Careers in Creative, Theatre, Design and Sport Event
Wednesday 5 March 2025
Rhiannon Fisher
Head of Creative Learning
What is the best thing about your job?
I get to work with a wide variety of people on different projects and the work is generally creative, fun and interesting.
What does a day in your life look like?
Some days can be laptop based if you are in a planning and programming phase – responding to emails, programming, managerial duties, admin etc. On other days which involve delivery, I might work with a group of people where I am leading or overseeing creative activities and workshops.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
Creating the Discover Theatre project at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre and seeing how the project has grown and developed over the last three years.
Tara Le Roux
Director and Founder, Linden Staub
What is the best thing about your job?
Being able to champion diversity and individuality in an industry that often prioritises trends over authenticity. As the founder of Linden Staub, I love nurturing talent and creating a supportive environment where our talent feels empowered to thrive, both professionally and personally. Watching people grow into their potential is deeply rewarding.
What does a day in your life look like?
No two days are the same, but my work typically involves a mix of strategy, team collaboration and problem-solving. I focus on leading my team, building partnerships, and ensuring the agency remains true to its mission of creating positive industry change. I also prioritise bigpicture thinking, such as exploring new markets, while balancing this with effective delegation to my talented team. Some days I might also spend time mentoring or checking in with our talent, ensuring their wellbeing is always a priority.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
I feel incredibly fortunate to have had two major career highlights. Earlier in my career, I danced internationally for some of the world’s biggest stars, which allowed me to travel the world and experience extraordinary opportunities. Now, I am lucky enough to manage stars in many different fields through Linden Staub. On a personal level, I am also proud of balancing a fulfilling career with being a present and involved mother to my children. It is not always easy, but finding harmony between the two is one of my greatest achievements.
Charlotte Miller
Director of Intergenerational Music Making
Clinical Early Intervention Specialist Music Therapist,
NHS
What is the best thing about your job?
The best thing about my job is the opportunity to create meaningful intergenerational connections that bridge people of all ages, fostering understanding, collaboration and a shared sense of purpose. Whether it is convening policymakers and parliamentarians to shape the NHS Ten-Year Plan or the Civil Society Covenant, consulting on national and local strategies to tackle loneliness, or leading high-profile campaigns like The Queen’s Jubilee and The Big Help Out, every day is purposeful and inspiring.
What does a day in your life look like?
No two days are the same, which I love! A typical day might start with a meeting to plan an intergenerational project or hub, followed by a Music Therapy session with a client. I often work with policymakers or attend parliamentary discussions to advocate for intergenerational
approaches, then shift to creative workshops or mentoring younger professionals. Evenings might involve preparing for upcoming events, refining campaign strategies, or reflecting on the impact of ongoing projects.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
One standout moment was receiving the Prime Minister’s Point of Light Award in recognition of my work tackling loneliness, dementia and mental health. Another would be co-creating Together with Music, a project that has reached tens of thousands of people and demonstrated the profound impact of intergenerational music on community cohesion.
Millie Proffit
Fundraising Development
Executive
What is the best thing about your job?
The best thing about my job is that no two days are the same. One day I might be working on a pitch to win a multi-million pound ‘Charity Of The Year’ partnership with a huge corporation, and the next I might be designing a digital billboard advert for a West End show we are putting on with one of our celebrity ambassadors. The broad scope of responsibility I have working in fundraising development allows me to interact and collaborate with some amazingly dedicated and talented people, both inside and outside of my organisation. Every day I am learning something new about what it means to be a great fundraiser.
What does a day in your life look like?
A typical day for me involves first seeing if any requests for support have come in from my Philanthropy & Partnerships colleagues - usually I will have a couple of requests for Canva support, as I have become the go-to person for making sure our communications are visually enticing! After I have replied to those, I will start prioritising my workload for the day and start getting on with the major projects I am working on - I normally have 3-5 at any one time. At the moment, for example, I am putting together a booklet for prospective funders about how our work relates to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Normally I will have a couple of working-group meetings during the day to discuss ongoing projects with
colleagues and if I am lucky, I will have a ‘Check-In & Creative’ - a casual drop-in session where team members can come along and bounce ideas off each other. I am lucky to be part of a team that is so collaborative - the best days are certainly the ones where we all get together in the London office, which is about two days a week at the moment.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
A personal highlight of my work for me is whenever I get to interact with our beneficiaries: young cancer patients and their families. When working from home especially, it is sometimes difficult to feel the impact of the work I am doing. But whenever I get to visit one of our incredible ten Homes From Home that families can stay in for free when receiving treatment, or when I get to interact with families at major events and hear directly from them the positive impact our support has had - I am reminded all over again that I get to play a part in helping young cancer patients and their families get the support they deserve and change the future of young cancer patient care for the better.
Rachel Boden
Lead, Children’s Book Promotion and Content Editor
What is the best thing about your job?
The fact that I am helping make a difference to children’s lives.
What does a day in your life look like?
When in the office, I spend time opening my post, which consists of lots of children’s books! My colleague and I look through them and decide which ones we might review in the next few months. I often have meetings with publishers, who tell us about their forthcoming titles. I also meet with colleagues to discuss various projects, for instance our planned webinar on the well-being benefits of reading, which is aimed at primary school teachers. I read books and write reviews of them. For our website
and social media channels, I compile booklists on themes, for instance, books that feature fostered characters or books that will improve babies’ fine motor skills. I email publicists about other book content too, like articles by authors or competitions. I am busy and happy, surrounded by books!
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
Before I moved to BookTrust, I was a children’s books editor for over 20 years, and I worked with lots of amazing authors and illustrators. One highlight of many is that I have been to both Julia Donaldson’s and Axel Scheffler’s houses! (They created The Gruffalo, and many other brilliant picture books).
Emma Dodd
Author, Illustrator and Artist
Emma was brought up in a family of artists and from as far back as she can remember she has wanted to be an illustrator. I Love My Mummy, written by Giles Andreae and illustrated by Emma, won the BookTrust Best Book For Babies award in 2010. Among Emma’s favourite things in life are surfing with her kids, punctuality and Scrabble. Things she cannot abide include heights, paté and children who complain that they are bored. ‘How can you ever be bored,’ she says, ‘when you can always draw a picture?’
Imogen Howse
Journalist
What is the best thing about your job?
I would say it is a combination of things. Firstly, I love that I spend most of my time writing. I grew up loving words, with English Lit as my favourite subject, so I really appreciate the fact that I get to do that for work. I also enjoy spending my time speaking to a range of different people about their life experiences - and helping share their story. But mostly, as clichéd as it sounds, I love it when something I have written makes a difference. Sometimes, this is just because an interviewee finds comfort or strength in having shared their story. But on other occasions, there have been tangible changes. One article I wrote helped stop a woman being wrongfully deported, another piece pushed the Met Police to review a rape victim’s case, and a third prompted a reader to get unusual symptoms checked - leading to an early (and therefore treatable) cancer diagnosis.
What does a day in your life look like?
What is fun about my job at the moment is there is no typical ‘day in the life’ - every working day is different. What I am doing depends on the news - and that can change pretty quickly. One day I will be in court reporting on a kidnapping trial and the next day I will be out chatting to locals about their thoughts on a third Heathrow
runway. Sometimes, in the morning I will be working from home - interviewing people about an animal rights petition they have launched or writing up a press release about a recent scientific breakthrough - and in the afternoon I am rushing out to a crime scene. It is definitely tiring - but it keeps things interesting!
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
My first career highlight was getting nominated for the Rising Star Award at the 2023 AOP Digital Publishing Awards. It was so exciting to be recognised - and to feel like I was getting somewhere! More recently, I was really proud to be featured in an ITN documentary called Cops Gone Rogue, which airs in February. The team asked me to feature as an ‘expert’ in one of the episodes following my extensive reporting on misconduct within the Met Police. My role was to describe the case of a specific police officer and offer some insight into how he slipped through vetting procedures.
Isla Van Tricht
Theatre, TV and Games Playwright
What is the best thing about your job?
This is a tricky question to answer without sounding, honestly, a bit smug or earnest but...there are so many ‘best things’ about my job. It is a difficult road but it is joyful, as well as challenging, to do something you love for a living. One of my favourite ‘best things’ is the necessity of being in a near-constant state of learning and discovery; researching fascinating people, stories, worlds etc. I get to go to the theatre, or cinema, or watch TV or read books, plays and articles, and it is all part of the job. I get to collaborate with interesting creative people to bring stories to life. And sometimes I get to go to some superb places too (backstage at London Fashion Week, the archives of a legendary Parisian cabaret club, on set in Rome...etc). But the best thing, really, is telling stories I want to tell and making a living from it.
What does a day in your life look like?
Being a freelance writer means few of my working days look alike. Mostly I work from home at my desk (this work includes writing tasks but also admin, emails, Zoom meetings, calls etc) but I also often have meetings in person in different parts of London. I also sometimes travel to work with collaborators in person to develop a project I am writing (most recently with a director on one project in Milan and
then earlier last year on a different film project working with a producer in LA) which usually means long days cooped up in production offices generating ideas in collaboration. If I am working on a play in development it may mean attending rehearsals or workshops with actors, a director and any other collaborators. Every Friday I write a schedule for myself, including writing projects broken down into tasks, for the week ahead which helps me keep on track juggling multiple projects in various phases.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
To stay sane in this business, with the routine amount of rejection, I think it is important to celebrate the little wins as much as the big ones. That caveat said, two career highlights are: having one of my plays produced off-Broadway in New York; my first time on set, watching actors speaking lines I had written. Both surreal. A personal highlight: meeting Olivia Coleman at a Christmas party.
May Fawzy
Director of Interior Architecture, MF Design Studio
President of the British Institute of Interior Design Board Director in the European Council of Interior Architects
What is the best thing about your job?
Every day is different, there are so many facets to the job, and no two days are the same. You get to meet great people, you get to be creative and you also work with builders and contractors. And one of the best highlights is you get to walk your design, which is the most rewarding experience of all.
What does a day in your life look like?
Although every day can be different, a typical day would start in the office with a meeting with the team, then I would have a series of meetings to attend, which vary from client meetings, site visits, business development meetings and sometimes pitches.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
Winning the first design award for my studio is one. Being appointed as the president of the British Institute of Interior Design and following from that, I am currently a Board Director in the European Council of Interior Architects.
Dawn Potter
Senior Design Manager
What is the best thing about your job?
Overbury are workplace fit out contractors and my role is to lead design and oversee the implementation of design in the construction of projects. The impact of what we create is cyclical, if people feel happy in their workspace then their output is better, their mental health and overall wellbeing is much improved too. That means the business they work for benefits, invests more in their staff and people feel more valued. That value then goes home to their family and friends, when people feel invested in and valued the consequences are far reaching. To have a small role within that process is an absolute privilege!
What does a day in your life look like?
No day is the same. I work across office locations, and on a lot on building sites. I am responsible for identifying what design team meetings and coordination meetings are required to ensure we are developing design alongside construction programmes. Making sure the right people are in a room to answer questions and solve problems. That can look like a meeting with three people or a meeting with as many as twenty people. A huge part of my job is to understand the detail of a project and ensure any challenges are resolved, communicated and resolved positively.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
Last year I completed a project for a global brand company, it was a hard project with many complexities and possibly the biggest career challenge I have faced. We completed the project successfully and left the project. The client invited us back to see how the building was operating seven months later. Whilst we were walking around meeting staff and seeing the workspace, a member of the client’s staff approached me and asked me if I was one of the designers. He told me that for years he had avoided coming to work in the office and worked from home at every opportunity, however since the project was finished he had come to work every day, that he had never been happier at work and he felt so much happier at home too. I don’t think I had processed the impact of our output properly until that point, I was really grateful that he shared such a personal story with me and felt proud that I was part of a team who turned his life around.
Sara Waterfield
Architect
What is the best thing about your job?
Designing a really clever solution for a client’s building problem, and seeing their delight when you explain it to them and then deliver it for them. Going onto site and seeing your idea become reality.
What does a day in your life look like?
Very varied! Emails, phonecalls, briefing staff members and/or answering their queries, checking work completed by others, marking-up drawings, writing minutes, reports etc., sketching and designing (if I am lucky!), client meetings, site visits, new project visits, fee quotes, HR issues…
Today I answered emails, ran a staff briefing meeting, had a Teams call with a client to talk through their planning application, answered staff queries, wrote a fee quote, went to site, chaired a site meeting, wrote a briefing note on a site issue, chose colours for finishes for the job on site and emailed these to the contractor, spoke to a QS on the phone, checked some fitted furniture drawings, answered more emails.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
Being recommended to be included in a limited design competition for a new secondary school.
Dan Fox
Director of Guildford Hockey Club
What is the best thing about your job?
I have the autonomy to make decisions that impact people’s dayto-day experience in a positive way. At Guildford Hockey Club people’s reasons for being involved are closely aligned (they want to enjoy playing, coaching, umpiring, administering hockey) which allows the club as a whole to be innovative and open to new ideas.
What does a day in your life look like?
From September to April, on four weekdays I work from home, along with three weekday evenings. On weekends, I work for 5-6 hours each day, sometimes more with travel. From May to August the workload is less substantial, with a similar amount of time working from home, but fewer evenings and less weekend activity.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
Guildford Hockey Club being recognised as England Hockey’s Club of the Year in 2023 for its work within the club and as part of the community.
Lisa Parfitt
Co-Founder of Sports Marketing Agency
The Space Between
What is the best thing about your job?
Being able to talk, watch, follow and read about sport for my job.
What does a day in your life look like?
Collaborating with creatives, marketing strategists and producers. Responding to client briefs with creative proposals and new ideas to promote their brands in sport. Currently I am working on a brief to promote women’s cricket, a brief for a campaign for Xero and the Lionesses, and a social media campaign for Sky Sports to promote the British & Irish Lions Tour. All while running the daily operations of our business
- managing our P&L, resourcing, culture & people strategy and the marketing for the agency.
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
Being interviewed by Kirsty Wark on Newsnight covering the growth of women’s sport during the Women’s Euros 2022.
Vicki Sparks
Football
Commentator
What is the best thing about your job?
The absurd privilege of being paid to do something I absolutely adore!
What does a day in your life look like?
Most of my week is taken up by match prep, which is essentially exam revision but with footballers instead of a history textbook! The actual matchday is the fun part though - arrive at the ground three hours early, potentially do interviews with managers and players or a live insert into Football Focus / Final Score, commentate on the game (with pre-match build up if it is a radio commentary), then often post-match
interviews, and then home to listen back or watch back on Match of the Day to assess how I did!
Do you have a career or personal highlight?
It has to be commentating for BBC Radio 5 Live as the Lionesses won their first major trophy - beating Germany at Wembley to become European Champions in 2022. It was one of the most nerve-wracking, exhilarating, wonderful moments of my life - and to have the honour and privilege of calling it home is something I will cherish forever.
