Extraordinary Creatives

Welcome to the 200th episode of Extraordinary Creatives: two hundred conversations with artists, thinkers, makers and cultural leaders about the strange, beautiful, often messy reality of building a creative life. And I couldn’t imagine a better guest to mark this moment than the brilliant John Lloyd CBE.

One of the great creative architects behind some of the most loved comedy formats of the past fifty years. He began at the BBC in the 1970s and helped create programmes that have become cultural landmarks: The News Quiz, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Blackadder, Spitting Image, and the long-running curiosity engine that is QI. 

Along the way he co-wrote the original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio series with Douglas Adams, directed the iconic Genesis “Land of Confusion” video, and has won more BAFTAs than almost anyone alive.

But what struck me most, isn’t just the scale of his career, it’s the way he thinks about creativity itself. John talks openly about the difficult things that shaped him and the strange truth that some of the most uncomfortable moments in life later reveal themselves as gifts. 

He reminds us that every creative life includes adversity, and that the ability to transform those experiences into fuel - into insight, humour, empathy or invention – is what stops artists giving up.

John is a powerful reminder that great ideas take time. Some of his shows took years to get made.

Whether you’re a writer, artist, musician - or simply someone trying to make meaningful work  - there is wisdom in this conversation.

KEY TAKEAWAYS


When we stay with an idea long enough - clearing away the sand, listening more deeply than we speak - what looks ordinary begins to reveal its own quiet, astonishing shape.


There are two selves. There's the little yaky person in your head - then there's the true self, which only arrives when you're in the zone, when you're in the state of flow.


The heartbreaks, the projects that fall apart - those “disasters” become compost, feeding the work we were actually meant to make.

BEST MOMENTS

“Creativity is like archaeology. You shovel mountains of sand… and eventually you uncover the sphinx.”

“Ideas appear. The difference with creative people is they notice them.”

“Deep listening means you're paying attention with not just your ears, with your whole body.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.instagram.com/johnlloydqi

https://www.qi.com

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 curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

**

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

In the last episode, we talked about rhythm. 

About what happens when life knocks you sideways and you walk back into the studio feeling foggy, brittle, or slightly foreign to yourself. We spoke about regulation, about re-entry, about restarting the engine gently instead of demanding brilliance on command.

But there’s something else that often happens after the dust settles. Something quieter. More destabilising.

Sometimes it isn’t only your creative rhythm that’s been interrupted.

It’s you - You’ve changed.

And that’s where things get complicated.

You go through something significant. An illness that forces you to slow down. A divorce that reshapes how you understand intimacy. Redundancy after years in the same role. Children leaving home and the house suddenly carrying a different kind of silence.

You step back into your studio, and something feels slightly off. The work you were making before isn’t wrong, it isn’t bad, but it doesn’t quite sit the same way in your body. It feels like clothes that used to fit and now don’t.

We're taught that consistency matters, that we should maintain our voice, that we should build a recognisable trajectory, so people know what they're looking at. So, when something internal shifts, panic sets in.

That can be deeply unsettling. Yet, as you will see, it is actually something to be welcomed, embraced and used as fuel.

KEY TAKEAWAYS


After big life events (illness, divorce, kids leaving, etc.), your old work can feel like clothes that no longer fit, not because it’s bad, but because you are different now. Life changes you - it should.


If you are different, the work must reflect that difference, or you will begin to feel like an imposter inside your own practice. 


Instead of asking how to recover your old voice, a more honest question is, Who am I now? What occupies my thoughts when I wake up? What feels tender in me? Those recurring thoughts are not distractions. They're signals. They point towards the seam that wants to be mined next.

BEST MOMENTS

“You're not meant to return to who you were. You're meant to create from who you're becoming, life will change you. It should.”

“If your work never shifts, if your questions never deepen, if your textures never evolve, something is probably stuck.”

“So perhaps this week, instead of trying to replicate what once worked, you sit with a quieter question, what wants to be made now?”

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 curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

**

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

In this episode I’m joined by the extraordinary Wet Mess - performer, shapeshifter, and maker of work that sits right on the ecstatic fault line between desire, politics, embodiment, confusion, and joy.

We centre the conversation around their solo show Testo that’s been touring over the past year. It’s a work born from a live, personal question: whether or not to take testosterone, and what that decision means socially, physically, psychologically.

We talk about how you can stretch a reveal across an hour. How pacing and punctuation shape tension. How repetition changes meaning depending on the intention you bring to it. How the same action can land differently in different cities and how trans experience is heard through different filters.

We dig into training - how Wet Mess conditions both body and mind to hold euphoria, anger, and absurdity without collapsing under it. How they choreograph points of view. How entertainment spaces have taught them things the art world did not. And how stepping into cabaret felt, at one point, like a liberation and even a rejection of fine art’s constraints.

There are real insights here about what performance can hold that white cube spaces sometimes struggle to contain. About how spectacle and seriousness are not opposites. About what you learn by attending to the same process over and over again until it deepens.

And alongside the artistic revelations, we also speak candidly about touring, sustainability, hiring a producer, stacking the finances so the work can travel, and how to prepare and decompress when your body is the medium.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

KEY TAKEAWAYS


Spectacle isn’t a distraction from seriousness; it’s one of the few containers big enough to hold euphoria, rage, and politics at the same time.  


When your body is the medium, sustainability isn’t a luxury add‑on. Training and decompression are part of the choreography, or the work doesn’t last.  


Testo doesn’t resolve whether to take testosterone; it lets us sit inside the risk, desire, and possibility of not yet knowing.  

BEST MOMENTS 

“A lot of the process of performing is caring so much about what the audience receive, and then also letting go of that, because you can never fully control it.”

“I got really interested in what it means to reveal, how you can stretch that out over an hour-long show taking off layers of costume, of self, and kind of getting deeper and showing different layers of oneself or possibilities.”

RESOURCES

https://wetmesswetmess.com/

https://www.instagram.com/wet_mess

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 curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

You know that strange moment when you walk back into your office or studio after something big has happened……and it feels unfamiliar. The light’s the same. The table’s where you left it.  Your brushes are exactly as you abandoned them. But you’re not.

That’s the bit no one prepares you for. I was speaking to an artist recently who had just come back from caring for a parent after a sudden bereavement. She said, “I’m desperate to get back into my practice. I need it. But I can’t seem to think."

That sentence, that tension, stayed with me – I need it, but I can´t.

Because when life throws something heavy at you - death, illness, divorce, redundancy, even something that looks positive but is destabilising -  your system shifts. You go into care mode. Logistics mode. Survival mode. 

You become vigilant. You are tracking hospital updates. Or legal emails. Or financial spreadsheets. Or your child’s temperature at 3am.

Vigilance is not the same state as creativity. Creativity asks you to soften. To wander. To sit with uncertainty without solving it.

After shock, your body doesn´t want to wander. It wants to secure. And then we stand in the studio and say to ourselves, “Right. Back to it. Let’s make something extraordinary.” – no wonder it doesn´t work.

I explore why flow disappears after life shocks, what your nervous system is actually doing, and how to return to your work without bullying yourself.

KEY TAKEAWAYS


After a death, redundancy, illness, divorce, or any major life shift, creativity doesn’t just snap back into place. You don't restart at full speed. You idle the engine. 


Often, what we call lack of focus is actually grief that hasn't fully moved through. Grief doesn't always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like distraction, fog, a strange flatness.


Creativity is a downstream of regulation. If the river is in flood, you don't shout at it. You wait for the waters to settle -You're not behind. You're rebuilding rhythm. Rhythm is different from output. Rhythm is showing up in small, contained ways, until your body trusts the space again. 

BEST MOMENTS

“You can't out discipline a dysregulated body. You can't bully yourself back into flow. Flow requires safety, not perfection, not control, but safety.”

“When athletes recover from injury, they don't return by running a marathon, they rebuild muscle memory. Creative practice is no different.”

“Returning after shock is one thing - creating after you've changed is another.”

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 curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

**

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

**

Discover Your Extraordinary Creativity

Visit www.cerihand.com to learn how we can help you become an extraordinary creative.

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/

Today’s guest has shaped the creative lives of millions.

Julia Cameron has been called “The Queen of Change” by The New York Times, and whether you’ve done Morning Pages for decades or only heard of The Artist’s Way in passing, you’ve felt her influence ripple through contemporary culture.

What struck me most in this conversation was her devotion to simplicity and trying.

Her tools are not complicated. They are repetitive. Ordinary. Almost deceptively so. Three pages. A walk. A date with yourself. And yet — they ask for something many creatives resist: discipline without drama. Practice without novelty. Showing up without fireworks.

We like complexity. We like newness. We like to overthink. Julia invites us back to something far braver - consistency.

We talk about trusting internal wisdom, or what she describes as seeking guidance both inwardly and outwardly. We explore the stream of consciousness as something different from a diary, different from a sketchbook — a way of accessing the subcutaneous layers of knowing that we’ve often been trained to ignore.

Decades on, she is still delighted. Still open. Still curious. Still learning from the community her work has helped to grow. She does not cling to authorship as ownership. She sees herself as a vehicle. The work belongs to the people who practise it.

There is something quietly radical about that.

This conversation is an invitation to return to the basics. To stop waiting for the breakthrough and instead build the ritual. To trust that the simplest tools, repeated, can change a life.

KEY TAKEAWAYS


Morning pages, walks, and artist dates aren’t self-help chores; they’re how you quietly outlast trends, algorithms, and your own boredom. Those simple tools become radically effective, especially when you are using them decades in.


Julia Cameron doesn’t banish her critic. She calls him Nigel. Thanks him. And keeps creating anyway. Trust your inner wisdom, even when it´s messy.


If you’ve been waiting for a breakthrough, maybe the breakthrough is repetition.

BEST MOMENTS

“I think procrastination is actually fear in a fancy dress.”

“A believing mirror is somebody who reflects back to your strength and your promise.”

“Fear can be present, and we continue. Criticism can speak, and we continue. Doubt can whisper, and we continue. Not because we’ve eliminated those voices. But because we’ve built a practice strong enough to hold them.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://juliacameronlive.com

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 curated more than 250 exhibitions and events. She has sold artworks to major museums and private collectors and commissioned thousands of works across diverse media, from renowned artists such as John Akomfrah, Pipilotti Rist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Vito Acconci. Now, she wants to share her extensive knowledge with you, so you can excel and achieve your goals.

**

Ceri Hand Coaching Membership: Group coaching, live art surgeries, exclusive masterclasses, portfolio reviews, weekly challenges. Access our library of content and resource hub anytime and enjoy special discounts within a vibrant community of peers and professionals. Ready to transform your art career? Join today!

https://cerihand.com/membership/

**

Unlock Your Artworld Network Self Study Course

Our self-study video course, "Unlock Your Artworld Network," offers a straightforward 5-step framework to help you build valuable relationships effortlessly. Gain the tools and confidence you need to create new opportunities and thrive in the art world today.

https://cerihand.com/courses/unlock_your_artworld_network/

****

Book a Discovery Call Today

To schedule a personalised 1-2-1 coaching session with Ceri or explore our group coaching options, simply email us at [email protected]

This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/