Creative Forces Podcast

In 2010 Oliver Jones founded Deer Shed Festival, a family-focused music, arts and science weekend camping festival in North Yorkshire, with his wife Kate. Since then, it’s gone on to become one of the best family-friendly festivals in the UK and celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. Oliver spent more than a decade working in… Read More CFP #40 – Oliver Jones

Andrew McMillan is a poet and lecturer in creative writing. His debut collection, physical, published in 2015, won a host of prizes and was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award. Earlier this year, it was voted one of the top 25 poetry books of the past 25 years by the… Read More CFP #39 – Andrew McMillan

Joanne Harris is the author of more than a dozen novels, most famously Chocolat, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Born in Barnsley, Joanne started writing at an early age and worked as a teacher for over a decade before the success of Chocolat allowed her to become… Read More CFP #38 – Joanne Harris

John Nicholson is a football writer, novelist and web entrepreneur. Born in Hull and raised in Stockton-on-Tees, John has enjoyed a wide-ranging career which includes setting up the online t-shirt businesses DJTees & TShirts365, submitting a weekly column for Football365 for almost two decades, and writing 16 novels. His 2010 book We Ate All The… Read More CFP #37 – John Nicholson

Matthew Cope is a magician and magic teacher who performs under the name Matthew J Magic. Growing up in Yorkshire, Matthew started juggling at the age of 10, performing magic as a street entertainer at 14 and was playing all over the country as a magical illusion act just a year later. Now, after a… Read More CFP #36 – Matthew Cope

Rebecca Swift is global head of creative insights at the world-renowned photo agency Getty Images. Since joining the photography industry over 20 years ago, Rebecca has pioneered the use of analytics to find out why we are attracted to certain images rather than others, and been instrumental in ensuring Getty’s stock photographs portray women and… Read More CFP #35 – Rebecca Swift

Rahaf Harfoush is a best-selling author who focuses on the impact of digital technologies on society and working life. Born in Syria, Rahaf grew up in Canada and became fascinated by digital technology as a teenager, particularly social media and blogging. Her first book, Yes We Did: An Insider’s Look at How Social Media Built… Read More CFP #34 – Rahaf Harfoush

Emma Kennedy is a best -selling author, TV writer, actor and presenter. After growing up in Stevenage and Hitchen then studying at Oxford University, where she met and performed with comedians Richard Herring and Stewart Lee, Emma spent three years as a solicitor before quitting to become a full-time writer. Since then she’s written for… Read More CFP #33 – Emma Kennedy

Greig Johnson is a comedy writer, performer, musician and filmmaker. His comic creations include Belgian action star Lunge Dolphin, music production guru Woody Brown and northern poet Brian McMorley, and he has recently appeared in BBC Two’s The Mash Report and CBBC’s Class Dismissed. After growing up in Harrogate, Greig studied and then went onto… Read More CFP #32 – Greig Johnson

Ian McMillan is a well-renowned and much-loved poet, journalist, playwright, and broadcaster. Known as ‘the bard of Barnsley’, his warmth, humour and way with words shine through in his books, regular TV and radio appearances, and frequent tweets. Still resident in his native South Yorkshire, he’s also held the position of poet-in-residence for a wide… Read More CFP #31 – Ian McMillan

Heather Greenwood is a senior executive at film and TV production company Fulwell 73, whose documentary production credits include the smash hit about the return of Bros, After The Screaming Stops, Sunderland Till I Die and I Am Bolt. After growing up in a small village in Lincolnshire she and her family moved to Birmingham… Read More CFP #30 – Heather Greenwood

Martin Newman is an internationally-renowned expert on customer experience and e-commerce who has been involved in multi-channel retailing for over 30 years. After growing up in Glasgow and starting out working for the family firm he went on to hold senior positions at Ted Baker, Harrods, Burberry, Pentland brands and Intersport before founding the multi-national… Read More CFP #29 – Martin Newman

Sulene Fleming is a singer/songwriter from Bradford. After starting out singing in competitions as a teenager she’s gone on to appear on countless sessions for all sorts of artists and producers – including Nowegian duo Stargate – and front funk and soul bands like The Brand New Heavies, The New Mastersounds and The Fantastics. In… Read More CFP #28 – Sulene Fleming

Diane Brown is the founder and president of RxArt, a non-profit organisation which installs contemporary artwork in hospitals, particularly those that treat children. Now based in New York, Diane grew up in Ohio and originally started out in medicine before pursuing her lifelong passion for art, eventually running successful galleries in both Washington and New… Read More CFP #27 – Diane Brown

Tony Husband’s brilliant and funny cartoons are familiar to millions of people in the UK and beyond, thanks to regular appearances in publications like Private Eye, The Times, Punch, Playboy and many others over the last four decades. In that time he’s won numerous major awards, including the Pont Award for depicting the British way… Read More CFP #26 – Tony Husband

Portia Jones is the creator of the travel and lifestyle blog Pip and the City. After growing up in South Wales with a passion for travel, Portia went on the first of many solo trips abroad as a teenager. More than ten years of extensive travelling later she launched her blog and has since been… Read More CFP #25 – Portia Jones

In a special podcast looking back at some of the highlights from Creative Forces episodes 11 to 18, record producer Steve Levine talks about his friendship with Boy George, technology evangelist Dr Sue Black remembers what she did in the first few years after leaving home at 16, drummer Simon Allen explains how his band,… Read More CFP #24 – Creative inspiration part three

Nick Johnson is a pioneer of property development and urban regeneration. After starting out as a surveyor he went on to become a director of the hugely successful city centre regeneration specialists Urban Splash, chair of Marketing Manchester and a teacher at Yale. In 2011, though, he went into “self-imposed exile”, leaving those and several other… Read More CFP #23 – Nick Johnson

Julian Richer is one of the UK’s most successful high-street retailers. After buying and selling his first piece of hi-fi equipment for a profit at the age of 14, he opened his first Richer Sounds store in London just five years later. Four decades on that store has grown into a nationwide chain of more… Read More CFP #22 – Julian Richer

Priya Lakhani is the founder and chief executive of the cloud-based education platform CENTURY. After training as a lawyer, Priya quit the legal profession in 2008 to set up the Indian cooking sauces brand Masala Masala and within weeks her products were being stocked in major retailers including Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Waitrose. She also set… Read More CFP #21 – Priya Lakhani