Ceri Hand

Extraordinary Creatives

#1 in Visual Arts · 🇮🇳 #4 in Visual Arts · 🇬🇧

About the show

Extraordinary Creatives: The Premier Art Podcast Welcome to the Extraordinary Creatives podcast, your gateway to the world of exceptional artists and creative leaders who have defied the odds to make a significant impact in the arts and beyond. Hosted by Ceri Hand, creative coach, curator, and seasoned arts and business insider, this podcast offers a wealth of insights into art and creativity through in-depth interviews. Ceri’s extensive experience and genuine passion for the arts make every episode a treasure trove of inspiration and practical advice. At the heart of Extraordinary Creatives is the belief that creativity is essential for success. However, it is the courage, confidence, and resilience to dare to be different that truly transforms the world. With her warm, playful, and straight-talking style, Ceri delves into the ideas, processes, mindsets, victories, and challenges of trailblazers who have paved the way in the arts. Ceri’s mission is to support 100,000 artists and arts leaders by 2025 by providing exclusive access to information, inspiration, and expertise. Discover the transformative power of art with Extraordinary Creatives. Tune in and follow so you don’t miss an episode!

Newest episodes

The Art Career Questions Nobody Teaches You to Answer

Nov 12, 2026 1 hr 4 min

Hello and welcome to a slightly different episode of Extraordinary Creatives. Today, I'm inviting you behind the scenes of my coaching membership, to listen in on one of our live Art Surgery sessions, where artists bring me the questions, dilemmas, and decisions they're wrestling with in their creative lives. We cover everything from approaching galleries and finding mentors to selling work, building your website, collaborating with brands, and keeping your practice going when your health is unpredictable. Members submit questions in advance and pop them into the live chat, so it's a very spontaneous conversation. And of course, depending on the circumstances, I might approach some of these questions differently on another day. Our Art Surgeries usually last 30 minutes, although we've been doing a few longer ones recently to welcome new members. I hope you find something useful here, perhaps an answer to a question you've been sitting with yourself. And if you'd like to bring your own questions and get support with your creative practice every week, I'd love you to join us inside the membership. You'll find the link in the show notes, or you can visit https://cerihand.com/membership/. Right, let's get into it. KEY TAKEAWAYS Get your website live. Start with 12 strong works, provide clear details and a little context about each series. Keep unseen work back for opportunities that need a first. Time is precious, so think carefully about where you're investing it. Is it generating feedback, dialogue, advocates, and opportunities for your work? Or is it just making you feel busy? When approaching commercial galleries, there are lots of steps before you make an ask. Visit the shows, follow the artists, go to openings and talks, and get to know the gallery's ecosystem. Build relationships first. Choose a mentor with care. Be clear about what you want to learn, why they're right and what you'll put into practice. Mentoring is reciprocal: value their time,...

How Time Reveals New Meaning in the Work We Make with Jeremy Liebman

Nov 9, 2026 1 hr 27 min

As a child, Jeremy Liebman hated having his photograph taken by his dad. He and his twin brother were forever being asked to sit still while their father tested his camera and lighting. Today, Jeremy photographs some of the world's most recognisable faces, including Walton Goggins and Stellan Skarsgård. But it's his deeply personal book Coincidence that brings us to the heart of this conversation. Through photographs of his young children and his father, who was living with Alzheimer's, Jeremy explores memory, love and what happens when language can't quite capture our experience of the world. We talk about finding your own creative voice, why being an introvert can be a strength, the importance of genuinely seeing another person, and why building a creative career takes far longer than most of us imagine. I'm Ceri Hand, this is Extraordinary Creatives, and my guest today is photographer Jeremy Liebman. KEY TAKEAWAYS You don’t have to adopt somebody else’s way of working. If you’re introverted, you can build a practice around observation and quiet attention. Treat failed attempts as useful information. Look honestly at what isn’t working, ask why, and experiment with angle, material, light, or timing; intuition grows through repetition. Leave room for the person or subject to surprise you. A plan is useful but stay responsive rather than forging ahead with a fixed idea of what the image should be. Trusted outside eyes can reveal connections you couldn’t see while making the work. A creative career rarely unfolds to schedule. Keep following your curiosity through quieter periods and changing circumstances; meaningful work can take years to find its form. BEST MOMENTS “I'm getting a sense that you developed the experience and the skill set ….like a toolkit or a toolbox that you could dip in and out of according to what the context and the people and the location was requiring.” “My hope is that I can take a picture of them performing a role rather than ta...

How to Talk About Personal or Vulnerable Work

Nov 5, 2026 21 min

If you're making work that comes from somewhere deeply personal, how much do you actually have to tell people about where it came from? I've been thinking about this because it's something that comes up quite often when I'm working with artists. Perhaps you've been through a bereavement, an illness, a relationship ending, a difficult childhood, or something else that has affected you profoundly. Inevitably, that experience has found its way into the studio. Then you get to the point where the work has to leave the studio. You need to write about it. Somebody asks you about it in a studio visit. You're writing your About page or preparing for an artist talk and suddenly there's this question: how much do I say? I think that's a really interesting question because there's a difference between something being important to the work and thinking you have to explain it publicly. Some artists are extraordinarily open about their lives. For those artists, that degree of revelation became part of their language. You may want to do that too, or you may want to say a lot less about your experiences. This episode will help you to get the balance right, for you. KEY TAKEAWAYS Think about boundaries and what you want to share before you publish. Once something is part of your public story, people will ask about it. What feels right to share mid-processing may not feel right in five or ten years. Give people enough context to open the door, then stop. Think less about how brave you ought to be. Think more about what information genuinely helps somebody meet the work. Sometimes explaining everything can actually make the work smaller. The story can also follow you for years. BEST MOMENTS "The person looking at the work doesn't necessarily need the details of what happened, who it happened to, when it happened or what you went through. You get to decide where that boundary sits." "We sometimes confuse honesty with disclosure. “Making vulnerable work doesn't mean you hav...

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All episodes

The newest 50 of 260 episodes

The Art Career Questions Nobody Teaches You to Answer

Nov 12, 2026 1 hr 4 min

How Time Reveals New Meaning in the Work We Make with Jeremy Liebman

Nov 9, 2026 1 hr 27 min

How to Talk About Personal or Vulnerable Work

Nov 5, 2026 21 min

Sustain the Thing That Sustains You: Finding Your People, Backing Your Work and Building an Art Career with Robin F. Williams

Nov 2, 2026 1 hr 15 min

What happens when you expect your art to become your entire “existential dread receptacle”? That brilliant phrase comes from my guest today, Robin F. Williams, and it opens up a conversation I think a lot of artists need to hear about how you protect the creative practice that gives your life meaning without asking it to do absolutely everything for you. Robin is a Brooklyn-based painter whose extraordinary work moves between art history, horror, gender, technology, and our strange relationship with AI. Their work is held in The Brooklyn Museum, ICA Miami and at the Colombus Museum of Art. We spoke just before Act Natural, Robin´s first UK solo exhibition, opened at No.9 Cork Street in London, where the new paintings move from Siri and language models to mermaids, Terminator 2, and Renaissance painting. and the increasingly slippery question of what we even mean by “natural.” We also get underneath their career: getting stuck, the group of women artists who helped Robin keep going, what nearly twenty years with P·P·O·W has taught them about gallery relationships, and why success comes down to sustaining the thing that sustains you. KEY TAKEAWAYS Don't ask your art to carry everything. Painting can't be your only outlet for anxiety, so build other practices around it: sleep, exercise, writing, even playing a guitar badly. These release valves keep your main practice vital and light. Let ideas tell you their size. Make studies, like Robin's gouaches, and live with them. If an idea keeps asking questions, it may deserve a big painting; if not, it's finished at that scale. Bigger isn't always more meaningful. Find your people. A trusted crit group offers honest feedback, moral support, and permission to follow your instinct. Don't wait for an invitation: gather a few friends and one willing organiser and start your own. Believe in your work first. A gallery can give you runway, but it can't supply your confidence. Learn the business side, but don't let it...

How Your Creative Obsessions Can Help You Find Your People

Oct 29, 2026 17 min

I want you to think about somebody whose opinion of your work really matters to you. Perhaps it's a curator you've admired for years, an artist whose practice you find fascinating, a gallery director you'd love to work with or somebody who has introduced you to extraordinary art. Now imagine you have the opportunity to spend an hour with them. What would you actually want to talk about? I ask because I think artists can spend an enormous amount of time pursuing opportunities without always considering whether they're connecting with the right people. And having spent much of my working life selecting exhibitions, working with artists, and making decisions about which projects to support, I know how much our individual interests shape those decisions. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been exploring how we develop our own artistic point of view: first looking at when research becomes art, and last week inviting you to choose ten artworks that make you feel glad to be alive and consider what those encounters might reveal about the kind of work you want to make. Today, I want to explore how that understanding can help you find people who genuinely connect with your work, and how you might build relationships that are creatively rewarding for both of you. KEY TAKEAWAYS Spend a little time thinking about the person who's going to be looking at your application. What are they interested in? What kinds of questions seem to preoccupy them? And what makes you think your work might lead to an interesting conversation with them? Instead of trying to perform or network awkwardly at exhibition openings, start with the work by visiting things you are genuinely curious about and asking questions you actually want answered. Build a constellation of people around your practice, over time. People who understand different aspects of your work, challenge you, and share your genuine curiosity. BEST MOMENTS “Selectors aren't neutral. We bring our histories, interes...

Who Gets Remembered in Art and Why? with Alona Pardo, Director of The Arts Council Collection

Oct 26, 2026 1 hr 23 min

Some of the decisions that shape art history never make it into the official record. They happen in conversations, through relationships, and because somebody is prepared to champion an artist before the market or the wider art world has decided they matter. My guest today is Alona Pardo, Director of the Arts Council Collection and a Turner Prize jury member. Before taking responsibility for this extraordinary national collection of more than 8,500 works, she spent thirteen years at the Barbican, curating major exhibitions including Masculinities, RE/SISTERS, and Dorothea Lange’s The Politics of Seeing. We talk about how artworks actually enter public collections, why archives can be unreliable witnesses, what happens to a work after it’s acquired, and Alona’s ambitious plans to bring the Arts Council Collection together in Coventry. At the end Alona also reveals the secret hope she has for what she might achieve during her tenure. I for one would like to see it happen. KEY TAKEAWAYS Public collections are living archives. They bring historical works back into cultural discourse through the lens of today, helping us think and feel our way through the complexities of our time. Official archives can be unreliable witnesses. They depend on what was deemed important enough to record at the time, so part of the narrative always gets left out. Informal conversations, negotiations, and backstage advocacy are all critical to shaping art history. True curatorial practice avoids a singular authorial voice, actively inviting challenge and collaboration from artists, writers, and scholars to expand and deepen how stories are told. Encountering structuralists and French feminism at university empowered and galvanised Alona. It shaped a lot of what she studied, her purpose and the direction of her career. BEST MOMENTS “The best works that I've ever encountered are works that kind of hit you in the stomach and really, really live with you and stay with you.” “What I w...

What I'm Looking For When I Select Art For Open Calls And Prizes

Oct 21, 2026 18 min

When I’m selecting for an open call or art prize, I might be looking at hundreds, sometimes thousands, of artworks. So, what actually makes me stop at one and think, hang on, I want to see this in real life? I wanted to share what’s actually going through my mind when I’m choosing from all those images to help you look at your own applications differently. Instead of wondering what everyone else wants to see, I want to help you figure out how to stop second-guessing yourself, drop the anxiety of playing it safe, and give your bravest, most distinctive work the best possible chance of catching a selector's eye. KEY TAKEAWAYS If you've made something that gives you that little whoosh of excitement, something you are slightly nervous about showing, perhaps that's the work you should be considering. You don't have to play it safe by submitting something that's simply nice; selectors would much rather encounter an artwork that makes them think, blimey, what's going on here? You don't have to second-guess everything a selector might like. But looking at who is selecting and what the institution is trying to achieve gives you a much more informed way to choose what to submit. Invest in the quality of your documentation, because your photographs need to give the work the best possible opportunity to communicate its particular qualities, especially when you're not there to advocate for it. BEST MOMENTS “What matters is what meaning I can glean and whether the artist has created an encounter that stays with me.” “Sometimes I'll select a work that's technically less accomplished than another because there's something odd happening within it.” “Generally, I'm looking for something that makes me curious, something that catches me off guard or makes me want to spend more time with it.” PODCAST HOST BIO With over 35 years in the art world, Ceri has worked closely with leading artists and arts professionals, managed public and private galleries and charities, and c...

The Weight of Imagination: Art, Memory, and Making with Andy Holden

Oct 18, 2026 1 hr 42 min

What would it be like to meet every version of the artist you’ve been over the last twenty years? That’s essentially what Andy Holden has just done. For his new book, Weight of Imagination, Andy re-performed works from across his career, encountering his younger selves along the way. The teenager who wrote an art manifesto with his friends. The young artist returning a piece of stone he’d stolen from the Great Pyramid of Giza. The artist who had to become a cartoon to understand the laws of a cartoon universe. And the musician who found that playing with his band, The Grubby Mitts, could keep his creativity alive when making visual art became difficult. In this conversation, we talk about what happens when you refuse to abandon the ideas that once mattered to you, how to keep making through periods of doubt, and what twenty years of work can teach you about the artist you’re becoming. I’m Ceri Hand. I’m an artist coach, and on Extraordinary Creatives I get inside the lives of remarkable creative people to discover how they make their work and build a life that allows them to keep making it. I can’t wait for you to get to know Andy Holden. KEY TAKEAWAYS Looking back can be more than a way of taking stock; it can bring earlier versions of ourselves into conversation with the present. Revisiting old work may reveal not a single, tidy through-line, but seeds and questions that are still alive and have potential. Let the story help you find its medium. Sometimes the work asks you to learn a new skill or make something imperfectly, because the way it is made needs to carry the same meaning as what it says. Creative practice can ask us to hold opposing truths at once: irony and sincerity, hope and pessimism, confidence and doubt. Art need not resolve those tensions; it can help us stay with their complexity and carry that capacity into life. BEST MOMENTS “If It is curious to you, it will be curious to somebody else.” “Don't try and reflect and analyse. Or c...

What Kind of Art Makes You Glad to Be Alive?

Oct 14, 2026 16 min

What kind of art makes you glad to be alive? I don't necessarily mean the work you think is important, the artists you're supposed to admire or the exhibitions everybody's talking about. I'm interested in the work that gets under your skin. The things you find yourself thinking about years after you've encountered them. The things that make you feel more curious about being in the world. And I wonder how often, as artists, we give ourselves permission to think about that. Last week, I was talking about the moment when research becomes art. I was asking what happens when all the information you've gathered, the things you've discovered and the ideas you've explored undergo some kind of transformation through your particular way of seeing. This week, I want to explore where that way of seeing might come from. KEY TAKEAWAYS Your enthusiasm can tell you things that your intellectual understanding hasn't quite caught up with. When a piece of art or something else prompts a strong reaction in you, take note of why it interests you, what makes you laugh, ask questions, relaxes you or even what makes you feel uncomfortable. If you're continually editing your interests according to what you think other people will approve of, you can lose touch with the things that made you excited about making art in the first place. Seeing someone else's work and feeling a little pang of envy can be revealing, not because of their success, but because they've made something you wish you'd had the courage to make. Gather ten artworks that make you feel glad to be alive and identify the recurring qualities. Use those insights to see if there are qualities you admire in others' work that you haven't given yourself permission to explore in your own studio. BEST MOMENTS "When I ask them what they find exciting about somebody's work, sometimes they struggle." "If you discover a contradiction between what you love and what you're making, don't immediately assume you need to c...

What Art Can Do About Climate Change? - with Alice Sharp and Rana Begum

Oct 11, 2026 1 hr 29 min

What can art do about climate change that science, facts, and frightening headlines can’t? That question has driven curator Alice Sharp for more than fifteen years. As Artistic Director of Invisible Dust, she brings leading artists and scientists together to create something neither could have arrived at alone. Her latest project, Climate Clock, created for Oulu’s year as European Capital of Culture in Finland, brings together seven permanent public artworks exploring climate change through our relationship with nature and time. Each artist was paired with a scientist, with Alice creating the conditions for those conversations to become something genuinely new. One of those artists is Rana Begum, whose collaboration with glaciologist Alan Hubbard transformed footage of glaciers breaking apart into a monumental work made from locally sourced stone, evoking both the weight and fragility of ice. In this conversation, Alice talks about trust, risk, fundraising, scientists, communities and the invisible infrastructure behind ambitious public art. Rana takes us inside the artist’s process: what happens when new knowledge enters your imagination, how work changes as it meets a place, and why the best collaborations leave room for surprise. And we ask: if information alone isn’t changing our behaviour, can artists help us feel our way towards a different future? KEY TAKEAWAYS Art can help us imagine climate futures in ways that facts and science alone cannot. Bringing artists and scientists together creates space for new perspectives, questions, thought provoking work and unexpected outcomes. Art doesn’t have to turn climate science into a neat lesson. It can hold beauty and fear together, creating a pause where people can feel, notice and ask questions. Public art doesn’t need to be removed from everyday life to have impact — placing challenging work where people encounter it unexpectedly can start conversations and change how communities see themselves. Art...

When Research Hasn't Become Art Yet

Oct 7, 2026 16 min

At a recent exhibition opening, I was talking with an artist whose work I admire. We were looking at work that was beautifully made and meticulously researched, yet somehow, I wasn’t moved. The artist described it as research that hadn't become art yet. I thought that was such an interesting observation, because it describes something I've encountered many times over the years A fascinating subject, impeccable research and extraordinary skill don’t always add up to an artwork that feels fully alive. Over the next three episodes, I’m exploring how you develop your own artistic point of view: how research becomes art; what the works that make you feel glad to be alive can teach you about what you want to make; and how that understanding can help you find people who connect with and champion your work. It’s easy to get caught up in producing, explaining, and promoting work without asking what you want it to do. So today, let’s start with research: when does it stop being information you’ve gathered and become something only you could make? KEY TAKEAWAYS Sometimes a work can feel like a presentation of research rather than artwork. Often, because the artist hasn’t yet made the personal choices that transform it into work that moves them and others. Don’t let research postpone creating. There will always be another book to read or person to interview. Sometimes the next discovery comes from trying something, getting it wrong, and seeing where the experiment takes you. The transformation doesn't have to be dramatic, but there's a difference between representing something you found and making a decision about it that opens up a new experience for somebody else. Give the viewer a chance to meet the work before they meet the backstory. Notice what they’re curious about, where they linger, and what surprises them. Their response can show you what’s already alive in the work and where to take it next. BEST MOMENTS “Sometimes, when an artist tells me about a new...

Learning How to Really Look, Understand And Uncover The Story with Daniel Crouch

Oct 4, 2026 1 hr 30 min

How does a sixteen-year-old looking for beer money become one of the world’s leading dealers in rare maps, selling extraordinary objects for millions and occasionally outbidding the Library of Congress? Today I’m talking to Daniel Crouch, founder of Daniel Crouch Rare Books, because I’ve always been fascinated by maps. They might look like records of the world, but they’re also records of how somebody wanted us to see it: who owns what, where borders lie, what gets included and what disappears. Daniel has spent his entire working life learning how to look. We talk about a magnificent sixteenth-century world map that may have been made for political negotiations between kings; a 5,000-year-old clay map bearing its maker’s thumbprint; and the nineteenth-century map he bought for £100 at a car boot sale, only to discover his own house sitting right in the middle of it. But beneath these extraordinary objects is a much bigger conversation about curiosity, storytelling, value, collecting and what happens when you spend a lifetime paying very close attention. I loved this one. I think you will too. KEY TAKEAWAYS Work that feels topical, disposable or culturally specific today can become an important historical record tomorrow. The fact that something was made quickly or for a short-lived audience doesn't make it artistically or historically insignificant. Go and look again at something you think you already know. Stay with it a little longer. Ask who made it, why they made it and what you can see that somebody else might miss - sometimes the extraordinary thing isn’t hidden at all. We just haven’t learned how to look yet. Looking is never neutral. Somebody has made a choice about what to include, what to leave out, where to place the centre, where to draw a boundary. Every creative work is also a way of deciding what the world looks like. Expertise doesn't arrive all at once. Daniel built his eye slowly by looking, touching, researching, talking, making mist...

What Four Days Learning About Trauma Taught Me About Creativity

Sep 30, 2026 33 min

What if the thing that you keep calling procrastination, lack of confidence or self-sabotage isn’t quite what you think it is? What if one part of you desperately wants the exhibition, the opportunity, or success, while another part is trying just as hard to keep you safe? And what happens to our creativity when we’re also carrying grief, uncertainty, difficult relationships, and everything that’s happened to us before, as well as everything happening in the world around us right now? I recently spent four days in Oxford thinking exactly about these questions at a conference on trauma, healing the mind, the body, and the spirit. I came home thinking how much of this connects to the challenges that I see creatives wrestling with every single day. So, in this episode, I want to talk about agency - the different parts of ourselves that can want completely contradictory things; grief and trust; how we protect our attention without turning away from the world; why spirituality is still a dirty word in the art world; and why the problem that you think you might need to solve might only be the visible part of something much bigger. KEY TAKEAWAYS If you’re procrastinating, stuck on pricing, or avoiding galleries, it may not be a simple confidence problem. The visible snag could be connected to exhaustion, grief, old hurts, or the conditions you’re working in. Your creative block may be tied to loss, not just bereavement. Maybe losing a community, security, or the person you thought you’d become. Naming what you’re grieving can help make sense of what feels stuck. You can care about what’s happening in the world without taking in every update. Managing your inputs isn't indifference - it enables you to remain present and useful for longer. Agency doesn’t mean carrying the whole art world on your shoulders. Agency is saying this isn't all within your control, so let's identify what is. You don’t have to become fearless to make work or put yourself out there. Con...

Preparing for Viral Success Without Burning Out with Freddie Yauner

Sep 27, 2026 1 hr 36 min

What do you do when an artwork you’ve been quietly developing for years suddenly goes stratospheric? And how do you turn a hit into a career-changing opportunity without sacrificing your health, your family, or the work itself? My guest today is extraordinary artist Freddie Yauner, whose work explores how our drive for continual growth impacts people and the planet. Held in MoMA’s permanent collection, his projects range from world-record-breaking toasters to portraits of CEOs painted with pollen. Years ago, I invited Freddie to make a film using his Mirror Mask, an ingenious piece reflecting the viewer rather than the wearer. Newly edited and reposted, the film exploded - racking up millions of views, reaching fans like Dawn French, and sending thousands of masks around the world. We discuss the mechanisms of success: how great ideas are mobilised, navigating health issues and imposter syndrome when things take off, and how to reinvest a hit to protect your creative life. Freddie also shares what shifted for him when he joined my six-month Artist Mastermind Circle. KEY TAKEAWAYS Sometimes a number one hit arrives years after you first made the work. Your job is to be ready for it. Treat virality not as a fluke but as the moment when preparation meets opportunity. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Investing in help with admin, social media or production isn’t indulgent, it’s how you create the capacity to stay creative, resilient and available to new opportunities. Doing less, better, is a radical act. When health or life reduces your capacity, it can also sharpen your priorities. Limitation can become a lens that clarifies what really matters in your practice. BEST MOMENTS “Luck favours the prepared mind.” “Treat a successful artwork like a number one hit… don’t abandon it because you’re already thinking about the next thing… stay curious about how far it can travel, who else it might reach and what doors it might open.” “You put all this energy in...

Stop Hoping Somebody Will Discover You

Sep 23, 2026 27 min

“I don’t know enough people” might be one of the most convenient lies artists tell themselves. And before you get cross with me, hear me out. If you tell yourself, you don’t know the right curators, collectors, commissioners, gallerists, or writers, you get to keep believing the problem is your network. You don’t have to risk contacting somebody. You don’t have to hear no. And you get to keep hoping that one day somebody might discover you. But hope is protecting you from the very thing your work needs you to do. I speak to artists every single day, and I hear versions of this constantly. “I live in the arse end of nowhere.” “I don’t have the money.” “I hate private views.” ““I’m awkward.” “I didn’t go to the right art school.” “My work is too strange.” “I’m an introvert.” And look, I have empathy with a lot of this. I’m an introvert myself. Given the choice, I would much rather sit in my little home office writing or talking properly to one interesting person than spend three hours shouting over somebody at a private view. But I think something else is going on. Why, when you already know how to network, are you still not doing it? I don’t think most artists need another lesson in networking. I think some of you need to stop waiting to feel comfortable enough to start. That’s what today is about. KEY TAKEAWAYS Stop waiting to be discovered. You can’t control whether somebody says yes, but you can control whether you make the invitation, send the email, follow up, or put the work in front of somebody. You don’t need the whole art world. You need your world: the people whose interests genuinely overlap with what you’re exploring. Who curated the exhibition that you loved, who wrote that essay that you keep returning to? Who commissioned that artist whose trajectory really fascinates you? Start with your curiosity, research those people, and follow the threads. You don’t have to become fearless, extroverted, or brilliant at networking. Start ridiculou...

What Creativity, Leadership and Community Mean When Your Life Changes Drastically with Andrea Grover

Sep 20, 2026 1 hr 41 min

Andrea Grover has spent nearly thirty years championing artists who take risks. And right now, she’s taking a few of her own. She’s turned her dining room into an experimental performance space called the Ponderosa Lounge. She’s started doing stand-up comedy in her fifties. And after ten years leading Guild Hall in East Hampton, she’s thinking deeply about what creativity, community and leadership can mean when life changes in ways you could never have planned for. Andrea is a curator, writer and arts leader who founded the pioneering Aurora Picture Show in Houston, went on to curate ambitious projects including Radical Seafaring, and has spent her career making space for experimentation, play and what she calls the “head-scratchers”, the art you don’t immediately understand but can’t stop thinking about. Earlier this year, Andrea was diagnosed with ALS. We talk about what that diagnosis is teaching her about accepting help and love, why she’s using comedy to process what’s happening, what decades of working with artists have taught her about leadership, and why she believes creativity can bring people together when so much around us is pulling us apart. There is so much life in this conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. KEY TAKEAWAYS Creative community can feel like finding your way back to the weird kid lunch table. A place where you’re allowed to be fully yourself, to laugh, to be vulnerable, and to let other people help you when you can’t do it all alone. Depth matters more than churn. When you commit to artists and audiences over time, you create the conditions for real trust, real risk, and real change. Leadership in the arts isn’t about control; it’s about distributing power - trusting others to hold the work with you and letting them surprise you. BEST MOMENTS “An extraordinary creative life really asks of us. Not that we control what happens next, but that we remain curious enough to meet it. To make something with what we have...

When Someone Else's Envy Lands on You

Sep 16, 2026 17 min

Today, I am talking about a feeling that most of us know intimately. A feeling that most of us don’t talk about: Envy. This episode is about both kinds, which turn out to be the same machine running in two different directions. We’ll look at what happens inside you when you hear someone else’s good news - the prize, the residency, the museum acquisition, the sold-out show - and feel that sharp jab under the ribs that bends you double. We’ll talk about how, within about 90 seconds, you can pick up their achievement and swing it at your own career like a wrecking ball, and why that reaction isn’t just you being “awful,” it’s information. Drawing on research into “benign” and “malicious” envy, we’ll separate the kind that quietly points you upwards towards the work you actually want to be making from the kind that wants to pull other people down when you feel you have no control over your own situation. We’ll also talk about the other half that almost nobody names: what happens when you are the one being envied. The colleague who goes a bit cool, the snide remark at the opening, the tall poppy swipes that land at two in the morning and come home with you. This episode is an invitation to notice which kind of envy has landed, what it’s trying to tell you, and how to move from resentment and comparison towards honest data and self-trust. KEY TAKEAWAYS Envy is a two-way machine. It’s one word for two different emotions, both triggered by someone else’s good news but pulling you in very different directions. When you envy others, ask what kind it is. The benign kind pointing you towards your own next step, or the malicious kind that needs you to reclaim your sense of agency. Expect some envy, some odd weather as you become more visible: the cool colleague, the snide remark. Pause and sort what you’re seeing and hearing. Warm, awkward admiration gets a “thank you”; real nastiness usually gets no response and never results in a smaller you. BEST MOMENT...

The Journey Back to Yourself: Letting Go of Who People Expect You to Be with Gabriella Cilmi

Sep 13, 2026 1 hr 0 min

My guest today is the wonderful Italian-Australian singer-songwriter Gabriella Cilmi. Many of you will remember her breakthrough hit Sweet About Me, which became a global success when she was just sixteen. Since then she's toured the world, won awards, shared stages with some of music's biggest names, and now, after thirteen years, she's released a remarkable new album called Pure Love. It's soulful, analogue, deeply human, and for me, one of those records that gets better every time you listen to it. What fascinated me wasn't the success. It was the journey back to herself. In this conversation, Gabriella shares what it took to stop running from other people's expectations, how she learned to trust her own creative instincts again, why the people around us shape the work we're capable of making, and how she finally found the confidence to make the album she'd always wanted to make. If you've ever questioned your own voice, struggled to trust your instincts, or wondered whether it's too late to create the work that's really inside you, I think you're going to love this conversation. KEY TAKEAWAYS The work often changes when we stop trying to outrun ourselves and start listening to the part of us that knew what it loved before everyone else’s expectations got involved. Sometimes your younger self knows more than you think. Return to that place within yourself that cannot be destroyed, your spark. The right people can create the conditions for extraordinary work to exist. Being seen, supported and challenged by others can give you the confidence to take risks. Don´t eliminate all uncertainty from your creative process. Deliberately creating slight discomfort, more opportunity for spontaneity and the possibility of failure introduces energy into your work. Some imperfection is not a defect; it can be part of the character of the work. BEST MOMENTS “That first seed of idea is so important. don't lose track of it. It can change. Be open to it changing,...

The Work That Didn´t Sell

Sep 9, 2026 15 min

I was watching The Big Deal, the new programme with Steph McGovern on the BBC, and I came away with more thoughts than will fit into one episode. Most of them can wait. Today I want to use one thing from it, because it landed directly on top of something that comes up in my membership every single week. An artist has made a body of work. It went out once, into one exhibition, and it didn't sell. Now it's in the studio taking up space, and the question arrives in one of three forms. Should I auction it off cheap? Should I give it away? Should it even be on my website anymore? So, three questions, and every one of them is a plan for getting rid. It is interesting the speed at which the artist brain goes to disposal. The work has been out once…. and already the conclusion is that it's spent, it's evidence of something that didn't work, and that the fastest way back to feeling alright is to make it disappear. And underneath that is something bigger - artists hate the idea of selling. Yet, I know that every artist can turn their graveyard of pieces that did not sell into a living archive that attracts collectors. KEY TAKEAWAYS Unsold work is not failed work. That back catalogue you’re quietly ashamed of might be the best thing someone new to it sees this year. Your job is not to hide it, but to remember why you made it and let it back into circulation. An aversion to the idea of sales holds you back. Selling doesn’t require you to become louder, slicker, more salesy. It’s shared enthusiasm. When you reconnect with the ideas, stories, and processes behind a piece, you can talk about it in a way that lets other people decide whether it’s for them. You need a simple practice. One older piece a month: document it properly, write a short note about where it came from, and release it through your newsletter, socials, or a personal email. BEST MOMENTS “The work in the corner of your studio isn't waiting to be disposed of. It's waiting for you to remember why yo...

Why Returning to “Failures” Can Be the Most Creative Act of Your Life with Wreckless Eric

Sep 6, 2026 1 hr 29 min

Some artists spend their whole lives trying to outrun the work that made them famous. Others spend their lives trying to find their way back to themselves. Today's guest has somehow done both. Wreckless Eric exploded onto the music scene with Whole Wide World, a song that became part of popular culture. But behind the myth sits Eric Goulden: musician, songwriter, producer, writer and relentless observer of ordinary life, who's spent four decades building a body of work far richer and more personal than most people realise. In this conversation, we go far beyond punk and nostalgia. We talk about growing up, art school, perfectionism, collaboration, his distrust of the music industry, and what it means to keep evolving when everyone thinks they already know who you are. We explore his partnership with songwriter Amy Rigby, why imperfection makes music human, and how returning to songs he'd once considered failures became one of the most liberating creative acts of his life. This isn't really a conversation about success. It's about staying curious enough to keep becoming. I loved every minute of it, and I think you will too. KEY TAKEAWAYS You don't need perfect conditions to make honest work. You can start exactly where you are, with the tools and spaces you already have, and let the scruffy, makeshift reality around you quietly seep into what you make. Celebrate your idiosyncrasies and make the work anyway. No one is queueing up for it - and that's freeing. The wrong notes, rough edges and sudden left turns are often where the real human connection lives. BEST MOMENTS “You should celebrate your idiosyncrasies rather than try and fix them.” “Stay curious. Keep experimenting. Trust your odd rhythms. The work that lasts isn't usually the work that tries hardest to fit in. It's the work that sounds unmistakably like you.” “I got it in my head that rhymes were really banal… but she said they take you to places that you probably wouldn't go without them.”...

You're Not Avoiding the Task, You're Avoiding the Feeling

Sep 2, 2026 17 min

There is a page in Emma's notebook that has been written out, in more or less the same words, most weeks for months. Five things on it. Email the curator she met last spring. Book the studio visit. Get the new work up on the website. Finish the residency application. And every week, in that big looping handwriting of hers, the same five things go down on a clean page, and by the following week not one of them has a line through it. If you have a page like that, and I think most of you do, I think some of you could recite yours to me right now, then this one is for you. It will help you to work out why you are repeatedly delaying doing those specific tasks, so you can finally break that cycle, get them done and make some real progress.Before we go any further, if you haven't followed the show yet, do that now, because these solo episodes land every week and they are built to be used rather than just listened to. KEY TAKEAWAYS The task that´s been on your list for weeks isn’t a procrastination problem; it’s an emotional one. Emailing the curator, updating your website, raising your prices look like simple tasks, but by not doing them you are actually dodging the risk of rejection, judgement, or getting it wrong in public. Instead of asking, “Why can’t I just do this?”, say, “I’m not avoiding the task, I’m avoiding the feeling that…”. Reframe the task, make it tiny and less threatening: “email the curator” becomes “practice reaching out,” “update my website” becomes “practice being seen.” Make taking action embarrassingly small. Send a three‑line email to that curator, spend 30 minutes on updating your website – so fear doesn’t get a vote, and you can actually do it on an ordinary, messy day. BEST MOMENTS “Not one of those five tasks was a task. All five were feelings that she'd already decided the task would produce.” “You tell yourself to put the new work online, and it (your brain) files that under judgement. And you tell yourself to raise your price...

What Does It Really Take To Create Extraordinary Work With Another Person With Ain Bailey and Elaine Mitchener MBE

Aug 30, 2026 1 hr 28 min

What does it really take to create extraordinary work with another person? Not just the exciting bits of making, but everything that happens behind the scenes. Building trust. Navigating creative differences. Talking honestly about money. Knowing when to compromise and when to hold your ground. And finding a way to keep making work together over many years without losing your own artistic voice. That's what today's conversation is really about. My guests are composer and sound artist Ain Bailey and vocalist, composer and movement artist Elaine Mitchener MBE, two artists whose work has quietly shaped the landscape of contemporary art and experimental music in Britain and internationally. Ain's work has been commissioned and exhibited by organisations including Camden Art Centre, the Serpentine, FACT Liverpool and CCS Bard in New York, and she's a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation's Awards for Artists. Elaine is a Wigmore Hall Associate Artist, an MBE for Services to Music, a former DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Fellow, and an exhibiting artist in British Art Show 9, with a practice spanning contemporary music, performance and visual art. Together they've created Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner for Art on the Underground. But what they share today reaches far beyond a single commission. This is a conversation about creative partnership, artistic integrity, sustaining a practice over decades, and what it really takes to make ambitious work that lasts. KEY TAKEAWAYS Creative careers aren't built by endlessly saying yes. They're built by knowing what deserves your time, having the courage to walk away from what doesn't, and trusting that the quieter seasons aren't empty. The best creative partnerships are sustained by relationships that exist beyond a single project. Building trust over time, staying connected to your community and continuing to initiate relationships creates the network of people and opportunities that keep an ambitious practice moving forwa...

When Your Big Idea Becomes Your Big Job

Aug 26, 2026 18 min

I was looking at an artist’s proposal recently for a really significant exhibition, and it was one of those proposals where you can immediately see that the artist has really thought about the opportunity. They haven’t just taken some existing work and thought, right, where can I put this? They’ve responded to the place, they’re thinking about how people might move through it, there are new works, things happening outside, possible collaborations and performances, ideas around public engagement. You can feel their excitement about what the project might become. And I was excited by it too. But because I’ve spent so many years on the other side of these proposals, working in galleries and institutions and actually having to get exhibitions and programmes made, I found myself reading it in two slightly different ways. One part of me was thinking, this could be fantastic. And the other part of me was thinking, bloody hell, this is a lot of work. This episode addresses how ambitious creative ideas can quickly spiral into overwhelming production work. It offers practical guidance on how to navigate institutional proposals in a way that makes sure you don´t inadvertently agree to do all of the tasks needed to deliver the project. KEY TAKEAWAYS Many ambitious artists let the excitement of a big idea quietly lead them to taking on responsibility for too many aspects of the project. Do not use your own labour to quietly fill the gap between a project's ambition and the available resources. The language in your proposal matters. Innocently writing "I will organize" or "I will connect" can quickly turn speculative ideas into lines on someone else's production schedule that you are expected to deliver. Find the beating heart of your project. Identify the essential core elements you care about most so you can navigate changes and compromises. An institution's commitment to your work goes beyond money. Look for their investment in time, expertise, relationships, adv...

What If Creativity Is Really an Act of Investigation? With PJ Raval

Aug 23, 2026 1 hr 41 min

PJ Raval has spent his career asking a deceptively simple question: whose stories are we willing to see, and whose stories have we been taught to ignore? He's an award-winning Filipino American filmmaker whose documentaries explore identity, community, justice and belonging. Across films including Call Her Ganda, Before You Know It and Who We Become, his work follows people whose lived experiences reveal much bigger questions about power, history, colonialism, ageing, queerness and what it means to find home. What struck me most about this conversation wasn't just PJ's extraordinary filmmaking. It was discovering that before he ever picked up a camera, he trained as a molecular biologist. We ended up having one of my favourite conversations on the podcast about the surprising parallels between science and art, why experiments never really fail, and how curiosity can become the engine for an entire creative life. We also explore growing up as a queer Filipino American in a small conservative town, navigating isolation, discovering filmmaking almost by accident, and why every documentary he makes is also a way of understanding himself. If you've ever wondered how artists choose the questions that become their life's work, or how creativity can become a way of making sense of the world, I think you're going to love this conversation. KEY TAKEAWAYS The questions that keep pulling at us are often the ones worth following, even when we don't yet know where they will lead. You don't have to know the answer before you begin - the work can be the way you find it. There is a particular freedom in knowing when to let the work go. After months or years of making, we have to release our grip and allow other people to bring their own experiences, interpretations, and meanings to it. BEST MOMENTS “There's no bad experiment because you learn from it. So even if something quote unquote fails, its knowledge gained.” “Community isn't something that arrives once you've become...

How to ask for what you need without becoming 'The Difficult One'

Aug 19, 2026 17 min

'I don't want them to think I'm difficult.' I've heard that sentence more times than I can count, usually about four minutes after somebody has told me the best news of their year. They’ve landed a gig, an exhibition, commission. The residency they've wanted since art school. We celebrate, then the room goes quiet, and out it comes. What they're worried about is never the work. It's the hundred emails from eleven different people wanting an answer that afternoon. The day of travel with nothing after it. The meet and greet with thirty people on arrival. Whether there will be somewhere to sit down for ten minutes. Whether the biggest decisions will land on the day they have the least energy. If you have ever done that arithmetic before saying yes, this episode is for you, because I want to give you something better than hoping it will be fine. Last week, I talked about my own experience of chronic fatigue and learning the conditions that let me flourish. That was the part we have some influence over. This part is harder, because it involves asking somebody else for something so we can work at our best. By the end, you will understand why asking feels so hard and how to do it without appearing “difficult to work with”. KEY TAKEAWAYS Most artists need certain conditions to do their best work e.g. ramp access, a day of rest between public events or meal breaks at particular times. But many worry that asking for “special” arrangements will make them seem difficult and affect future opportunities. Hiding the conditions you need comes at a cost. The energy you spend worrying about what people will think could be channelled into your work. An access rider gives artists a way to put their needs in writing before you're tired or under pressure. Every artist should consider writing one, whether they would describe themselves as disabled or not. BEST MOMENTS “When an artist told me early in writing exactly what they needed in order to do their best work, my honest...

Why Making Bad Work Is the Secret to Great Art with Simone Brewster

Aug 16, 2026 1 hr 32 min

Welcome back to Extraordinary Creatives. Today's guest is the remarkable Simone Brewster. Simone is an artist whose work moves between sculpture, painting, jewellery, furniture, architecture, and public installation. On paper those disciplines might seem worlds apart, but beneath them all is one beautifully consistent line of enquiry. Simone creates what she calls intimate architectures: objects and spaces that shape how we feel, how we connect and how we experience belonging. Drawing on Black diasporic histories, architecture, material culture and memory, her work feels both timeless and unmistakably contemporary. You may have seen her exhibition at the Design Museum in London, or her work in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. In this conversation we talk about growing up in London, finding your creative handwriting, why making bad work is essential to making great work, and how to balance self-initiated projects with commissions, jewellery with public spaces, and creativity with business. KEY TAKEAWAYS So many creatives end up defining themselves by what they make, when actually it's the enquiry underneath the work that matters most. If you stay true to that, your work can evolve across disciplines whilst still feeling unmistakably yours. Developing your creative handwriting means accepting that bad work will sit alongside the good. Not as a failure, but as a necessary part of the line of enquiry that makes the work unmistakably yours. Creativity and commerce aren't opposing forces. Learning how to build a business around your creativity gives your practice the time, space, and stability it needs to flourish - creating the conditions for your best work to exist. BEST MOMENTS “The difference isn't whether you make bad work. It's whether you're willing to keep going, learn from it and make the next piece.” “You never know who is watching you….do the work - share the work.” "Your peers are going...

What Chronic Illness Taught Me About Creativity

Aug 12, 2026 31 min

There's something I've been thinking about for quite a while now. It's something I've talked about with close friends, but hardly ever publicly. Not because it's a secret. And certainly not because I'm embarrassed by it. I think, if I'm honest, I just never wanted it to define me. But over the last few years, I've realised that by not talking about it, I've probably left out one of the biggest reasons I think the way I do. Because so many of you write to me about Long Covid, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, burnout, depression, caring responsibilities and all the unexpected things that change what we're capable of physically or mentally, it feels like the right time to have this conversation. I'm not a doctor or a neuroscientist and this isn't an episode about fixing chronic illness or pretending mindset alone can overcome real physical limitations. It's about what happens when life changes, and you quietly keep comparing yourself with the person you used to be. Today, I explore what chronic illness has taught me about creativity, why so many artists find themselves grieving a version of themselves they've lost, and share some practical ways to work with your energy instead of constantly fighting against it. KEY TAKEAWAYS One of the hardest parts of illness, burnout or unexpected change isn't simply what it takes away physically. It's the quiet loss of identity that comes from comparing yourself with who you used to be. Instead of managing time, start managing energy. Becoming curious about the conditions that help you think, create, and recover allows you to build a creative practice that works with the life you have now. Acceptance isn't giving up on treatment or ensuring that things improve. It's simply saying this is where I am today, because once we stop arguing with today's reality, things drastically improve. Protect your energy from the things that deplete you but be sure not to let fear disguise itself as self-care. Learn to tell the difference...

Drawing with Light, Playing with Time with Reuben Wu

Aug 9, 2026 1 hr 37 min

I first met Reuben Wu when I was Director of Exhibitions at FACT in Liverpool, and he was one of the coolest musicians in the city, co-founding the band Ladytron and shaping a distinctive sound that travelled around the world. Years on, he's one of the most singular photographers working anywhere - his images are held in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim, MoMA and the Met, and commissioned by Apple and National Geographic, for whom he reimagined Stonehenge as if you were seeing it for the first time. In this episode, we explore his extraordinary journey from a Liverpool kid who dreamed of becoming an artist, to an industrial designer, successful musician, and then to one of the most distinctive visual artists working today. Reuben rigs lights to drones and walks into deserts and snowstorms at night to make work no machine could ever fake - because, as he says, AI can simulate the result but never the process. And he is fierce about something most artists are frightened of: that the artist, not the gallery or the auction house, is the best person to sell and speak for their own work. If you've ever wished someone else would do the talking for you, this one's for you. Follow the show so you never miss an episode. I hope you find this as inspiring as I did. KEY TAKEAWAYS Reuben's story gleefully dismantles the myth of the straight-line creative career. Proving no experience is wasted, everything you do can and does feed into the artist you are, today. Artists are often uniquely qualified to sell their own work because nobody understands the story, the labour, the intention and the meaning behind it better than the person who made it. Breakthroughs happen when you are prepared for them - when you're ready. Luck is preparation when it meets opportunity. Being able to respond to that instinctively to those moments, creates the magic. Tap into the power of portfolio reviews. BEST MOMENTS “No experience is wasted. The industrial designer, the musicia...

Why Avoidance Feels So Productive

Aug 5, 2026 8 min

Welcome to the Extraordinary Creatives Podcast. I'm Ceri Hand. A former gallerist, curator, now coach to creatives all over the world. I help them to make a bigger impact with their work and earn more money doing what they love. Recently, I have been noticing something, and I wonder whether you'll recognise it too. We often think avoidance is obvious. We imagine it looks like procrastinating or scrolling social media or watching television instead of getting into the studio. But I honestly don't think that's how avoidance shows up for most creative people. I think it looks responsible. It looks like being busy. It looks like finally getting on top of your admin saying yes to another teaching opportunity. Maybe helping someone else out with their project or sorting your accounts out. All good things and things that genuinely need doing, and that's why it's so difficult to spot, because from the outside it looks as though you're completely committed to your creative life, and from the inside it feels as though you're working incredibly hard. Then you get to the end of the week and realise that you've hardly touched the work that matters most to you. KEY TAKEAWAYS Being busy is not the same as moving your creative practice forward. The work that keeps you occupied is often the very thing that keeps you from actually creating. Avoidance rarely looks like procrastination - it looks like responsibility. Admin, teaching, and helping other people all feel productive, which is exactly why they are so effective at pulling you away from the uncertainty of making your own work. Your brain is not trying to sabotage your practice – it is trying to reduce discomfort. Every time you choose certainty over uncertainty, you reinforce the habit of stepping away just as the work starts asking something of you. Creative confidence is not built by making uncertainty disappear. It is built by learning how to stay with it long enough for the work to emerge. BEST MOMENT...

Your Creative Work Matters and You Have The Talent To Bring It To Life with Ela Thier

Aug 2, 2026 1 hr 9 min

We're told that creative talent is something you either have or you don't. Ela Thier has spent nearly 40 years disproving this crippling myth. A New York–based writer, director, actor, and founding director of The Independent Film School, she’s helped more than 65,000 artists find and develop their voices. Her films include Tomorrow Ever After, Foreign Letters, and her latest, 109 Billion Followers, stars Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons. In this conversation, we trace Ella’s journey from being her mother’s “wild weed” - a third child raised with very little supervision and a lot of imagination, through quitting filmmaking for almost a decade, to returning with a completely different relationship to her work. We talk about the difference between writing as therapy and writing as a gift, why craft is learnable, and why Ella believes talent is simply the courage to be fully yourself. She shares how she keeps “the rent and the real work” in two separate hands, and the cast of inner voices who appear in her book How to Fail as an Artist: My Best Tips - from Mr. Stop, whose only job is to talk her out of it, to the 120-year-old version of herself she writes to when she loses her nerve. If you’ve ever stood at the edge of giving up on your work - or you’re standing there right now - this one’s for you. KEY TAKEAWAYS The story many of us carry is that our work is a private indulgence, a side‑note nobody’s waiting for. You may never see the life it touches, but you are not creating into a void. Make the film, the painting, the book as if it already matters to someone, somewhere - because it does. Your audience is not a panel of judges to impress, but the people you are taking care of. The shift is from asking whether they will approve of you, to asking what they need and making the work from there. Keep the rent and the real work in separate hands - asking your art to also pay the bills is a reliable way to do neither well. BEST MOMENTS “Ela … has made peace with fai...

Inside the Art Surgery - Thirty Minutes, Real Questions, Honest Answers

Jul 29, 2026 42 min

Every week inside the membership, artists send in their questions. Career challenges, pricing dilemmas, difficult clients, creative blocks, gallery relationships, commission nightmares, confidence crises. Ceri works through them live, unfiltered and at pace, with more questions landing in real time from the room. The result is one of the most popular sessions inside the membership. Fast, direct, occasionally sweary, and completely honest. No script. No softening. Just Ceri answering whatever artists are actually grappling with right now. It has yet to be proven that there is a question she cannot answer. This episode gives you a taste of what happens inside the Art Surgery every week. If you want the full session, the full archive, and the chance to bring your own question live, the membership is where it all happens. Join our Membership at - https://cerihand.com/membership/ KEY TAKEAWAYS Admin expands to fill whatever time you give it. Every email feels urgent. Almost none of it is. Batch it all into one admin day and protect the rest of the week for the work that actually matters. When anxiety spikes, “spray and pray” feels like action – but it isn’t. Instead of firing off panicked applications, start by calming your anxiety, telling your brain nothing’s gone wrong, so you can act from a calmer, more intentional place. One artwork can live many lives – One piece can quietly work for you all year, let it travel. That film or artwork can stay as a full piece or elements of it can be used for clips, newsletters, embeds on other people’s sites and more. Selectors aren’t hunting for perfect work. Most submissions are good. The ones that get remembered feel inevitable and alive – like the idea and the medium have clicked so well the work couldn’t exist any other way. BEST MOMENTS “Rather than am I right for it? The question is - Is the work right for it? Would your work come alive in that context?” “We have to carve out the day to make ourselves the most clear-...

Fast Robots, Slow Clocks: How To Design Art That Lasts Beyond Your Lifetime with Zander Rose

Jul 26, 2026 1 hr 47 min

Somewhere inside a mountain in the West Texas desert, a clock is being built to keep time for ten thousand years. All mechanical. Wound by whoever makes the day-long hike to reach it. Designed so it´s chimes never ring the same sequence twice. Zander Rose has spent nearly thirty years building it. He grew up in a junkyard on the Sausalito waterfront – boat builders, artists, an activist mother who went on to become mayor, and a flea market every Sunday where he and his father took machines apart to see how they worked. Before the clock he was making combat robots that won six world titles, fast machines built to win in seconds. Then he gave half his working life to the slowest object on earth. What he’s really after isn’t the engineering. It’s a question I keep coming back to: Are we being good ancestors – and what would we build differently if we believed the future was watching? In this conversation we get into where that question came from, what it’s like to design for someone who won’t be born for thousands of years, and what the world’s oldest organisations – a hotel run by the same family since the eighth century, temples older than most nations – know about lasting that the rest of us have forgotten. It will leave you thinking about being a good ancestor and building things to last. KEY TAKEAWAYS Trust the future. Build it room to think. Don’t take options away from the people who come after you. The forest you don’t cut down, the river you keep, the law written simply enough that the next generation can reinterpret it – that’s the work. The conditions you grow up in aren’t just backstory, they’re training. A junkyard, a boatyard, a poor area – these aren’t obstacles to a creative life, they’re live laboratories. The places you learned to improvise quietly decide what feels possible to you now. Competition doesn’t have to mean scarcity or shame. Other people’s excellence can become raw material for your own growth, not evidence that you should...

Public Art: The Four Questions Every Artist Must Answer

Jul 22, 2026 26 min

I'm Ceri Hand, and this is Extraordinary Creatives. Thirty-five years in the contemporary art world as a gallerist, curator, commissioner of public art, institutional director, and now coaching artists and creative leaders worldwide to make a bigger impact and earn more money doing what they love. Over the last eight weeks, we've built a complete commissioning practice together. We've looked at the mindset, the five signatures of under-pricing, the commission ecosystem, the inquiry filter, the chemistry call, the alignment document, paid concept development, the production agreement, managing the making, the delivery, the legacy package. What public art is, the roles you can play, and what changes when the commission is this big. So, today we're going to cover three things, and then I'm going to leave you with the one sentence that I hope you carry out of the whole series. KEY TAKEAWAYS Build your scaffold once, then run every commission through it. The artist who thrives isn’t winging it each time; they’ve got a clear structure on the studio wall - they have stopped rebuilding the system from scratch for every new brief. Run every commission through joy, safety and income filters before you say yes. When those filters are true to you and your practice they alert you early to commissions that look good on paper but still not right for you. Preserving your capacity for work that is truly yours. BEST MOMENTS “Saying no to a commission that doesn't pass the filters is not lost income, it's preserved capacity; every no protects the yes you're truly waiting for.” “Built once, used again and again. The artist who thrives has built the scaffold once and now runs their commission practice through it calmly, profitably, without drama.” “A process without the willingness to say no is just admin. It looks good on your website, does nothing for your life.” “The artist who wins commissions isn’t the most talented. The artist who wins commissions is the one who makes...

Late Starts, Long Breaks: A Survival Guide to the Art World with Hettie Judah

Jul 19, 2026 1 hr 21 min

The art world runs on storytelling. The story of the artwork. The story of the artist. And one of the most seductive stories of all, the one that says if you got your toe over the line out of art school, your career goes onwards and upwards from there in a straight line. My guest today, Hettie Judah, has been inside the art world since the early 1990s, as a writer, critic, curator and advocate. And she has written a book that quietly dismantles that story. How to Enter the Art World… After a late start, a first career, illness, raising children, a crisis of confidence, leaving it in disgust… In this conversation, Hettie shares how the art world's myths are really costing the people inside it, why the relationships that move careers are built in quiet galleries rather than at private views, and what the financial reality of a successful writing and curating life actually looks like. You will leave with a sharper read on the structures around your practice, and permission to stop measuring yourself against a career shape that was never real in the first place. KEY TAKEAWAYS The art world tells a particular story about itself - A linear career. A clean upward arc. The right schools, the right shows, the right age. And if you didn't get on that track, or you stepped off it, maybe to have children or it was never offered to you in the first place, the story says you missed your window. Hettie demonstrates that is not true. If you are coming back to your practice, or finding your way in for the first time, or rebuilding after a long stretch away, take this as the invitation. Not to enter someone else's version of the art world. To build the one that holds your work. Often creative labour is quietly self‑subsidised so the rest of us can have the books and conversations we need – think a £150 fee for an event, from which the writer or artist still has to cover train fares and providing their own books. BEST MOMENTS “You can construct the art world you want to be...

Why Most Artists Lose Money On Their First Public Art Commission (Part 8 of 9)

Jul 16, 2026 17 min

Artists – most of you who take your first public art commission lose money on it. Not because the budget was bad, but because nobody told you a public commission is not a bigger version of a private one. It is a different job, with a different shape, and the work that does not appear in the brief – procurement, contracts, maintenance, stakeholder hours – is what quietly eats your fee. By the time you realise what you have signed up for, you are eighteen months in, with years still to run, and no honest way out. Here is what I want to give you today: the six things that genuinely change when you step from a private commission into a public one; the hidden costs inside the budget that almost no commissioner spells out, and that you have to know to ask about; and the support structure you need around you before you accept the commission, not after, because by then it is too late. This is for artists invited to apply for their first public commission, and for artists already inside one who can feel the ground shifting and have not yet been able to name what is happening. This episode is part eight of a nine-part series on commissions. Last week we covered what public art is, the five reasons it gets commissioned, and the six roles an artist might play inside a public commission. If you have not heard that one, it sets the foundation for today, so start here - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-six-roles-artists-get-hired-for-in-public-art/id1709105337?i=1000776044291 KEY TAKEAWAYS Public art is not just a bigger version of what you already do – it is a different job, with different time scales, different power dynamics, and a different kind of authorship you step into for decades, not months. The number in the brief is never just “your fee” – it has to cover engineers, fabricators, insurance, installation, maintenance planning, everyone’s professional time. If it does not, you will be the one underwriting the project with your labour. Build a small...

We Move Through Scales of Blue: Making Art That Holds More Than One Truth with Phoebe Boswell

Jul 13, 2026 1 hr 22 min

Ninety-six per cent of Black British adults don’t swim regularly. That's the statistic from the Black Swimming Association that my guest came across while she was deep in research about bodies of water / about what they hold, what they absorb, what they promise. Phoebe Boswell is a Kenyan-British artist whose work has been shown at the Venice Biennale and in major institutions and collections worldwide. In this conversation, Phoebe talks about her latest large-scale commission for Art on the Underground, we move through scales of blue, now running alongside the escalators at Notting Hill Gate and Bethnal Green subway stations in London. She shares how she works with communities without extracting from them, why she stopped painting for twenty years and what brought her back, and what she has come to understand about figuration, freedom and the responsibility that comes with the work. You will leave with a deeper sense of what it means to make work that holds rupture and joy at the same time - and the courage it takes not to resolve them. KEY TAKEAWAYS Phoebe holds two things at once - A figurative practice that she describes as lovemaking - a sustained attention to the body, particularly the Black female body, as a way of truly seeing. And alongside it, a refusal to stay in the language of identity alone. Making work that holds rupture and joy at the same time isn’t a flaw to be fixed. It’s a way of working: that stays true to pain, history and politics while refusing to let go of tenderness, nuance, and beauty. Phoebe’s approach to figuration, community and public space asks us to think more deeply about how we see who we work with. What we owe the people in and around our work, not just as subjects or audiences, but as co-holders of meaning. BEST MOMENTS “Art became a way of coming back to myself… it was a process of trying to re-see the self that had been kind of shattered. It was proclaiming myself, reminding myself that I’m still here.” “Art is this p...

The Six Roles Artists Get Hired For In Public Art (Most Don't Realise They Have A Choice) - Commissions Series, Part 7 of 9

Jul 9, 2026 14 min

Artists if you've ever been invited into a public art commission, here's the thing nobody tells you. Most of you assume you've been asked to make a single artwork. A sculpture, an installation, a piece. You usually haven't. There are six different roles you might be playing inside that project, and getting the wrong one means you've quietly accepted a job you didn't sign up for. Worse hours. Different fee structure. Different scope. The same brief, with you doing the wrong work inside it. This is the most expensive mistake that artists make in public art. And almost nobody is told the roles even exist. Here’s what I want to give you today: the five main reasons public art gets commissioned, the six roles’ artists are actually hired to play and how to recognise which one you’ve been invited into), and one question to ask any prospective commissioner that reveals in 30 seconds whether they’ve properly scoped the project or are asking you to finish their thinking as well as the work. This is for artists curious about public art who haven’t yet made the move, and for those already working in it who’ve felt a commission go quietly wrong without knowing why. This episode is part seven of a nine-part series on commissions. The first six cover everything from mindset and pricing through to the legacy package - the foundations you need before you take a single enquiry into public art. If you haven’t done so yet, hit follow so you don’t miss an episode. KEY TAKEAWAYS Understand which role you've been invited to at the start of the conversation. Ask yourself which of those five commission types is closest to what you make already and how you work - that tells you which kind of public commission to be looking for. If you’re new to public art, treat temporary and meanwhile work as laboratories. They’re lower risk for commissioners, and they let you test how your practice behaves in public BEST MOMENTS “Done well, a single public commission can shift the trajecto...

Building a Sustainable Truly Creative Practice Without Selling Out - with Luke Jerram

Jul 6, 2026 1 hr 15 min

Imagine setting fire to half your art budget before lunchtime. Seven hot air balloons grounded in a field. Fourteen speakers. The Birmingham Symphony Orchestra waiting to be paid. And a city council expecting you to reach a hundred thousand people by the end of the week. That is the kind of corner Luke Jerram has found himself in. And it is also the corner that produced Play Me, I'm Yours - pianos in the street for anyone to play. Two thousand of them. Seventy cities. Welcome to Extraordinary Creatives. I'm Ceri Hand. Follow the show so episodes like this land in your feed every week. Luke Jerram is the artist behind Museum of the Moon, Gaia, Helios, Park and Slide, Sky Orchestra, and Glass Microbiology. His work has been seen by tens of millions of people. Close to a thousand exhibitions across forty countries. Pieces held in over eighty permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the Wellcome Collection in London. And he has built all of this from a studio in Bristol, with a team around him, without gallery representation. In this conversation you will hear how he funds projects nobody has made before, why he turned down Red Bull and Coca-Cola, and what he calls stamina of dissatisfaction - the last five percent that lifts a piece from good enough to worthy of people's attention. I hope you find this as inspiring as I did. KEY TAKEAWAYS Most artists make a piece, show it once, and move on. Luke lives with a piece across a hundred installations and refines it. That last 5% of refinement makes the work land, turns it into something enduring that funds the next project and the next. Being an artist is a marathon, not a sprint. A diverse practice takes longer to build. But that willingness to keep reinventing yourself creates adaptability. Don´t underestimate your ability to solve problems and learn from failure. It´s up to us to decide on the rules we play by. BEST MOMENTS “I like...

How To Stop Commissions Eating Your Profit (Part 6 of 9)

Jul 2, 2026 15 min

Artists — if you take commissions, here's the number that should frighten you. Scope drift, the polite, gradual expansion of a commission beyond what you agreed, eats twenty to thirty per cent of the original fee in unpaid work on most commissions I see. That isn't a margin problem. That's your profit. Gone. On every job. And it isn't because you did bad work. It's because nobody taught you how to manage what happens after the deposit lands. This episode is part six of a nine-part series on commissions — how to prepare for them, respond to them, deliver them, and stop them burning you out. If you haven't followed the podcast yet, hit follow so you don't miss an episode. Today we cover three stages. Managing the making - which is where most commissions go wrong, and almost never for the reason artists think. Delivery and the story of the work — the bit that quietly funds the next commission if you do it right. And the legacy package — the stage almost every artist skips, and the single most commercially valuable thing you can build into your practice. KEY TAKEAWAYS Once the deposit lands, you’re managing 2 things: the work and the client’s psychology. Build in named updates and review points so they feel heard, without turning the project into an open invitation for endless tweaks. Treat the legacy package as your quiet sales engine. A simple bundle—certificate, process images, care instructions, and a short narrative, turns a buyer into a custodian. Custodians come back, commission again, and quietly introduce you to your next three clients. Ceri´s tried and tested but simple 11‑stage process means you stop rebuilding your practice from scratch for every enquiry. Instead, you run each commission through the same calm, repeatable structure. BEST MOMENTS “Scope drift … eats 20 to 30 per cent of the original fee in unpaid work on most commissions I see. That isn't a margin problem. That's your profit. Gone.” "Saying no to a commission that doesn't pass the fil...

The Work That Lasts Speaks To What Is Stuck, Not What Is Comfortable with Lucia Pietroiusti

Jun 29, 2026 2 hr 2 min

The art that stays with you isn't the art that pleases you. It's the art that names the thing stuck at the back of your throat — the one you couldn't quite say out loud — and then makes it real. That's Lucia Pietroiusti. Curator of the Golden Lion-winning Sun & Sea, Head of Research & Emergence at the new Hartwig Museum in Amsterdam and Curator of The 2027 Autostrada Biennale. In this conversation, we get into why the works that last speak to the body before the mind, and what it really takes to hold space for art that risks making people uncomfortable. We talk about ideas behaving like people, about institutions learning to hold a piece of an artist's life rather than commissioning a piece of their work, and about being tethered and free at the same time. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. KEY TAKEAWAYS The artworks that stay with us often bypass explanation. They reach "something stuck at the back of your throat" before the intellect catches up, reminding us that feeling can be a form of knowledge. Meaning isn't delivered by the artist and received by the audience. It emerges in the space between them. The work offers coordinates, not conclusions - people find their own way through. Art creates meaning, connection, and transformation in ways that go beyond language. The most powerful art isn't the art that explains the world. It creates the conditions for people to feel, experience, and discover something they couldn't quite access before. Trust intuition, trust audiences, trust long-term relationships, and trust that meaningful work often emerges from uncertainty rather than certainty. BEST MOMENTS "An artwork that stands the test of time is one that speaks not to your mind, but to something that's stuck at the back of your throat. And in a sense allows you to release that." “There´s the sort of belly register - the heart, the body register, then there's the brain register, all of it working together…you're not over-emphasizin...

Artists, Get Paid To Think Before You Get Paid To Make (part 5 of 9)

Jun 25, 2026 12 min

This episode is part of a nine-part series on commissions. How to prepare for them, respond to them, deliver them, and, crucially, how to stop them burning you out. If you haven't followed the podcast yet, hit follow so you don't miss an episode. Today, episode 5 of 9 - If you only listen to one, I would ask that it be this one. Because I am going to tell you about the single biggest shift most artists can make in how they run commissions. It changes the economics. It changes the relationship. It changes how the client sees you. And it is still, astonishingly, the thing nearly every artist is not yet doing. It is called paid concept development. So, last week's episode. The enquiry filter told you this client was serious. The chemistry call confirmed they were a good fit. The alignment document came back confirmed, with minor amendments. The client is now saying, brilliant, love it, let's go. This is where most artists collapse. They work for free. Sometimes 5 hours. Sometimes 10. Sometimes, on larger commissions, 30 or 40 hours of unpaid concept work before a single £ is on the table. This is the shape of how artists lose weeks of unpaid labour every year. And most do not realise it is happening, because the work feels like normal commission behaviour. But it isn't. It is something an industry has normalised that is quietly killing its own practitioners. There is another way. KEY TAKEAWAYS Every industry where bespoke work is produced charges for concept work -architects, designers etc. It simply means the client is paying upfront for your thinking: visuals, materials, research, concept rationale, scale considerations. They keep that work whether or not they proceed. Paid concept development filters out the clients who were never going to commission anyway - before you've spent hours working for them. Once your proposal is accepted, move to a second, separate production agreement: final fee, a 50% deposit with a 30/20% payment schedule, named date...

Trust Discomfort As Part of Your Creative Language with Amartey Golding

Jun 22, 2026 1 hr 39 min

Amartey Golding makes chainmail sculptures that are seductive, threatening, funny, and deeply unsettling all at once. And in this conversation, he explains why discomfort might be one of the most important tools an artist has. Raised between London, Ghana, Rastafarian culture, council estates, and rural England, Amartey speaks with rare honesty about growing up between identities and how that tension became the emotional engine of his work. In this conversation, you’ll hear how he learned to trust discomfort as part of his creative language, why audience feedback became essential to sharpening his voice, and how he creates installations that work not just intellectually, but viscerally — through sound, light, atmosphere, scale, and the body itself. We talk about the emotional labour behind ambitious projects, the crash that can come after making large-scale work, and why sustainability, family life, and building a nourishing environment now matter as much to him as artistic ambition. But perhaps most importantly, this episode offers a powerful lesson in how to develop your own artistic voice: not by trying to become someone else, but by listening more deeply to the contradictions, histories, and instincts already living inside you. This one is rich, layered, funny, tender, and deeply human. I can’t wait for you to hear it. KEY TAKEAWAYS Belonging is not always about finding where we fit, but about reshaping inherited stories until they can accommodate more of who we are. Sometimes our work becomes a way of making room for identities that existing symbols struggle to contain. There are moments in a creative life when continuing to succeed at one thing becomes a barrier to discovering another. Growth often asks us to leave behind what is proven, visible and commercially rewarded. We romanticise the artist who creates through suffering. But, when people have enough security to be curious, playful, and fully present, they gain access to forms of imaginatio...

Artists, Don't Reply To That Commission Enquiry — Filter First - Part 4 of 9

Jun 18, 2026 12 min

This episode is part of a nine-part series on commissions. How to prepare for them, respond to them, deliver them, and, crucially, how to stop them burning you out. If you haven't followed the podcast yet, hit follow so you don't miss an episode. Today, episode four of nine. And this is where the series shifts gears. For the last three episodes, we have been doing the preparation work. The mindset. The five signatures of under-pricing. The commission ecosystem. Today, an enquiry has arrived. This is the moment most artists get wrong because this is the moment their nervous system takes over. When an enquiry lands in your inbox. And before you've finished reading it, your stomach has tightened, your brain is already drafting a reply, and somewhere in the next three sentences you're going to offer availability, ideas, enthusiasm, and a half-committed yes – all before you know you are a good fit. And the principle is this. Before you reply with anything, you filter. How, is what today´s episode is about. KEY TAKEAWAYS Ceri´s short enquiry form is a low-friction sieve: it quietly filters out tire-kickers, and a serious client will fill it in within 10 minutes. The right questions reveal what they actually want, how committed they are, whether they really get your work, and whether their budget and timeline are realistic. After the enquiry form, you move into a chemistry call – 30 minutes - to ask important questions and spot red flags. Then, produce an alignment document to further test understanding. If the client confirms the alignment document, you move forward; if they come back with big changes, it’s a sign you weren’t fully aligned on the call – it’s far better to catch that now than 3 months into making. BEST MOMENTS “Stage one of responding to any inquiry is the initial filter, low friction, high signal, a sieve, not a conversation.” “If those signals are weak, you slow things down, you don't ghost them, but you don't rescue them, you reply pol...

Don't Wait For Permission To Build The World You Want To Live In with Ian Giles and David Shenton

Jun 15, 2026 1 hr 27 min

I have two guests on the podcast today, and they have made something extraordinary together. The first drew queer Britain into being for sixty years and quietly refused to call any of its art. It paid the mortgage. It was cheaper than being a window cleaner. He published the world's first LGBTQ+ graphic novel in 1983, drew for Gay News, Capital Gay and The Guardian, made safer-sex campaigns through the AIDS crisis, and hung a nineteen-metre banner at Carrow Road for Justin Fashanu. All of which he called work - never art. That guest is cartoonist David Shenton. The artist who finally insisted it was art is Ian Giles. Together they have made Kindly Ease the Tension, David's first ever institutional retrospective. It begins with a small burnt doll, dressed in clothes knitted by a boy in a Lancashire terrace house and thrown into the fire by his father. The doll survived. So did the boy. In this conversation we get into what happens when somebody finally calls your sixty years of work art. We talk about the Duvet of Love; an AIDS memorial David stitched in a bedsit that he never meant to be art. We talk about the trans baton being passed in a moment when many in the gay community have gone quiet. We talk about censorship and the rising conservatism in the arts, the works that have to be shown after hours, the double standard between classical nudity and queer images. And we talk about what intergenerational care actually looks like in practice. David is seventy-seven and says this retrospective has stretched his horizon by another ten years. There is a lesson in that for all of us. KEY TAKEAWAYS Some of the most important opportunities in your career won’t arrive through a formal application process. They happen because you care enough to ask the question, start the conversation, or create the thing you wish existed. What feels awkward, unfashionable, or difficult in one chapter of your life may be exactly what gives your work its depth and originality lat...

Your Commission Ecosystem: Four Decisions To Make Before The Next Enquiry Lands - Part 3 of 9

Jun 11, 2026 12 min

This episode is part of a nine-part series on commissions. How to prepare for them, respond to them, deliver them, and, crucially, how to stop them burning you out. If you haven't followed the podcast yet, hit follow so you don't miss an episode. Today, episode three of nine. The first practical stage of the commission process. Your commission ecosystem. In episode one, we did the mindset work. In episode two, we named the five mistakes that almost every underpriced commission has in common. Today we start building the structure. Here is the principle. Stage one of any serious commission practice is the invisible work. The four decisions you make, in advance, before any enquiry arrives. These decisions form what I call your commission ecosystem. Build it once. Revisit it annually. Let it do the work of saying no, so you do not have to do it in the moment. Why does this matter? Because the moment an enquiry arrives, your nervous system will want to say yes. The ecosystem, written down in advance, is the only thing standing between that yes and the resentment you will feel six months later. Four decisions. Let me walk you through each. KEY TAKEAWAYS Set a clear annual profit target for commissions - pricing will stop feeling vague or reactive any you will know how many of each type of commission you need to complete to keep your practice viable. A written rules list and clarity on materials, scale, and time protect you from burnout work and pull in the commissions that genuinely grow your practice. BEST MOMENTS “The year is the unit, not the commission. Once you know what the year needs to earn, every individual commission conversation becomes easier, because you know what you're measuring against.” “This is the work. Nobody else can do it for you. But once it's done, every inquiry that arrives from that moment onward lands into a structure that already knows how to respond to it.” “Clarity makes an artist easier to collaborate with, not harder...

Grief, Caregiving and Work That Shines Through It All with Alexis Soul-Gray

Jun 8, 2026 1 hr 36 min

Today’s guest is an extraordinary artist whose work feels deeply lived rather than simply made. Alexis Soul-Gray is a British painter exploring memory, loss, and maternal lineage through richly layered works that move between abstraction and figuration. Based in Devon, her paintings feel both intimate and expansive. A graduate of the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins, Alexis has exhibited internationally, received two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grants, and won The Delphian Open in 2021. Alongside her studio practice, she also curates’ exhibitions, including Declarative Language, a group show bringing together women artists whose practices have been shaped by caregiving within neurodivergent families. We talk about art school, grief, motherhood, caregiving, advocacy, and the challenge of continuing to make work that stays true to lived experience rather than outside expectation. Exploring the realities of artistic identity alongside financial pressure, loss, and resilience. What unfolds is an honest and deeply human conversation about endurance, creativity, and what it takes to keep going when life refuses to move in a straight line. KEY TAKEAWAYS When you’ve carried grief and caring responsibilities for years, the work you make in the margins is not “less than” - it’s work that has learned to hold chaos, fatigue, school refusal, and hospital letters in the same frame as colour, gesture, and form. You don’t need a clean, linear career to be an artist; you need a stubborn thread. The years of bad jobs, failed applications, family rupture, and self-doubt don’t sit outside the practice - they deepen it. The culture will always reward tidy, repeatable pictures, but painting is something else: a willingness not to know the outcome in advance, to refuse being a production line for your own style, to risk disappointing people who only came for the last hit. BEST MOMENTS “I just couldn't really see that my practice would ever become a ful...

The Five Signatures Of An Underpriced Commission – Part 2 of 9

Jun 4, 2026 13 min

This episode is part of a nine-part series on commissions. How to prepare for them, respond to them, deliver them, and, crucially, how to stop them burning you out. If you haven't followed the podcast yet, hit follow so you don't miss an episode. Today, episode two of nine. The five mistakes I see every artist make when pricing commissions. I see them every single week. In coaching conversations. In the Mastermind Circle. In private messages from artists I have never met who have found my work. Different artist. Different medium. Different decade of experience. Same five mistakes. Every time. If you listened to episode one, you'll remember I opened with a story about a textile artist, mid-career, who sent me a costing for a corporate commission and told me he was embarrassed. Today we are opening up his costing. Not literally his numbers, but the five mistakes inside it. Because every one of them will be familiar to you. KEY TAKEAWAYS Quote in the currency your costs are in; otherwise, you're letting the currency markets quietly price your work for you. If the market shifts in the time it takes you to create the commission, you can easily lose 5 to 15% of your fee. Your client sees the finished piece, but you lived a “three-month shadow life” around making it; your fee has to reflect the shadow life, not just the visible outcome. Day rates anchor your income to availability; move to project fees so you’re pricing the value of a lifetime of practice, not slices of your calendar. Treat bespoke and repeatable work as two different commissions with two different pricing logics and stop trying to negotiate all of that over email. BEST MOMENTS “When artists and creative practitioners move from day rates to project fees or to flat fees based on the scope of the commission, two things happen, the fee goes up and the quality of the relationship improves.” “Every commission disaster I've ever coached on can be traced back to a decision made over email.”...

When Music Meets Image: Crafting Emotional Worlds On Screen with Tiffany Anders

Jun 1, 2026 1 hr 22 min

Today’s guest is someone who quite literally shapes how stories feel. Tiffany Anders is a music supervisor working across film, television, and advertising, and if you’ve ever been completely pulled into a scene emotionally, there’s a good chance someone like Tiffany helped build that experience. Her work spans everything from the Sundance-winning indie film Like Crazy to major series like Reservation Dogs and Netflix’s BEEF. What’s remarkable is how seamlessly she moves between those worlds, bringing the same instinct, care, and emotional precision whether she’s working with a tiny music budget or a global production. But what makes Tiffany especially compelling is how she got here. Growing up in Los Angeles around filmmakers and musicians, she absorbed how music and images work together to tell a story. That deep sense of listening still defines the way she approaches her work today. We talk about how a project unfolds from script to screen, how she figures out what a scene needs emotionally, and how she balances instinct with the realities of budget, time, and negotiation. We also get into collaboration, creative identity, and the invisible decisions that shape the emotional experience of film and television. And there are some brilliant stories along the way, from discovering music as a kid and playing in bands to her recent work on The Lowdown. If you’ve ever wondered how music really works in storytelling, or how to build a creative life that can hold both art and complexity, this is a great one. KEY TAKEAWAYS Your early environment matters, but it’s not about having perfect conditions. In Tiffany’s case, it was chaotic, it was under-resourced, it required her to grow up quickly. But what she did was translate that into skills. It’s not about imposing taste or showing off knowledge. It’s about understanding the world of the work deeply enough that the right choice becomes obvious. And that comes from years of paying attention. From being curious BEST...

Designing The Way You Want To Work - The Mindset Shift Behind Every Commission That Doesn't Burn You Out Part 1 of 9

May 28, 2026 11 min

This episode is part of a nine-part series on commissions. How to prepare for them, respond to them, deliver them, and, crucially, how to stop them burning you out. If you haven't followed the podcast yet, hit follow so you don't miss an episode. Today, episode one of nine. The mindset. Because nothing in the practical work across the next eight episodes actually holds if the mindset is not in the right place. Let me start with a story. KEY TAKEAWAYS Before you draft a single document, you have to get honest about what you actually want, not what feels polite, not what you think people can afford, not what your imagined client might say yes to, what sustains your practice and keeps Your work alive. You're not responding to briefs, you're filtering them, shaping them, and sometimes quietly refusing them. A commission inquiry is not an instruction, it’s a proposition. Your job is not to say “yes” by default, it’s to decide: Do I want to make this? Can I make it well, profitably, and without wrecking my sanity? Audit your last two years of commissions: Which ones drained you? Which ones energised you? - notice the patterns. These will inform how you set up your commission process in future. BEST MOMENTS “When you define your process, your time and the kind of commissions that genuinely excite you, something changes. You stop bending yourself to every vague inquiry.” “The hunger for work that feels human, specific, and emotionally resonant is only going to grow the work you make, the way you make it, the meaning you bring to it, that's becoming rarer - not less valuable - more valuable.” “You're not responding to briefs, you're filtering them, shaping them, and sometimes quietly refusing them.” "Your role is not to shrink in anticipation of rejection. Your role is to articulate clearly what you offer, how you work, and what it costs." EPISODE RESOURCES Julia Cameron episode - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-the-artists-way-simple-tools-th...

Great Institutions Aren’t Built On Perfection—They’re Built On Permission with Joe Hill

May 25, 2026 1 hr 30 min

What does it take to lead an institution in a way that people don’t just visit—but feel they belong to? Today, I’m in conversation with the extraordinary Joe Hill—Director and Chief Executive of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and formerly the force behind Towner Eastbourne’s transformation into one of the UK’s most dynamic cultural spaces. From winning Art Fund Museum of the Year to hosting the Turner Prize, Joe has built a reputation for shaping institutions that don’t just show art, but root it deeply in place, people, and possibility. But this conversation goes far beyond titles and accolades. We talk about what it really means to create cultural spaces that people care about—so much so that they protect them, claim them, and see themselves inside them. Joe shares stories of artists whose simplest ideas became the most powerful, why overcomplicating can kill a commission, and how trust—real trust in artists—is still one of the most radical acts an institution can make. We also get into leadership. The kind that isn’t about control, but about creating the conditions for others to think, take risks, and occasionally fail. Because without that space, nothing new can actually happen. This is a conversation about stewardship, risk, generosity—and what it means to build an art world that people don’t feel excluded from, but part of. KEY TAKEAWAYS When an institution truly belongs to its place, it stops feeling like a white monolith you “visit” and becomes a living landmark people claim, protect and point to as their own. The most powerful work often starts from disarming simplicity and deep trust: a crayon sketch on a façade, an artist given space to think, a curator whose first job is to nurture the project out of the person and to be generous to both artist and audience. For the sector to stay alive, we need time and permission to think, to experiment sometimes get it wrong. Without that protected space for risk, we don’t just lose ambitious projects - we los...

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Created by: Ceri Hand
Status: Active
Latest episode: Nov 12, 2026
Episodes: 260
Release period: Several times a week
Avg. episode length: 52 min
Explicit: No
Language: English

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