what it takes to create products in an area of design associated with heritage and set up a great contemporary business.

We also chatted about the convergence of craft and tech and how the 21st century ceramicist works. From mould to kiln to stamp, Wendy was kind enough to show us her creative process in her studio.

In this episode, we chat with William Barr from video games company Billygoat Entertainment in the company’s offices on the Lisburn Road. William’s love of videogames and animation from a young age led him to set up the company in 2010.

Billygoat have gone on to build games including adventure-led empire-inspired Her Majesty’s Spiffing and are currently developing Supermarket Shriek in which a boy and his goat traverse a supermarket. In this interview, we heard about William’s journey from boy to startup to an award-winning games company and the challenges of setting up shop in the games industry.

We asked him about the inspiration behind Billygoat’s games, being a socially awkward networker, the joy of joyless living and the thing he is looking forward to the most at the Games Development Conference in San Francisco - biting into a juicy Impossible Burger.

In this episode, Graeme tracked down writer, theatre and film-director Aislínn Clarke to her brand new office at Queen’s University Belfast, where she has just been appointed as a lecturer in scriptwriting with the Séamus Heaney Centre.

A graduate of the course that she now lectures on, Aislinn grew up on the border between the North and South of Ireland, and now lives in the quaint seaside town of Whitehead on the North Coast of Co. Antrim. Beginning a media career from when she graduated from a Film Studies degree in 2004, Aislínn has pursued her passion for telling stories with talent and tenacity, across TV, theatre, radio, and now film, with her first feature – The Devil’s Doorway – due to be released in 2018.

In this interview, Graeme uncovers how Aislinn’s early life created a love for telling stories, and how she manages to balance creative integrity and personal happiness with success and opportunity, and the joys of living by the sea.