Creative Chit Chat - Dundee

Annie is Project Coordinator for UNESCO Dundee City of Design team & Place Partnership Programme. You may know her from events such as the Dundee Design Festival. We talk about how she came to apply for the roles she's in now and why her career has led her into wearing lots of different hats. Little known fact, she used to do the train announcements at Inverness station before it all got automated. Annie's real creative passion started around theatre production and performances. We get into when her transition happened between creating her own work and facilitating that of others. Moving into more events based stuff I ask Annie where she thinks her expertise lies and she gave a brilliantly simple analogy. She drives a crazy bus and has the end destination in sight knowing where she needs to go. Her skill is getting people to jump on her crazy bus and go on a journey with her. I'm pretty sure that applied to both of the Dundee Design Festivals where Annie was a pivotal part of the team making sure everything

Composer and sound designer Rachel Simpson joins me this week to talk about her day job working at games company Outplay Entertainment, some of her amazing musical work and cycling. I think Rachel must be one of the most modest guests I’ve ever had on and she did take a bit of encouragement to get her in front of the mic. It was specified that Fred the dog had to be present for moral support. So I suppose Rachel is also the first guest with a rider! Rachel is responsible for creating all the sounds and music for all of Outplay’s games. Which is a massive task. We get into how that process works and how you go about creating weird and wonderful noises. We then move on to talk about her musical career in collaboration with loads of amazing artists. We also touch on a particularly memorable gig where she ended up improvising with a guy and his rape alarm. Rachel’s Website - http://www.rachelsimpsonsound.com/ Outplay - https://outplay.com/ Zoom h6n - https://www.zoom-na.com/products/field-video-recording/

On this week is Ali McGill an accountant and experience designer. You wouldn’t necessarily put the two together. Ali talks about making a start in his career training as a traditional accountant. Over the years of running businesses and being responsible for profit and loss sheets he started to see the real value of putting yourself in your customers shoes. Using design tools and methodologies to craft memorable experiences for your customers. He talks about how his daughter introduced him to Service Design, with the influence of Mike Press and how Pecha Kucha nights and other events eventually drew him down to Dundee where he became Head of Enterprise and Entrepreneurial strategy at Dundee University. A bit of a long title and one that has certain prerequisites. We talk about the stigmas attached to the word ‘entrepreneur’ and the differences between an ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘designer’. Ali has started his own podcast under Ashton McGill called Never Settle where he speaks to people doing things differently and

This week’s podcast is the announcement that Fleet Collective will be closing its doors. Donna Holford Lovell joins me to chat through starting Fleet with Lyall Bruce. We talk about the journey she’s been on and how the co-working space has grown and developed over time. We then finish up with talking about the reasons behind closing the collective. Afterwards you’ll about what Fleet meant to the people who were part of the collective and what they’re going on to do next. Here’s the official statement on the closure: “After 4 years of procrastination and 6 months of hard graft Fleet Collective opened its doors in Dundee. The idea was to create a co-working space that brought together freelancers, researchers, and businesses. We had affordable and flexible desk space for hire and great ambitions to reform the way freelancers worked with the city. The idea was to foster a collaborative environment where creative folk could work on their own or work with others on larger projects that would not normally be av

Hayley is a Dundee born fashion designer with clients that include Little Mix, The Saturdays and Pixie Lot. We talk about how she got into the industry and established her clothing label H.S. It was clear from chatting to Hayley that style and appearance have been key considerations for her from a really early age. Sitting round the kitchen table with her Gran sewing clothes for her barbies and passing comment over strangers appearances in the street. I don’t think I’ve had someone on the podcast who has been so determined and driven towards a single goal from as early as they can remember. As I’ve found with a lot of the creatives on the podcast, Hayley didn’t particularly get on well with educational institutions. Even at DJCAD she struggled to see how she fitted within the textiles course when all she really wanted to create were clothing lines. Before finishing at art school she found herself out in the Hollywood Hills working for Jeremy Scott and brushing shoulders with a few celebrities. This experie

Shahbaz Majeed is my guest this week and he is an amazing photographer based in Dundee, who brings landscapes to life from the air. If you haven’t heard of him already, chances are you will have seen his work. Shahbaz has had his photos used and featured in a lot of places as well as picking up a few awards along the way. Probably the most fascinating story is how he got his photo on Scotland’s first polymer note. Those blue plastic Clydesdale fivers feature his photograph of the Forth Road Bridge. He told me that there are a lot of established photographers that think he’s a jammy git! It’s clear that Shahbaz just loves harsh mountainous landscapes from his back catalogue and because of his list of places he wants to tick off his list. They’re all brutally cold but I imagine completely spectacular. We spend a bit of time geeking out about his set up and kit but I was a little surprised to hear his take on drones. At the moment he only uses them for fun and doesn’t see them affecting commercial aerial land

Hazel runs service design agency Open Change along with Mike Press and has spent a significant part of her career in education but according to her that might have been a little too long. She started out at Edinburgh University with her first degree but after 5 years working she realised that art school was calling. Hazel found herself in jewellery and metal work apparently attracted by the materials and the naked flames! I find it really strange that the smallest things can highly influence our career paths. Logically we should be looking to gain transferrable skills that will be needed in the future in order to make a living. Maybe high school teachers aren’t best placed to be advising or maybe we should be doing more education around career paths. A real trend of Hazel’s early career is proving people wrong when they say she can’t do something. An amazing attitude to have and there’s a real drive that you can see throughout everything she does. We first met at DJCAD when she began teaching design stud

The chefs from The Newport Restaurant, Jamie Scott and Tasso Neofitos, join me this week to talk about their Masterchef experiences, getting inspired for new menus and their guilty pleasure. Jamie and Tasso came in for a chat about how they got into cooking and when their passion really began. They met at Dundee’s Byzantium restaurant and then went on to work at Rocco in St Andrews together. From there Jamie tells the story of the atmosphere and dynamic of a busy kitchen and how his Masterchef journey began. He also unveils a few behind the scenes mishaps and editing decisions that weren’t exactly ideal on his journey to winning the competition. It’s clear from our chat that the guys had the desire to shape something of their own from pretty early on and that idea was what became the Newport. Before that they created a series of pop ups using the exposure of Jamie’s Masterchef success as a springboard. They were able to test the appetite (sorry, unintentional pun) of people in Dundee and Angus for their

After a few requests and to celebrate the 50th episode of the podcast I’ve done an episode of my very own. I’ve got to thank Lyall Bruce for volunteering to take the role of host for the episode and Sam Gonçalves for the editing. I was also told I would not have editing rights over the episode. As I write this and the file uploads to soundcloud I’ve no idea what made the edit or what I said in the episode. All I can hope is that I don’t repeat all the things I’ve said over the last year. I now know the fear of the unknown you have as a guest on the podcast. After the episode is recorded I instantly felt like I didn’t get to say everything and worried about what I actually said, which I’m assured is how everyone feels. So thank you to all my previous guests for having faith and helping make the podcast what it is today. Hopefully it’ll still be here in 50 episodes time and I’ll be finding something more extravagant to celebrate. Well here goes nothing... hope you enjoy it. Revamp of the Fleet Collective st

After working pretty much all over Scotland with a load of amazing museums Scott is now general manager at Hospitalfield House in Arbroath.  He’s pretty much lived in every city in Scotland making his way around some amazing and prestigious galleries and museums curating their collections. Now at Hospitalfield House Scott is part of a wider team helping make everything up there happen. From tours to events and workshops to artist shows and collaborative working there's loads going on. The house itself is a 13th century hospital that then became the UK's first art school. I'm really not going to do it justice by describing it so go check out their website to see some photos. It has some amazing architectural features, staircases and rooms filled with beautiful and historical objects. Everything seems to have a story and Scott is a fountain of knowledge even though he's only been there a few years. We did the recordings of this episode and last week's with Jamie Simpson, in the library and putting my coffee do

The only coffee roaster in Angus, Jamie is  based in Arbroath and is 1 third of Sacred Grounds coffee company, creating delicious roasts ready to grind up and enjoy. We open up with a really interesting conversation about identity in relation to where you are from. It’s a strange one that I always ponder, am I now from Dundee? Or do I default to where I grew up just outside Edinburgh? It’s always a tricky on but I think it depends on who you’re speaking too and the place that you identify more with. For me that’s Dundee now. There’s 2 real strands in Jamie’s life music and coffee. Although we don’t get much time to chat about the music side of it you can hear some more of the story during Layla Brown’s episode talking about their band Lunan Bay. Jamie talks about how his love affair with coffee began and grew with several home roasters made out of little popcorn machines. We also got onto the concept of the ‘hipster’ and Jamie does confess that he adheres to some of the stereotypes. I think what this time

Artist, printmaker and technician at the DCA print studio, amongst a few other things. He was one of the founders of Dundee Print Collective and has been part of many amazing projects since including print city. Scott chats about his first experience coming to Dundee from Sunderland and applying to art school with his big A1 portfolio in tow. Coming over the Tay on the train is always picturesque and it seems to have had an impact on Scott’s live as Dundee keeps drawing him back. We go on to discuss his time at art school studying illustration and exploring various printing methods. Although screen printing would go on to feature heavily in his career Scott says that he did very little of it at art school. It was more a technique that the graphic design students were using rather than the illustrators. After leaving art school Scott went off travelling but ended up back in Dundee and at the newly opened DCA. In the print studio he started to get to grips with all the kit helped by funding from the Scottish

Gemma is a dancer, choreographer and creative producer who trained under one of Kayne West's dancers and now runs The Artifact a company creating performance, directing movement producing arts events and research. Gemma briefly dives in to the history of Hip-Hop culture and the 5/6 pillars that make it up. She also has an amazing tree based analogy for the development and evolution of the culture which is genius. Gemma has already released 2 ebooks that are available here. There’s still 4 to come in the series and her plan is to publish a big meaty printed book of all 6 once the series is complete. We also get into how the perception of Hip Hop is has been massively skewed by commercial Hip Hop music. Rappers with derogatory and discriminatory lyrics throwing money around is a facet that has come from Hip Hop culture but it only represents a tiny minority of it. It also doesn’t represent the core values of the movement. Gemma's Twitter - https://twitter.com/ArtifactTweets The artifact - www.theartifact.or

Russell is currently doing a PhD on community renewable energy systems and works from Fleet Collective. We chat about his journey to Dundee and how he created Dundee’s first street art trail Open/Close. Russell admits himself that he’s not very ‘creative’ but he enjoys facilitating others creativity and making projects happen. The co-working environment in Fleet Collective really spurred him on to start the Open/Close project and we had the people here to help him make it happen. Backed by funding from the Place Partnership and the Cultural Tourism Fund Russell commissioned 18 artists to paint doors all around the city centre. Not on the high street or the beaten track but down the amazing hidden alleyways and closes of Dundee. I was involved in helping to create the trail, the printed maps and the online presence to allow the project to flourish. It’s actually astounding the amount Russell managed to achieve in such a short space of time and how the trail is moving towards self-sufficiency. Russell is

This week features the young people of Dundee answering questions loosely based on the theme future perfect. I organised it with Andy Robertson who runs the creative programme at the Hot Chocolate Trust based at the Steeple Church in Dundee's city centre. Over the course of 3 weeks we had various young people come in to the recording room and spend 2-3minutes answering a question. Once they had answered they could create their own question for someone else to answer. It's a great format that worked previously at the design festival and I'm tempted to say it worked even better with young people. They did need a bit of prodding here and there but the conversations we had were phenomenal. Such a diverse range of topics and we get into some deep and dark areas. I'm really excited to put this out and I hope you enjoy it. Hot Chocolate is a youth work charity based in Dundee. They use creative approaches to engage, build relationships, and grow community with the young people who hang out in the city centre, provi

This week it's a collaboration between the Beans Podcast and Creative Chit Chat for a roundtable all about story telling. We discuss the landscape of story telling today and get into some of our favourite storytellers. We then go off into an interesting debate over positive discrimination in storytelling and whether we should be consuming the content of disgraced celebrities. It was an absolute pleasure to have Erin, Sam and Valerie on the podcast and if you haven't caught The Beans yet then go do it now: https://www.thebeanspodcast.com Valerie Glen Mullen - https://twitter.com/v_glenmullen Valerie’s website - http://www.valerieglenmullen.com/ Sam Gonçalves - https://twitter.com/SidlingBears Feature content at Creative Dundee - https://creativedundee.com/features/ Erin Farley - https://twitter.com/aliasmacalias Brandon Sanderson - https://brandonsanderson.com/ Louis Theroux - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05qzmgd Lois McMaster Bujold - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_McMaster_Bujold Vorkosigan S

Claire’s email - claire@creativedundee.com Creative Dundee - http://creativedundee.com Dundee Wearable Arts - http://www.dundeewearableart.com/ Creative Industries Strategy - http://dundeecreates.com Creative Dundee’s 99 things to see and do guide - http://creativedundee.com/2017/05/a-brand-new-99-things-to-see-and-do-in-dundee/ Claire’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/byricohet

Kevin is a 4th year product design student with a real understanding of aesthetic and form. During the episode we talk about what Kevin’s plans for the future post graduation. Basically he wants to stay if he can. Meaning if there are the right conditions to support his own product design practice or an attractive enough position at a company. Again and again this issue comes up of the reluctant leavers. We need to have a creative infrastructure that allows graduates to start their own businesses and then sustain them. This is all outlined in Dundee’s Creative Industries Strategy. It launched last week and if you haven’t read it, go do it now. http://dundeecreates.com It’s an amazing piece of work facilitated by creative Dundee. They created the strategy through a series of focus groups and discussions with creatives in the city and industry stakeholders. The outcome is a strategy with clear goals, directions and aims that are actionable. Back to the episode though: Kevin gives a very honest account of h

John runs a private letterpress studio up in Coupar Angus making small and beautiful print runs. To tell you how I first met John I need to introduce Kevin Sinclair, a 4th year Product Design student and DJCAD. Kevin got in touch with me last year to go for a coffee and a chat. We left the meeting on the terms that we could potentially work on a project together if the right brief or opportunity arose. This summer Kevin got back in touch saying that he’s been up in Coupar Angus doing some letterpress printing with John and that I should come up and meet him. I duly went up and we had a 3 hour chat about art, design, printing and everything in between. I saw the logical conclusion to the first meet up that I should have both of the guys on the podcast and then we should collaborate to create a couple of prints. This week’s episode is my conversation with John. I think we talked for somewhere between 2 and 2.5 hours. It was a bit of a nightmare to edit but I just didn’t want to cut John off as he’s a fo

Originally from Barcelona, Joan is an independent choreographer based in Dundee. He has worked for fourteen years as a dancer, teacher and rehearsal director in companies across Europe, including Scottish Dance Theatre, the Ballet of the Graz Opera (Austria), the company of the Choreographic Centre of Valencia, and Ballet Carmen Roche (Madrid). He now runs his own company called Joan Clevillé Dance based in Dundee. Personally I have very little experience or knowledge of performative dance and if I’m honest, I was pretty nervous going into the recording. I feel particularly uncomfortable talking about subjects I have little knowledge of. Luckily it turned out to be one the most relaxed and enjoyable conversations I think I’ve ever had on the podcast. Joan talks beautifully about his work and the thinking behind his productions and I was surprised in parallels I could draw from his design process. We took a pretty deep dive into how Joan creates his work and how performances evolve over time. ‘Sketching’ in