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...

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...

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...

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...

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. Eva Appelbaum – Butchershop – The...

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 Dragon...

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...

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...

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...

It's the 3rd episode of our Creativity & Football mini-series. Craig Elimeliah is an award-winning ECD at VMLY&R in New York. A native New-Yorker he gets his football analogies from the oval shaped ball rather than the circular one. A couple of months ago, Craig wrote a brave post on Linkedin sharing his experiences with many years of mental heath ups and downs. It's not easy to suddenly go from zero to a hundred in the transparency and vulnerability stakes, but Craig has taken it in...

Dr Zac Seidler knows a thing or two about football. Whilst he's scored many a goal from all over the pitch, his ultimate goal is to reduce the staggering rate of male suicide. In this second episode of our Creativity & Football mini series (psst, yeah the one on men's mental health in the creative industry) Andy and Zac discuss everything from mental health to masculinity and the one secret that just may give men the courage to speak up. Find out more about Zac at...

Welcome to a Never Not Creative podcast mini-series. Creativity and Football. We're talking to men about creativity, football and... who are we kidding? This is an essential listen. A mini-series dedicated to the topic of men's mental health in our industry. We kick-off our first episode with Pete Brennan. Co-founder of Heaps Normal, Electric & Analog and lucky for us, sharer of stories and experiences about his own journey with mental health. We're publishing this series because its...

Asher Oliver didn’t take the traditional ‘qualified’ pathway into the creative industry. After graduation from university with a Business Management degree in 2009, he moved back home and encountered a huge struggle in regards to finding employment. Like many graduates having to rely on casual work meant Asher became a waiter in an Italian restaurant, but he never gave up what had become a passion on the side for animation. While researching opportunities, Asher came across Gary Vaynerchuk...

Blair Enns (author of Win Without Pitching and Pricing Creativity) joins Andy to discuss the challenges that creatives have when it comes to business. How our emotional attachment to work can hinder financial success and why we shy away from the grown-up stuff. We also discuss the pro's and con's of unpaid internships and whether mental health issues are naturally more present in creatives.  Links: Rocket Fuel book Win without pitching Mentally-Healthy research Never Not Creative Thank...

Andy and Sarah are back with another episode on a Never Not International Women’s Day talk with Tom Tapper.   Tom is the co-founder and CEO of B-Corp certified agency, Nice and Serious. In 2008, he co-founded Nice and Serious with a clear purpose: to make creative work the world needs. Since then, he’s exclusively worked with pioneering charities and brands to make creative work that amplifies social and environmental causes. From international brands like IKEA, Unilever, Innocent and Ben...

Join Andy Wright and Sarah Nguyen in another episode to discuss two powerful talks from Never Not International Women’s Day - ‘Until your fear of me isn’t my problem’ with Tanarra Schneider, and ‘Until we flip the question’ with Andy Polaine.   Tanarra is a Managing Director at Accenture Interactive, leading Design in the Midwest. She spills the tea about the outcomes of a system predicated on the fear of women’s success.    Dr. Andy Polaine is a designer, educator, coach and writer who...

Somewhere around 2015, the first of the John genre articles arrived, trumpeting that there are more CEOs named John than women CEOs in their entirety.   In this episode, we have a well-presented talk by Jess Lilley, who focuses on this issue and talks through what we (John) can do about it. Jess is a co-founder at The Open Arms, a creative company that strives to weaponise empathy to help communities thrive. After a near 20-year career as an award-winning writer and creative director in some...

Jane Duru (Verbal Design Director, R/GA) and Sumita Maharaj (Associate Design Director, Re:) join Sarah and Andy to discuss their recent submission to Never Not International Women's Day. From having to bring a 6-pack to a meeting to get a seat at the table and a constant need to over-prove themselves Jane and Sumi share their stories and experiences from the world of advertising and design. You can watch their talk at Never Not International Women's Day. More at Never Not Creative. Thanks...

To make meaningful change in workplaces all around the world, we need to recognise that the gender inequity in our industry and society is a cultural problem. We need to show men what they can’t see all around them - the norm. The norm that has let stereotypes rule and anyone but a privileged white male suffer.  Join this discussion with Daniele Fiandaca and Deborah Rey-Burns. By his own admission, Daniele is the very definition of privilege - white, male, straight, middle class and...

International Women’s Day 2021 has passed. But this year, we're not going back to business as usual. As far as we're concerned, it will always be Never Not International Women’s Day until all women including women of colour, women with disabilities, and queer or trans women, stop being penalised for being women.  This new season of the podcast highlights our Never Not International Women's Day initiative. A mind-changing, bias-ridding, downright mutinous loop of ideas and musings from women...

Dr Sally Fitzpatrick is a Clinical Psychologist and the Acting Program Manager, Mental Health and Research at Everymind, our partners in the Mentally-Healthy research study. In this episode she’s joined by Author and Creative, Alex Wadelton to tackle community questions about finding meaning and purpose through work, disclosing mental health challenges, taking better care of contractors and freelancers and managing expectations about working hours with your boss.  You can also watch at...

Victoria Davies has spent years as a leader in the advertising industry.  Now though, Victoria has swapped running some of the most successful agencies in London and New York to start an artificial intelligence business to nudge leaders into being better. This episode is recorded in partnership with Gabberish – Creative Therapy For Creative Minds. An online magazine for our industry. Issue 21 (out on 15th December) is edited by Never Not Creative's Andy Wright and this interview forms part of...

After years of learning in the agency business, championing and doubling-down on a project-based model, Trevor Hubbard is on a mission to wipe out failure. The one thing standing in his way? Clarity, or lack of it. Having co-founded, and then bought outright, his agency Butchershop in California, Trevor's hit on a formula for a successful business, projects and client relationships. The Clarity Project. A concept that introduces us to the pre-mortem (over the post-mortem) and a way of looking...

Kelly Mackenzie founded White Bear in 2014. Since then it's gone from strength to strength. No surprise really, as when we caught up with Kelly it was clear that she doesn't let much stand in her way. We chat about the challenges that women in the creative industry can face in rising to the top and how even, for all designers, this industry can sometimes feel like an extreme sport. Kelly's story of how they continued to grow during the pandemic is also a great case study on how to grow a...