World Equal MagBook Spring/Summer 2023

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Nurture Nature N.I.

Natural Intelligence Natural Intelligence speaks every day A leaf can turn sunlight into oxygen for play!

Artificial Intelligence may move very fast But it never will feel the speed of our past...

Photography Shelley Rodgers Creative Designer Corinne O' Neill Makeup & Hair Mary Louise Mc Combe WorldEqual_Final_3mmBleed_Outlines.indd 3

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World Equal ® The publisher of World Equal Magbook takes responsibility for the accuracy but not any inaccuracies of the content placed in its publications. For the avoidance of doubt, World Equal Magazine gives no warranty or guarantee in regard to any information placed in this publication. This publication is proudly designed by worldequal.com Contributors: Teddy Hayes - Skyler Jett - Mourneprints - WMC Construction

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Contents Nurture Nature with Natural Intelligence (N.I.)......................................3 Introduction......................................................................................................................6 World Equal - Team...................................................................................................7 Stephen Garrett - Film Producer Extraordinaire............................10 Karla Gordy Bristol - Motown Family Dynasty................................23 Ed Fielding - Photography.................................................................................36 Jasmine Carey - Leather Artist........................................................................48 Getrude Matshe...........................................................................................................60 Richard Mc Closkey - Artist & Author....................................................68 The Minnows - Band Interview......................................................................78 Nurture Nature with Natural Intelligence (N.I.)..................................88 Genevieve Goings - Singer & Disney Voice Over..........................90

James Lee Taylor - Entertainment Entrepreneur..........................100 Mary Ginnefer - Stylist.......................................................................................108 Ayo Onatade - Author..........................................................................................110 Nurture Nature with Natural Intelligence (N.I)....................................114 Barry Perkins - Business Entrepreneur.................................................116 Marinalva de Almeida - Athlete of Inspiration................................124 AVA J Holmes..............................................................................................................128 World Food Programme....................................................................................138 Nurture Nature with Natural Intelligence (N.I.).................................148

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Welcome back Have you a thirst for

knowledge, creativity and the business side of the arts?

This third edition of World Equal Magbook 2023, has a bounty of excellent stories, experiences and colours to broaden your horizons. If you, like us, have an interest in learning how the creative arts and business worlds tick and click together then look no further and dive in. Some of the best movers in the creative industry of film, music, theatre and life in general share their journeys on how they got involved in their respective careers and how they’ve learned to navigate and succeed in them.

Our front cover is Stephen Garrett, a British film producer extraordinaire - Salmon Fishing In The Yemen 2011, Spooks 2015. Inside Stephen gives us an incredible insight into the inner workings of how a movie or TV series begins from a seedling idea to a completed project and the mammoth task that a producer must bear on their shoulders from start to finish. For those with an interest in films and storytelling and who want to move in bigger ways in bigger circles, strap in as it’s no easy task, Stephen will teach you what the word courage, belief and endurance means.

We interview gatekeepers to the highest musical people of Motown as Karla Gordy Bristol talks to us about the family business with the legendary founder of Motown, Berry Gordy, her work with Smokey Robinson and many more.

You will learn that in many cases in the world of arts, it can take a lot of failures before you become a success

Times are changing so fast in this modern world where convenience via A.I. technology is replacing traditional human thinking, elbow grease and human trial and error.

Take our James Lee Taylor story for example, a regular guy, who may never have learned professionally to play the guitar, drums, piano, or sing but loved music so much he played local DJ sets for £100 to £150 per night, then started getting up to £10,000 per night and offers into movies and now his business ENTERTAINERS is the leading UK tribute act provider selling almost a million tickets a year fresh out of a pandemic. James provides a huge amount of work for live singers, performers, instrument musicians and live bands all across the UK. We all love a good zero-to-hero, rags-toriches story and it is even better when it happens to someone with a job they actually enjoy within the arts.

James sounds like a fab boss in music and theatre.

We welcome back our like-minded friend, Grammy recognised singer-songwriter Skyler Jett and his team at Music For Global Change who have delivered fantastic interviews with singers who have worked with Disney and incredible leaders in business who are engaging in the commercial world of Cannabis, Music and Wellbeing, a future big boom industry to come.

As we end here on a high note (pardon the pun), check out the beautiful images throughout. As always World Equal delights in making our Magbook as nourishing to your eyes as it is for your mind, body & soul. We hope you enjoy it.

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even if sometimes by pure

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Digital creator photographer & World Equal Designs

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Corinne O'Neill Partner at World Equal ® Owner and Founder at musicforglobalchange.com Skyler Jett leads the way as the 'Global Messenger' in his quest to make the world a better place; with his musicforglobalchange.com platform as a driving force. This is done through songwriting, singing, and inspiring positive lyrical content within the genre of socially conscious music. He is an award-winning, Grammy Recognised vocalist and one of the most sought-after singersongwriters and vocal producers in the music industry today.

Skyler's impressive resume includes some of the biggest recording artists of our time. His accolades include receiving a Grammy Award embossed plaque from NARAS for singing with Celine Dion on her Grammy-winning hit song My Heart Will Go On, adapted from James Cameron's blockbuster hit film Titanic. This was also record of the year (1998) and is still the highest- grossing movie theme song of all time. Prior to this Skyler succeeded in becoming the new front-man for The Commodores after Lionel Ritchie's departure.

Assistant Editor & Graphic Designer at World Equal.

Owner & Founder at Mourneprints.com Corinne O'Neill is an artist with over fifteen years of experience in metal smithing, embroidery textiles, drawing, painting & digital art /graphic design.

She runs and owns her company mourneprints.com which specializes in personalized clothing and gifts.

From digitizing embroidery of her own artwork, she runs a popular stall at the famous St Georges Market in Belfast City Northern Ireland nearing ten years.

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Who's Running The Show ?

Stephen Garrett:

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Stephen Garrett has produced for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky, Amazon and Netflix. He founded the production company Kudos, for a long time the UK’s leading drama producer, and is best known for turning out such programs as long-running BBC dramas like Spooks, Life on Mars and Hustle, as well as films and series such as Law and Order U.K, Ashes To Ashes, Eastern Promises, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Kudos also produced The Tunnel, Humans, Broadchurch, Grantchester, Apple Tree Yard and Utopia. In 2006, Kudos was bought by Elisabeth Murdoch’s Shine TV for £35m. Not satisfied with just being an exproducer and resting on his laurels, in 2014 Garrett started a new company called Character Seven and continued making series like The Night Manager based on John le Carre’s bestselling novel, The Rook (for Lionsgate and Starz) and HBO’s The Undoing, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. Stephen Garrett is currently in the final stages of post-production on his latest piece, CULPRITS, a thriller for Disney and directed and written by J Blakeson starring Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Gemma Arterton and Eddie Izzard.”

In addition, he returned to his university at Oxford to give a series of media lectures which offer insights into his approach and understanding of creating characters for a drama series. World Equal digs deeper into the mind behind the magic in an interview with Stephen by Teddy Hayes.

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Interview by Teddy Hayes

The current internet streaming culture means that now a myriad of film and TV production companies are turning out programs in greater numbers than ever before.

These programs are international via the internet and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon; they can be seen and talked about all across the globe in a way that was never before possible. When viewers see the programs, they tend to focus on the obvious people, on the front lines, mainly the actors who star on those programs. And sometimes if the series is popular enough, maybe the writer if the series was based on a best-selling book or even the director.

Rarely however is the focus on the people who make the process happen. I’m talking about the people who might have the idea for a program, pitch it and sell it, organize the production, which includes hiring the cast and then nursing the project through the post production process where a big part of the look and feel of a project is decided in the editing room when they add music and texture and then finally working to market it to the public. That is why I thought it would be interesting and enlightening to talk directly with Stephen Garrett, who is one of the most successful executive producers in British history. Stephen has produced programs that have become household names and has a series of hit programs and films at least as long as your arm, (and both legs too!) making him one of the most successful producers in the history of the genre.

Teddy Hayes: Stephen, you mentioned in your Oxford Lectures that when you started your first production company Kudos, it almost went out of business twice.

What was your plan that kept you in the game?

Stephen Garrett: I think a lot of people are like that,

whether as a creative or somebody starting a new tech firm, they’re being very brave and consciously taking risky decisions. I think the great thing about doing what I did early on when setting up Kudos which was my first company, is that you're kind of naive, you know, you have the enthusiasm of the young and incredible optimism, and maybe an utterly full sense of your own talent and skill. So you kind of naïvely go into this, just hoping, praying, assuming it’s all going to work out, but I think that confidence takes you over the edge.

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You mentioned to me those great books that sort of underpinned the film The Sting, and again I don’t mean this in any criminal sense but as a confidence trick, I think confidence is contagious, and if you appear to be confident, you create a belief around yourself. That can be, you know, in the wrong hands, that can look and feel nauseating and be really annoying and brash, but I think if you just are quietly confident and not arrogant about it, that can propel you and those around you into battle, and you stand the chance of winning against all the odds.

I remember an early boss of mine was Michael Grade who ran Channel 4, ran the BBC, and had almost every senior job in television that it's possible to imagine. He was my overall boss when I was a commissioning editor at Channel 4. I remember he came in early one morning, it was an open-plan office and there was just my immediate boss and me, and he was puffing a cigar in the days when you were still allowed to smoke in offices. My boss who also was responsible overall for entertainment but also some acquisitions was watching the pilot of an American show that was starting to appear in the States, quite a low budget, with a very cool indie vibe to it, called The Street. It just had two cops in a car, parked in a street talking. My boss had just started watching it and Michael Grade came in and said, “What are you doing?” My boss explained he was watching it just to see whether it was something he thought that the channel should buy, and Grade pulled the cigar out of his mouth and pointed to him and said, “Buy it.” He literally had watched it for five seconds.

My boss quite understandably said, “Well, yeah, I thought I’d, you know, get to the end, it’s only a half-hour show, I’ll just watch it for another 25 minutes,” and Grade said, “Pick up the phone, call them, buy it.”

That characterized the way he operated, and it was very interesting to watch him because of course, he had no idea how good the show was. I mean you couldn't tell with that short a viewing, but he trusted his instincts. He also worked out that to be a successful leader, you need to appear to be decisive. That means actually making decisions quite quickly, and he also realized that quick decisions are usually no worse than slow decisions, so you might as well make them quickly and at least you save people a lot of time. So, I think that was quite an important lesson and one of those manifestations of confidence. When you feel like the end is nigh, you sort of have no option but to carry on, and you can do that looking

like you're drowning, or like the poem goes, looking like you’re waving, if you look like you're waving then you stand a chance at persuading people you're waving and everything’s going to be hunky-dory.

Teddy Hayes: At one point during your career, you worked for Channel 4 as a commissioning editor. What is the difference in approach, as opposed to being an independent producer?

Stephen Garrett: I think it’s a bit like the difference

between journalists and newspaper editors. They're two very different skills and both can be done really well or really badly. As a commissioning editor, I think you're a bit more detached from the process, you have a sort of helicopter view, and that’s good and bad. The good of it is that when producers and the team around the creative enterprise have been immersed in a project for weeks, months, or years in some cases you really sometimes can't see the wood for the trees and a smart commissioning editor can come in and give really great advice about the script development process or a cut or a piece of music because you're so close to it, as a creator, you can't see that and you’ve lost the ability to have that level of detachment.

A great editor can come in and really help shape materials and shape the story collaboratively. Their value is actually in not being so close to the material.

For my part, having been a commissioning editor and TV executive and now as a producer, I found it very frustrating because I like being there at the beginning and I like having those early creative conversations. Inevitably when you are a commissioning editor, people are coming to you with something that’s already partly formed, in some cases fully formed or nearly fully formed, and I found that depressing, that’s just not what worked for me. You know, I think we’re all different versions of a control freak and my manifestation of control freakery is to need to be there at the beginning and to kind of have that relationship with the writer or director or creative team and knowing that you were there as those early kind of idea bubbles started to ferment.

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Teddy Hayes: You hired Robert Vaughn for Hustle,

and you told me before, he was not really the first choice for the BBC, but the way things worked out, he got the part anyway.

Stephen Garrett: Well, for Hustle, Robert Vaughn was our first choice, and again, it happened. I’m very drawn to the role that luck, chance and randomness plays in these things.

We were looking to cast the Hustle gang, and needed what we called a kind of good old boy for the makeup of the team, some grizzled old guy who had a history in the con game world in a way that would be eclectic and complementary. I happened to have lunch with an old friend of mine who was a veteran agent called Jean Diamond, and she had a collection of clients all of whom were, I think I’m not doing her a disservice, there wasn’t a single client under 60. She’d kind of grown up with this amazing collection of people and represented, among others, Liv Ullmann. And she was delightful to have lunch with and she’d always talk about her list of clients and say, “have you got anything for this one for that one… '' and then she mentioned Robert Vaughn. And I’m old enough to have grown up with The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and I suppose if you asked me what are the shows that inspired me to do what I do, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. would be up there. So Robert Vaughn was my hero, I wanted to be Napoleon Solo which was the character he played. So, when Jean mentioned him, I thought, wow, this is just too perfect, he’d be brilliant in the role, how cool, how amazing, what a coup for the BBC, what a coup for us, and I get to meet one of my heroes. And we pitched the idea to the BBC, all of us very excited. And the BBC said, “you know what, we are the British Broadcasting Corporation, our British audiences do not want to see Americans as lead characters in their shows, they just don’t,” And they vetoed it. And so we ended up with a relatively high profile, long in the tooth British actor who was a very good actor, nothing like as famous and iconic as Robert Vaughn, but perfectly decent.

But that actor failed his medical three days before we started shooting, so sheepishly we approached Robert Vaughn again. It was obviously embarrassing to approach him so late in the day because it was clear he was replacing someone but the BBC had no option but to go with him.

And when the show was launched to the press, every headline, every single headline said “The Man from U.N.C.L.E. returns to the BBC” and I’ve absolutely no doubt in my mind that one of the reasons Hustle was successful, very successful, apart from the fact it’s really good, is that we got all that press and we got all that press initially because of Robert.

Teddy Hayes: The term show-runner is one that you hear around a lot these days, connected with people who pitch and plan, and produce shows for companies like Netflix and Amazon. For most people who have not met one in the flesh, a show-runner is still a kind of mystical character.

People hear the word thrown around, but if you’ve not worked in television or films, most people don’t know what that means or what a show-runner does.

Stephen Garrett: Well, to be clear, we have very different

models in the UK and US, and my credit has never been and never will be show-runner, my credit is executive producer. In America the show runner tends to be the lead writer, often the writer who has come up with the idea or the writer who has been brought in by a team or a studio to drive the writer’s room and creatively reside over the whole project. But in the UK, the producer was king or God, not the writer. And so, we evolved the tradition of the nonwriting show runner. So, I suppose, that’s what I’ve been, the non-writing show runner. And that’s the role I’ve had in many of the shows I worked on. You are the chief alchemist because the whole thing is a kind of alchemical process and you're casting this team of people.

You might have an idea or buy the rights to a book as a producer, and your first step then is to decide who’s the writer you want to make this come alive, then the director, then the cast. You're the person making those decisions, you're the person hiring all those people but to say that you're hiring people makes it sound rather mechanistic.

There is a kind of, if you get it right, a kind of magic or alchemy that takes place because you're wanting to bring together a team of people who will add up to more than the sum of their parts. So at your best as a show runner,

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whether you're writing or not, you're a kind of magician and you have some understanding of the spells that you cast.

You're never sure whether they’re going to work, you mean well, you hope your spells are benign, but you kind of see what happens.

We have this great day in the UK, called Guy Fawkes Day or Fireworks Day, November the 5th, where we celebrate the man who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. And I remember on Firework Day you would see the rockets, that had this warning which said “Light the blue touch paper and retire.” And I think as a show runner, you assemble the firework, you put all these bits together and you light the blue touch paper, and then you see what happens, and hopefully you get the sort of fabulous magical explosion in the sky, or it’ll just fizzle out and disappear without a trace and I’ve done that too.

Teddy Hayes: In your first time as a show-runner, what were some of the biggest surprises you encountered?

Stephen Garrett: I don’t even know which I would characterize as my first show as a show-runner because you kind of evolve into the role. I think the show which I’m most proud was The Night Manager where I joined forces very early on with The Ink Factory who were part of John le Carré’s family, and they trusted me with that project to drive it forward. And so, my first act there was to bring in the director Susanne Bier who at that point had only made movies. I’d been a huge fan of her movies, a lot of them very kind of indie depressing Scandinavian movies, very brilliant.

She won an Academy Award for best foreign film, but she recently had made an American movie, a Hollywood movie that hadn’t worked out, probably through no fault of her own, but what happens is, you know, we have an expression which I’m sure you're familiar with, she was in “director jail”. She’d made this one movie that had tanked and was perceived to be not good. So, she was more available than she might have been. I’d always been a fan. And I just thought because le Carré created in The Night Manager a

very quintessentially British, rather old fashioned, very male world; that to have a female non British director would be an interesting, again, alchemical mix. And so, that began a process, you know, with me I suppose in that role as a non-writing show runner where you start to bring together different talents and watch the magic happen.

And, you know, in all honesty, we obviously set out to make The Night Manager as brilliant as it could be and it was just one of those projects where as we filmed and as we then started the post-production process, the editing, you just got a kind of tingle in your spine, it just felt special, and as a show runner, all you’ve done is to bring these elements together, and as I say, hope that something magical is going to happen, and it really did that time.

Teddy Hayes: I remember watching that show and Hugh Laurie was, to me, what made the show really work. I thought because he was such a charming character as well as such a bastard; that the ambiguity of the character made it work.

Stephen Garrett: I can take no credit for Hugh though I’d love to. You may remember, he was described by people in the show as the worst man in the world, but we wanted the worst man in the world to be so charming and so lovable that however badly he behaved, you still wanted to sit next to him at dinner.

Teddy Hayes: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Stephen Garrett: Hugh, interestingly, had been a lifelong

John le Carré fan, still is. He’d actually tried to buy the rights to the book when it came out from 25 years before, and Hollywood got there first. So, he was obsessed with that and, you know, him coming in was pushing against an open door.

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Teddy Hayes: Yeah, it was very interesting because I think I saw The Night Manager as a streaming show and you’ve been involved with streaming for a while, how was it in the beginning, streaming—working with a streaming company as opposed to how it might be now?

Stephen Garrett: I think streaming kind of crept up on us all because if you take The Night Manager, we were working a co-production essentially between the BBC in the UK and AMC in the States, neither of which were streamers; but it ended up on a streamer because Amazon bought the second window in the States, and I think probably the vast majority of Americans saw it on Amazon as a streaming show. If you watched it on AMC, you had seven commercial breaks in each episode. On the BBC, obviously, no commercial breaks.

But for me, what the streamers have done, is to make what used to be impossible, the untellable stories have become not just tell-able but gold dust. And that for me as someone who just wants to tell great stories is the most thrilling side of it because of course, they needed from the get-go to differentiate themselves from the terrestrial broadcasters. I think my favorite example really is Amazon commissioned Transparent. If you remember, that was about a man in late middle age who comes out to his family as someone who wants to change his gender, so daddy wants to become mummy to a big family. And there’s no doubt in my mind that before the streamers, you would not have got arrested with that idea. It’s one of the shows that differentiated a streaming show from a terrestrial show, and was a huge success and was very brilliant and rightly one that surprises from the get-go. So, it blazed a trail for really left-field ideas.

And suddenly, all those things that you wouldn't necessarily pitch to broadcasters, you could go, oh wow, this is special, this is different, this is interesting, this can bring new audiences, this is perfect for a streamer, and that goes on.

Teddy Hayes: Because you’ve been in the business a long time, you’ve seen many changes, and being a creative person, you may see ways in which streaming companies can change their model and do things differently in future and maybe even better. What would you like to see happen with shows that make it to streaming the future?

Stephen Garrett: I’m not sure, I think in a way they need

to not change, they need to be their best selves. And by that I mean, the shows that have really punched through have been really bold commissioning decisions, and I think what they need to do is to go on in the face of insane competition and escalating prices, just go on taking risks and trusting the instincts of creative people.

I think it’s tough when you're working for a streamer or broadcaster because when you green light something, you're committing tens of millions of dollars to a project, and it’s not your money and you've got a boss and they’ve got a boss who’s scrutinizing you, and you make one decision that looks like a turkey, and, you know, the world comes down upon your head. I remember again in the early days of Channel 4, before I got there, the man who created it said that the mantra of Channel 4 is the right to fail, those words were actually on the wall, and I think it’s really important that broadcasters and streamers and particularly their commissioning executives encourage the right to fail. Not obviously if everything’s failing, because then you’ve got a problem; but you know, you don’t get those big bold breakthrough shows unless you take bonkers risks and you’ve just got to go on taking bonkers risks. And they’ve done it and they just need to go on doing it and not go back to the days when that wasn’t the case and that was one of the reasons that terrestrial TV suffered. Going back to when Spooks was our first show for Kudos, we kind of broke the mold with that because TV was full of shows about doctors, lawyers and cops, and you couldn't break out of those precincts. But Spooks was a very early one that showed you can, there were different places to play, and audiences were really open to that. And the danger is if the streamers go backwards and start to try and play safe bets, they’ll die.

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Teddy Hayes: When I worked in New York, we used to

hear so much about people making the right wrong decision. For example if an actor has been successful in many films, the traditional thinking among most media executives would be, “let’s get this actor” even though the actor may be totally wrong for the part. The thinking behind this kind of decision making is even if the project fails because the actor had a track record of success, then the decision to hire the successful actor would have been the right one and the executive wouldn’t get fired, however if the exec chose someone who was much more suitable, and the project didn’t work, then of they could get fired because the traditional thinkers would have said the executive had made the wrong decision and should have chosen the successful actor for the part. And streaming, it seems, has kind of challenged that kind of decision making, because like you say, streaming is a different format and you can get into something over six, seven, ten episodes and bring the character out, which again gives the actor much more freedom and chance to develop and show what they can do, but in a two-hour film, it’s not going to

It’s not so long ago that with terrestrial broadcasting, if you missed the show and your VCR didn’t work, that was it.

You know, this means that you're never getting that back and you just gave up. Obviously, DVD’s changed that a bit and actually DVDs were fantastic for independent producers because of course people did miss an episode and then thought, oh fuck it, I’ll buy the box-set. But what the streamers have now is the ability to be there on demand, therefore word can spread. So something can actually have quite a soft launch, and can seemingly disappear, and then you find that everyone you meet is saying, “hey, have you seen this or that?” And so you go find it. You know, I’ve actually been out hearing people next to you on the street talking about a list of shows and saying these are the things you’ve got to watch. And I’m only watching them because I’ve been triangulated by two or three friends and I’m going, okay, now I know I need to watch this. And it’s just sitting there waiting on your demand, and it’s great.

happen.

Stephen Garrett: I think the right/wrong decision, the wrong/right decision, they're both two sides of the same coin. And I think you're right, I think again because it’s so expensive and everything needs to market its way into a place where audiences can't avoid it, the pressure is on to have very high profile stars because otherwise, how do you differentiate yourself from all those other shows that seemed to be launching at the same time. But, again, I think some of the great successes on the streaming platforms have been with shows that don’t have necessarily very high profile casts. And you look at one of the very early ones which was The Crown, there was no one particularly famous initially in that. Of course, you could argue that the fame was brought to you by the subject of the story namely, the former Queen Elizabeth, but I think the other great thing that the streamers had in the trail they blazed was just being able to sit there, so word had time to spread.

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Teddy Hayes: It was like that for me and The Wire because I saw the first episode and I’m like, meh, but by the time I got to the third episode, I was hooked. And because it allowed me to get into the characters to see the subtleties, the ambiguities which you spoke about in your lectures.

And because as a writer, I’m a big one for ambiguity in the writing. Because we are all a combination of supposedly logical things and also, the emotional things, which seemed to take up a whole lot more space than people are willing to admit. And they often try to wrap them into a nice logical framework because that makes them feel good. It’s almost like stereotyping, and I find when you deal with people, people are so complex and those complex aspects in people’s characters, may punch through at any time, which surprises you. And if you're telling a story with that kind of character, it surprises the audience as well.

Now with new producers, and I’m sure you work with guys who are looking at your seat and saying, hey, (chuckles) in five years, I want to be in that seat, what would you tell new producers about getting into the game, some things that they may take on as words of wisdom or something that they may do to help them avoid stepping into that huge pile of shit and frustration that any producer is bound to encounter?

Stephen Garrett: I think there are so many things. I think

that you can't beat experience, the wisdom that comes from that, and there's something to be said for, you know, growing older is obviously frowned upon in many circles but actually, that can be a good thing because like blotting paper you just absorb stuff if you're listening. But I think the old adage, surround yourself with people smarter than yourself. There's nothing wrong with smart people, they're not threatening to you, they can only add value, and you can learn from them. And I think the other thing is you never stop learning. Don’t ever think you stop learning and if a day passes where you haven't learned something, it’s gone wrong. So, just always be open to that. And there's no idea, no approach that can't be improved. I think a lot of people through insecurity, lack of self-confidence, close themselves down to other people’s ideas, and the great thing is to be able to differentiate between those ideas that will add value to what you're doing and those that won't. If it’s going to add value then why not embrace it?

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Teddy Hayes: You’ve pitched a lot of things, some of

which were accepted, and obviously some of which were not accepted. What have you learned about pitching?

Stephen Garrett: (chuckles) It’s fucking frustrating. t’s fucking frustrating.

Teddy Hayes: I understand that exactly, yes.

Stephen Garrett: Yeah, I guess, you know. You and I met when you pitched something to me, so I’m sure that was frustrating. But the difficulty is that I don’t have a huge slate, the Character Seven slate, maybe there's 10 or 12 projects which is quite small, and I try to make sure that everyone is loved equally, you know, they're like your children. But when you pitch, you just know the law of averages, and most of those ideas are not going to happen, ever. When I was a student, I trained to be a traveling salesman of stainless-steel cookware. I didn’t last very long, but I learned… I was taught—one of the things that kind of amused me and also depressed me was you were told that when you pitched your saucepans, you didn’t say, “So Mr Hayes, would you like to buy the set of very stupidly expensive saucepans?” Instead you said, “So Mr Hayes, would you like to pay for these saucepans now or over a sixmonth installment plan?” In other words, it’s called a double barreled ending.

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Teddy Hayes: Yeah, you assume that they're going to buy,

that’s the assumption it’s just a matter of how you're going to pay.

Stephen Garrett: Yeah. So they don’t have a choice.

Unfortunately, broadcasting streamers have all the power and they're completely free and usually do just say no to everything. So, I don’t think there's any particular skill. I do know there are some really smart, talented creative people, very brilliant, more often writers than producers, and that’s why the American model I find fascinating because they're often great writers who are terrible show runners. You know, they should just write. But as a producer, a part of your armory has to be the ability to sell But I think it’s tough because actually being in a room and selling an idea, it’s not always the best people who are doing that, and sometimes I think good ideas just don’t happen because they’ve not been presented in the room correctly and that’s a shame. So the model, it’s worse in the States where you do have to go in all singing and dancing, and again I know—I’ve show-runner friends who bring in wall posters and, PowerPoints and slides and, you know, dancing girls. And you know, as you pointed out, the British are a little more reticent so we take a slightly more subtle approach, and the more British way of, “Well, you know, we’ve got this idea,” “It’s okay, it’s quite interesting.” Is obviously that’s not going to get your foot in the door. But what you really want to do in the pitch is just get someone interested enough to read a script. Now, we develop scripts. We used to go to a broadcaster and take their money and develop scripts. Now we fund that development ourselves. And so, you're really saying, “Here are the scripts I want you to read, I’m not expecting you to read all of them but of my three or four projects, I’m pitching it to you today, which of these scripts do you want to read?” So that’s the sort of double barrel ending, it’s very hard for them to say no, I won't read any of them. In the early days, I remember the career’s advice I got was not to write to people to ask them for a job but to say, “Can I come and see you for some advice?”

Because it’s really mean if you're relatively elevated in the industry and you say, “No, I will not give you tragic young person any advice,” that just is mean, and people do it but it’s hard. So, you want to get people excited enough to say, “I’ll read the script,” and then the script hopefully can do the talking.

Teddy Hayes: Thank you so much. It’s been an honor and a privilege. And aside from that, it’s been very interesting, Stephen Garrett: Teddy, thank you so much. I’m very grateful.

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Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

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The Rook

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My past interviews have included highly acclaimed individuals, Mayor of Beverly Hills Lili Bosse, Smokey Robinson, Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire, Tata Vega, Freda Payne Nobel Prize Winner, Lou Ignarro, Authors, Dance Theater Directors, charitable organizations, artists and Prince protege Jill Jones.

Many guests have a connection to Beverly Hills, while others are celebrities who our community would enjoy. It would be a pleasure to do presenter work projects in the U.K. Karla Gordy Bristol

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Karla Gordy Bristol is the proud daughter of former Motown Records vice president, Iris Gordy, and the late Johnny Bristol, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, producer, and singer; and the great-niece of Motown founder Berry Gordy. Having been raised within a family environment of extensively rich musical wonderment which has had a profoundly positive effect on the lives of millions of people all around the world, it makes it tremendously special for World Equal to be welcomed by the warm wings of Karla's kindness. A very special interview between Teddy Hayes and Karla Gordy Bristol will take you into the heart of her Motown family and the magic of Motown’s musical past present and future plans.

Teddy Hayes: You grew up as part of the Motown family which was a very successful-oriented family, how do you think that shaped you as a person with respect to your goals and outlook on life?

Karla Gordy Bristol: Actually, there's the Motown family, who hold an extremely unique bond of love and connection to each other through working together, and there's my Gordy family which led to the existence of a Motown family. Motown family is an extension of the family love, respect and support established by my

great grandparents, Bertha and Berry “Pops” Gordy, Sr. My mother, Iris Gordy and my father, Johnny Bristol were already a part of the illustrious Motown family through their work contributions to Hitsville U.S.A. and Motown Records, so I was doubly blessed times two…from my Gordy and Motown families and both of my parents music careers, making me a Legacy Motown family member.

This is the village that raised me, and oh what an active, fun and excitement-filled village it was! I didn’t realize it growing up, as I viewed everything and everyone around me as a normal life, though I was a very quiet yet observant child. So, to your specific question, the development of my life has been greatly impacted, nourished and subliminally guided, as a direct result of my family's influences. All of this shaped me to be confident and committed and to believe I can do anything. It caused me to be detail-oriented, to have a plan, and a team and to execute successfully.

Setting goals was a priority lesson for my family. It also instilled in me the belief that everyone has successful abilities, whether they realize it or not. Without planning to, I eventually became an employee at Motown Records, contributing to the company, for the final two years before my uncle Berry sold the company, which ironically placed me as a part of the Motown family on my own merits. And, best believe, I received many family lectures, words of advice, and witnessed extreme acts of kindness that remain with me today in how I handle my work.

I continue to love and appreciate my Gordy family, as well as the Motown family for loving and instilling priceless life gems into me, and the many who are still there for me today. All of those involved from the creation through to the sale of Motown in 1988, were executives, writers, producers, artists, musicians, staff, etc, who are true alumni of this magnificent global phenomenon.

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Teddy Hayes: What things are you most asked when people find out that you are a member of an iconic Gordy family and are there any misconceptions?

Teddy Hayes: You have used your background to create

Karla Gordy Bristol: After asking me how I'm related to

Karla Gordy Bristol: Creating and producing my Motown show has been my long-time developing project idea, which I'm so grateful to have premiered in Beverly Hills, California on October 1, 2022, which sold out in three weeks and had a waitlist of nearly 250 people. I initially envisioned my show would offer a direct relationship with the Motown family and an audience, providing a rare authentic experience and a history lesson from those who were there (Hitsville U.S.A. in Detroit, MI), Meanwhile celebrating my family legacy and Motown family. The real deal show is about, by and with actual Motown family members, sharing the early Motown experience. One that also highlights people who were a part of the Motown story, but may not be readily known, but who were impactful; unsung Motown family, their stories...I bring remarkable stories and music, a combination that is proven to be a unique, explosive and life-changing event experience for people to attend. It's my tangible Motown show, where guests have an opportunity to get the true history and ask questions directly to the Motown family in a more intimate venue of approximately 1,000 seats. I include special videos of Motown artists, producers, executives and writers, filmed and produced exclusively as a part of this show. I love and appreciate my Motown family dearly for their participation, in support of my show. That means a lot, especially because this show highlights their history. I understand and respect that there are Motown tribute shows out there.

My lens for developing this show is unique and special. My drive and passion are heartfelt and I hold my Motown family in high regard and true love. After years of putting this off, I had to launch it this year, as my uncle Berry Gordy is 93 and most of are Motown family in their 70s and 80s.

Life is to be celebrated and give flowers in person. I don't want fans to miss the opportunity to engage with them, and witness history in person, so yes, I had to create and launch this show and continue to take it to other venues, cities and counties, especially the U.K. who began showing Motown artists love early on and continue to do so.

Berry Gordy, people tend to go straight to asking me what it was like being around so many celebrities, especially Michael Jackson. For the record, my maternal grandfather, Fuller Berry Gordy is the elder brother of Berry Gordy.

People ask me if it was exciting growing up and express how it must have been so amazing being around Motown artists all the time. But, a large majority don't ask questions, as much as they rave about their love of Motown and what it meant to them and their parents, they share stories of the impact of Motown in their life, share favorite songs and express so much joy, praise, love and admiration, and even appreciation for what Motown has meant. It's emotional for me to hear their comments. It makes me feel proud and very humble for what my family gave to people. Some of their misconceptions are believing that being related to Berry Gordy and growing up around Motown artists and other celebrities is a big deal to me, when it's not. That's the life I knew from birth and the people they're talking about are either my actual family or Motown family to me, so no, their view of it is not mine. Another misconception is, I'm often told that they expected me to be snobby or stuck up, yet pleasantly view me as down to earth and engaging.

Again, I credit my loving family for instilling humanity and core values into me. It took a while for me to view the "fan perspective" from their lens. After years of not understanding why people "fans" would surround, crowd and scream for Motown artists, and sitting aside observing their behavior and actions, it was in high school, maybe 11th grade when I had a moment of, "Ah, I get why my friends act so excited." Then, I took the view of, how can I share my normal self with my friends who find it, in high school terms...freakin' amazing.

the Motown show, tell us a bit about the nature of the show, and why you created it.

lol so, I kept inviting them to concerts and events, which made them happy, so it made me feel good for them. Possibly that has something to do with why my life has been about making people happy.

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Teddy Hayes: When you approached the Motown legends to be a part of your show, what were their responses to being onstage and in the public eye after so many years?

Karla Gordy Bristol: I'm grateful and blessed to have had my Motown family say "Yes" to me when I called! Some were available in person, while others who were on the road took time to be filmed in our video participation segment. I don't take that lightly, as hey don't have to. They love me and I love them. Some are much more actively on the road performing, than others, so the response to participating

can be different. The response by those who may not perform as often was very happy to participate and grateful and it showed on stage as these professional talents were enjoying doing what they do best on stage, and the audience was completely engaged and lively.

They were pleased to celebrate Motown in this way.

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The mood backstage was truly Motown family love.

Coming off a Pandemic, most hadn't seen each other in over two years or more, so a lot of catching up and joy was had by our performers, speakers and hosts. Live on stage or via video participation, my 2022 premiere show included Smokey Robinson, Otis Williams (The Temptations), Duke Fakir (The Four Tops), Martha Reeves, Thelma Houston, Brenda Holloway, The Former Ladies of The Supremes, and others. Additional appearances included music arranger Paul Riser, Sr. and The Temptations’ long-time manager, Shelly Berger, and celebrity hosts.

Teddy Hayes: You recently staged this show at a venue in Beverly Hills California to a sell-out crowd. Was this response a surprise or not, and why?

Karla Gordy Bristol: I've produced many events, shows

and galas, but this was my first theatre venue show. I must express my thanks to my entire production team for their hard work. I knew I created a popular content show with unique elements, so I expected it to sell out. What I didn't expect was for it to sell out in about three weeks. What a blessing and true testament to this unique production, and of course the love of Motown. I don't think the venue expected a sell-out show, but they were highly pleased. It was their season kick-off show, so it brought a lot of attention to the theatre and its fall season. We were told by the venue that they had a waiting list of 220 people weeks before the show. By show day, that number had increased significantly. Many patrons were calling the venue demanding a second show. This was truly humbling. I did feel bad that we couldn't accommodate everyone, but clearly optimistic about what I created and looking forward to

Teddy Hayes: What kind of industry and business support were you able to get for your show?

Karla Gordy Bristol: Sponsors, supporters and/or

patrons are of course key to any production. I've been grateful and blessed to have received support on my projects, which have all been successful and enjoyed and remembered by many. That's key to me, producing something that positively impacts people, and they talk about their experience well beyond the event or show. That brings me joy. I always want my supporters to be pleased too. My launch of the Motown show was supported by The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Sony Music Publishing, The Berry Gordy Foundation For Truth and Justice and the many people who purchased tickets.

There was big community support. I remain so appreciative, thankful and grateful. It was my joy to thank them from the stage.

taking it to other venues. I wanted to launch the first show in my home city of Beverly Hills, and also support our local theatre.

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Teddy Hayes: What did you find was the most difficult part of producing the show?

Karla Gordy Bristol: Well, all projects need funding. It's always easier when funding is secured for pre-production.

In 2022, this was my first show, and funding was in place a bit later than planned. Motown The Musical was a production by my uncle Berry Gordy that was highly acclaimed and a huge success in the United States on Broadway, on tour and in the U.K., as you've mentioned. I absolutely loved the show. I attended the New York, Detroit and Los Angeles opening nights. I really wanted to attend the U.K. opening, but couldn't get away. Our show is called Motown: Celebrating the Music, the Magic, the Love. Motown is a global phenomenon filled with magical music and stories. Motown is the one line of communication that connects people all around the world through music. People of all cultures dance and sing together and know what Motown is. They love it. That makes it magical, and lasting for years and years.

Teddy Hayes: What is your vision for developing and expanding the show in the future?

Karla Gordy Bristol: I have tweaked parts of the show for the next production. The venue, city and other factors cause me to continue to create a variety of special elements for the show. All are wonderful. The Motown story is like a large tree with thousands of branches, each having its own sub-story. From the many hit songs to the many stories within Motown and the Motown family, my show is creatively and lovingly incorporating key elements, and doing it from an inside authentic view. The key vision remains as I explained earlier. I have several layouts on how my show will be expanded. I can't share that information though, just know it's pretty amazing.

Presently I am working with Alan Cutler Managing Director of Peel Entertainment who is my business representative in the UK. And he is talking to people in the entertainment business there, about bringing this show to the U.K.

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That's key to me, producing something that positively impacts people, and they talk about their experience well beyond the event or show. That brings me joy. I always want my supporters to be pleased too. My launch of the Motown show was supported by The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Sony Music Publishing, The Berry Gordy Foundation For Truth and Justice and the many people who purchased tickets.

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Teddy Hayes: Because you have so many famous iconic names involved, is there the possibility that this stage show could be recorded and streamed so that millions of people around the world could get to see your show?

Karla Gordy Bristol: That possibility is definitely on

the table for our future shows. We recorded our launch show for archive purposes.

Teddy Hayes: What do your great uncle Berry Gordy Jr,

and your mother Iris Gordy, think about your show? Have they passed any words of wisdom onto you?

Karla Gordy Bristol: I love and respect both of their opinions. They're each tough critics. Mom learned it from him. He hired her to his Quality Control Department in the earlier years, so...no pressure, right? I was very happy that my Uncle Berry attended. During that time, he wasn't attending most events. He was clapping, smiling and standing at many points during the show. I'm grateful for his continued support of my many projects and initiatives, especially this one. He always shares feedback. He is the best teacher and doesn't hold back his thoughts. He has shared many wise words and complimentary comments with me. I can't share most, but he's told me to be the best at whatever I do, when respected people speak high praises of you, it says a lot about you, volunteering is important, be 15 minutes early, not on time and he's also said to me to be proud of myself to be truly happy. I'm always grateful for my uncle's input. His pleasure in my work is a blessing. I invited my mother to be my Associate Producer of the show and one of the panellists, where she shared remarkable stories. She added so much knowledge and creative elements and even helped with script rewrites. She was definitely a proud mom throughout the production period, and on show day, she was very happy for me. She congratulated me and shared how proud she was of all that I accomplished on the show. She's looking forward to my next show, as many on the program have also stated, and I'm looking forward to it too.

Teddy Hayes: In addition to being the creator of the

Motown show, you are also a Commissioner of Arts and Culture for the city of Beverly Hills. Tell us a little about your role in this position, and how you came to this position.

Karla Gordy Bristol: A few years after Motown moved to

Los Angeles, CA, my mother was relocated to work for Motown there, so we moved to Beverly Hills. Having grown up here, I became involved in the city in a variety of ways over many years, leading up to my unanimous city council appointment to the Arts and Culture Commission in July of 2021, after applying for an open position along with nearly 100 applicants. The city commissions are advisory commissions. My commission helps the city make decisions on Art installations, the Fine Arts Fund, Arts and Culture initiatives and much more. A full term is six years. With my career background as a dance and singing performer, choreographer, TV Host, entertainment and event producer, and my work at Motown and Legacy, I'm honored to be a city commissioner of Arts and Culture. We just put on our first cultural festival, Festival Beverly Hills.

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Teddy Hayes: You have a relationship with the original studio where the hits of Motown were recorded in Detroit, how are you working with them with respect to your show?

Karla Gordy Bristol: The original Motown building is called Hitsville U.S.A. and still stands in Detroit, Michigan as Motown Museum. As my show highlights early Motown, this building was important to include, in addition to the fact that I fully support my family's legacy and Motown Museum, so this show was an opportunity to educate my audience on the meaning and impact of this small white and blue house to the Motown story. My cousin Robin Terry is CEO and is leading a multi-million dollar expansion project, carrying on the artefacts and history. I asked Robin to allow me to use the Hitsville house image as my logo, and she graciously agreed. We also filmed some of our show interviews at the museum of Martha Reeves, Paul Riser, Sr. and The Four Tops Duke Fakir, to further connect this house visually to my show. I'm grateful to these artists, my Motown family, and my cousin for saying "Yes", and being a part of my launch show. On another note, my Dad, Johnny Bristol produced many Motown hits there, and I believe he met my Mom, Iris Gordy, a former Motown executive and producer there.

Karla Gordy Bristol: After many years doing red carpet interviews, emceeing at beauty pageants and events, then seeing me as a host of a live television show for over a year, in 2017, the City of Beverly Hills city council unanimously approved to have me as a host for their local Beverly Hills View television talk show. In my segments of this show, I bring guests who entertain, enlighten, educate and inform the audience, while sharing their life journey to success. I'm still a host and last interviewed Otis Williams of The Temptations. We even discussed his recent U.K. visit and his play, "Ain't Too Proud" which is in the U.K. now. I'll be filming more shows soon. My past interviews have included highly acclaimed individuals, Mayor of Beverly Hills Lili Bosse, Smokey Robinson, Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire, Tata Vega, Freda Payne Nobel Prize Winner, Lou Ignarro, Authors, Dance Theater Directors, charitable organizations, artists and Prince protege Jill Jones. Many guests have a connection to Beverly Hills, while others are celebrities who our community would enjoy. It would be a pleasure to do presenter work projects in the U.K.

Teddy Hayes: You also host a TV show for Beverly Hills Television where you interview many guests, tell us a bit about this show.

Interview by author Teddy Hayes

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Once you get a solar panel on a roof, energy is free.

Once we convert our entire electricity grid to green and renewable energy cost of living goes down.

Elizabeth May

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Ella Eyre

Ed Fielding

edfielding.co.uk

Ed Fielding is a Pro Freelance Music Photographer who contributes to events work for the Harrogate Convention Centre and is the official photographer for Black Start Riders & Stiff Little Fingers.

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Ed photographs concerts and events mainly for magazines, editorials, advertising and for artists/bands for CD artwork. Ed’s work has been featured in Rocksound Magazine, NME.com and he is a contributor to World Equal Magazine, formally known as Equal Fashion Magazine.

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Paloma Faith

The Bootleg Beatles

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Emeli Sande

How is it that music can, without words, evoke our laughter, our fears, our highest aspirations?" – Jane Swan

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Roy Wood 39

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Placebo - Brian Molko

Where words fail, music speaks." – Hans Christian Andersen

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"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything." – Plato

Shed Seven - Paul Banks

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Go West - Peter Cox

Music is a language that doesn't speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it's in the bones, it's in the bones." – Keith Richards 42

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Nick Kershaw

Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can't." – Johnny Depp 43

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Father John Misty

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Music is the strongest form of magic."

Leo Sayer

Marilyn Manson

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Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked while

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the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind Bruce Lee

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Jasmine Carey

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Leather Artist

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Teddy Hayes: What inspired you to become a leather artist?

Jasmine: That is a long story!

I took the scenic route into leather craft. Came from a fashion background studied fashion for five years and worked in the industry as a pattern cutter for many years. I then progressed on to freelance pattern cutting for fashion brands and creating my own business as a clothing label which I was very good at designing and making clothes and terrible at selling them. I was on the brink of giving up when I won a business award in my local borough and a couple of months later succeeded in getting a studio at cockpit arts where I planned to develop my clothing label to focus on bespoke commissions for coats and jackets…failed again!!

For a long time I had been positioning Deco 22 as a Fashion Brand. I freelanced as a pattern cutter at numerous fashion brands and could see that these companies have teams of people working on different aspects of the business - design development, mass production, promotion and sales, to name just a few. I did not have a team of people, occasionally I employed freelancers , but the majority of the time it was all me on design, production, branding, photography, editing, website, marketing, social media - I did it all. My focus had always been on the craft and producing limited edition pieces . It amazes me that despite knowing this it took me years to realize that a fashion brand was the wrong business model for Deco 22. Perhaps subconsciously I knew - which is why I had struggled with a clear vision of how to promote and sell my work.

What changed for me? I cannot recall when I first started to make bags . I just remember not being able to find the bags that I wanted. Without coming to a real decision, I found myself creating patterns to make my own and occasionally making bags as gifts for relatives. People would often ask me where I got my bags but at that stage, I didn’t consider adding them to my product range.

One of the conditions of having my studio at cockpit was that I had to participate in the two annual open studios when most makers would have their work on display for sale. I moved into Cockpit Arts in 2011 and, with my first open studio fast approaching I was still developing my coats. It was suggested in my first meeting with the business support person that I could make some of my bags to test the market 49

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for my first open studios. My work started to evolve into making fabric bags. I do believe I did an excellent job at hiding my surprise when I sold my first bag!

So I began to design and make cloth bags as well as coats. I began to experiment with leather to incorporate harder wearing straps and bases to some of the bags. I was not completely happy with the results and decided I needed to learn more about leather.

I started to do short courses and luckily for me there were a few leatherworkers who had won awards that were based at the studios who were really helpful. The more I learnt the more I wanted to do and I fell in love with leathercraft. The thing that made leather become the dominant medium for my craft was after I did a week intense course to refine my hand stitching technique and later in the same year I won my first cockpit arts Leathersellers award in 2017. This meant the cost of my studio was subsidised. The following year I won a runners-up bursary from Huawei which meant I could take a step back from some of the additional freelance work I was doing to focus on leather . work and produced my first collection. I went on to win two more Leathersellers awards in 2018 and 2019.

So originally tailoring was the main focus of my work but I started to have an affair with leather and leather became my Camilla!

Told you it was a long story!

Short answer…. I did some short courses in leather really enjoyed it, learnt some tips from other leatherworkers the more things I tried and made in leather the more I wanted to do. I have made loads of mistakes and have had countless failures but they all led me to now, life’s river redirected me towards leathercraft and I’m now enjoying the journey.

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Teddy Hayes: Was developing the artistic side of your work a gradual thing, or did you start immediately making artistic things?

Jasmine: Gradual. I think it will be the same for anybody creative, development of work is gradual as creative people are always a working progress.

For me with leather work, before I could start being creative and explore new ideas I needed to get to grips with the basic techniques and rules. Because I’m aware from a fashion and teaching background ( I teach pattern cutting at a University part time) that you need to know the technical rules to be able to break them and explore what is possible with leather.

Teddy Hayes: What are the most challenging part of being a leather artist?

Jasmine: I don’t know what I don’t know. So some things I Teddy Hayes: How did you go about getting your training to learn the skills?

•Jasmine: My route was an unconventional one.

•I did some short courses that were aimed at beginner’s / hobbyist, •try things I’d seen on Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.

•My fashion background meant I already knew how to create my own patterns and had some core making skills.

•Lots of making things really badly •getting tips and advice from other leatherworkers at the studio •took the plunge and did a one-week course away from home specialising in hand stitching leathercraft technique which had been recommended to me by other leatherworkers helped refine my make •I’m still a work in progress and am learning as I go along.

Other leatherworkers I’ve spoken to have done •BA degree in fashion accessories •a course at Chapel Manor in saddlery •trained in Italy for between six months to a year •apprenticeships.There are lots of short courses for hobbyist but very few courses for those who want to do it professionally available in the UK

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create do not have the outcomes that I was expecting that is due to me not using the correct techniques. It can be frustrating to produce something and realize it’s wrong at the end or halfway through. As leather is not cheap so it can be quite expensive mistake.

Impostor syndrome, not believing I’m good enough comparing myself to other people. Luckily for me I’m surrounded by other creatives who also face the same challenges. It is most definitely good to talk as we often surprise each other with some of our over critical thoughts about our own work. Business side of things, being dyslexic can be challenging for the admin side…but on the flip side it is also an advantage for my creative elements.

Also as a leather worker in the UK it can be very challenging to source the materials and tools as a lot of the companies that used to exist are no longer here. And the changes with the UK leaving the European Union is added more challenges and costs.

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Teddy Hayes: Is leather making a costly undertaking?

Jasmine: Oh yes! Is not just the obvious of the leather. It’s also the tools and equipment you need to create pieces. I’m lucky where I’m based there is a leather hub where I can use some of the large machinery which means I can work in a smaller space and have less machinery costs.

The largest element of cost for my pieces is the time it takes to make work. Some pieces can take at least 10 hours to make.

Teddy Hayes: You have your own studio, why it is necessary to work in a studio rather than out of your own home?

Jasmine: For me the connections I have made and the people I have met have helped me move forward with my work.

If I have been working out of my own home, I probably would have given up a long time ago. Also my work would never have evolved into leather work It was interacting with the other leather workers at the studio that helped spark my interest in leather work. It was a conversation with a ceramicist at my studios who saw one of my early leather pieces that suggested I apply for the Leather sellers awards. Also I don’t have the space and I’m lucky to have access to the larger machinery in the shared leather hub.

From a productive point of view it’s better for me to have a separate workspace for making and I do my admin work at home. So when I am in my studio I focus on the making creative process.

Teddy Hayes: Are you getting any problems with people who don’t agree with using leather as a material for art? If so what is your response?

Jasmine: Not at the moment.

There is a lot of misinformation out there about the leather material. Although I am noticing that more people are being educated and understanding that the only reason that leather exists is because people eat meat. The leather I use is a by-product of the meat industry if the skins were not made into leather they will be thrown into landfill .Leather products last for years and can be passed down to generations.

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Teddy Hayes: If A young person wanted to become a leather artist what advice would you give?

I can only speak for the UK. Try a short course first to see if you like it. Avoid those offered by large universities . First aim for a short course that focuses on teaching you the basic skills.

•Make, make , make.

•Except that you are going to make lots of mistakes and keep making.

•If you still have the bug then see what area of leather craft you want to follow…shoes?Bags and accessories? Saddlery?

•If you can get an apprenticeship in leather work go for that as you will learn more making skills. However if you are more interested in a creative artistic route probably best to do an art foundation course first and go through the academic degree route.

Potentially there might be some T Level options for leather craft soon which could be a good starting point if they happen.

Teddy Hayes: I imagine that leather art is a very old tradition among many different cultures. I know in the Native America culture in the USA leather work has always been a part of some tribes’ cultural traditions, can you discuss a little about the history of leather work?

Jasmine: Leather arts and leather craft has been part of humanities creativity throughout history.

All cultures throughout the world have leather work entwined in their historical past Archaeologists are continuously finding pieces from ancient people the world.

Leather workers been found in the tombs of Ancient Kemet and closer to home in the UK mudlarks is always finding leather shoes and bags along the Thames giving a small insight into U.K.’s past.

Teddy Hayes: Where can people go to see artistic works made of leather in the U.K. or Online?

Jasmine: Museum of Leather craft in Northampton is a

must! Also Walsall Leather Museum is still on my list to visit. The Horniman museum in South East London have a selection of pieces some of their bags were lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum for the recent Bag exhibition.

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Accept that you are going to make lots of mistakes and keep making them Jasmine Carey

Cockpit Arts has a selection of Leathersellers awardees past and present and both of the sites and will have the annual winter open studios.

Keep an eye out craft exhibitions as there’s always elements of leatherwork in those shows.

The Bloomsbury site has a few leather workers and will be open 24th – 27thNovember https://cockpitstudios.org/whats-on/cockpit-makers-market-bloomsbury/ The Deptford site where I am based has the most leather workers spread across the first, second and third floor and we will be open on 2nd- 4th December https://cockpitstudios.org/whats-on/cockpit-makers-market-deptford/ 55

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Teddy Hayes: Do you do special bespoke orders for people

Teddy Hayes: On your dream list what are 3 things you would like to achieve with your leather making in the next ten years?e.

Jasmine: Yes I do special bespoke orders of original leather products (but not copies of other work). I also offer variations in size and adaptions of pieces I have designed in collaboration with my customers. I usually recommend to allow 3 to 4 weeks for bespoke orders.

Jasmine: That’s a really good question but the thing is I found with me when I talk about what I would like to achieve often I don’t do it. So what I will say is to watch this space. One thing that will always remain the same I am fully aware that there is always room improvement and refinement of my work. I know I will keep making keep exploring and keep evolving my work. The last 10 years I went from a jackets and coats designer maker to an awardwinning leather worker. Whatever I end up achieving I know it will be something creative.

wanting to have something made from leather maybe for a birthday or anniversary present?

https://www.deco22.co.uk/

Teddy Hayes: What is your favourite kind of leather to work with and why?

Jasmine: My favourite leather vegetable tanned leather.

Vegetable tanned leather is referring to the method of turning the animal skin into leather. It is called “vegetable” because of the natural tannins used in the process taken from vegetables or tree bark and is one of the oldest methods of tanning leather. This process is slower than the more commonly used chrome tanning methods used for mass produce leather products. Vegetable tanned leather also tends to age better, and overtime develops a rich Patina This is my favourite leather to work with , because it is what predominately I use for the saddlery hand stitching techniques and hand burnishing. I enjoy the process of this work, the slowness.

Marking the stitching and then the peaceful calm of pulling linen thread through the beeswax then positioning the product in the stitching clamp and the rhythm of hand stitching.

Teddy Hayes: In the 1970’s the trendy thing was Italian

leather, especially for shoes and jackets; is Italian leather good for the work you do?

Jasmine: Currently I am using Italian and British vegetable

tanned leather for my hand stitched leather pieces. For my machine stitched leather work I used chrome tanned leather from Germany at the moment.

Teddy Hayes: What is the best kind of leather for the kind

of work you do?

Jasmine: It really does depend on what I am making.

Generally I use vegetable tanned leather for hand stitch work and chrome stitched leather machine stitch pieces

Interview by Teddy Hayes

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Whatever I end up achieving I know it will be something creative Jasmine Carey

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Getrude Matshe talks with Music For Global Change. Ubuntu - We Rise By Lifting Others“Empathy, passion and connection are the superpowers that every single human being possesses. But it starts at home when you put your family first, and the community next, then if you have something to spare, do something somewhere else in the world.

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Tom: Welcome to the show Getrude. You’re a social entrepreneur, an inspirational speaker who is passionate about helping people achieve their full potential and individual life purpose. You started your career in Norway and worked within the IT industry as a project manager migrating to New Zealand in 2001. You’re journey has crossed paths with actors and directors such as Denzel Washington & Peter Jackson. We have loads more to talk about with you so thank you very much for joining us especially as early as it is over there in New Zealand at the moment for you, please do tell us more.

Getrude: It’s wonderful to be here thank you so much it's such an honour to connect with all of you. I have been living in New Zealand for 21 years and have just moved to Australia last year. My only daughter was about to have a baby so I jumped on a flight and came to Australia to be with her. The day I landed the two countries locked down, I couldn't go back to New Zealand for eight months and decided to stay with my little grandson who is now a year old and the most amazing little human there is. No way I can go back to New Zealand now. So I pitched an idea to build an application called The Diversity Connector App for the New Zealand Australian Women and Technology Awards last year in November and won the first prize.

Skyler: Wow congratulations.

Getrude: Thanks, I'm busy working on an application that will dispense stories. I curate women's stories. I believe we can change the world through our stories one person at a time one woman at a time and it came out of my personal experience having gone through a very traumatic divorce that led to a separation that led to congestive heart failure due to stress and hypertension. I collapsed in a rice field in Bali in Indonesia and it was a real wake-up call for me I realized at that point that all of my work my philanthropic work in particular would have died with me what I had created was not sustainable. I had been going around the world as an inspirational speaker raising funds for the orphaned children in my immediate family and community in Zimbabwe.

Lying in that rice field that day I realized I had to change the way I was doing things. I've been given a second chance.

Thankfully and during my recovery I came up with an idea to create a platform very similar to TED Talks (Technology, Entertainment, Design) where I could coach, mentor women to share their stories to be a source of hope, of inspiration to another woman who might be going through a similar challenge.

I launched in Las Vegas in July 2019 with the first 100 women. The second event was in Wellington New Zealand the third was in Sydney Australia and then I got an amazing Grant from the New Zealand government and went to Norway I had an event in Oslo in London went back to New York and I had 15 events that had to be cancelled at the beginning of 2020 because of Covid. Yes, yeah so I was in a terrible financial black hole all of us. Then my personal tragedies happened I first lost my mother on the 29th of April 2020 she died in Zimbabwe I wasn't able to go to her funeral, my daughter had a miscarriage three weeks later and you know how you sometimes just have to stop and take in the sadness the pain the grief. On the day of my mother's funeral, I remember the ritual in Zimbabwe, if you lose someone close, to show that you are in mourning you shave off all your hair!

Skyler: Oh wow okay.

Getrude: So that's what I did and my brother, fortunately, managed to Zoom us so we could watch the funeral online. I have a sister in Sydney Australia a brother in Edmonton Canada I was in New Zealand so we were scattered all over the world. My sister came online and took one look at me and started laughing hysterically I said Patricia why are you laughing? It's Mom's funeral today. She said to me “Gertrude have you looked at yourself in the mirror?”, I'm like what are you talking about she said you look so much like Mom it scares me oh wow and I was a duplicate copy of my mother. People used to think we were sisters. Now fast track to November, and I'm still in this sad depressive state.

I woke up in a dream and in that dream, I was brushing my teeth in the morning I looked into the mirror and the person looking back at me wasn't me it was my mother and she was healthy, vibrant and laughing the same way my sister had laughed on the day of her funeral and she said to me do you see baby do you see what I did I made you look like me so that you will remember I am in you, I am with you, I haven't gone anywhere, you need to do your work.

She said so long as you are six feet above the ground the job is not done! I thought, that's right, very powerful and I snapped out of that state of depression and I put my

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platform online and we are scaling faster now than I could have ever imagined. I have a following of over 50,000 women in 25 countries. Covid had a lot to do with the success of this organization because people are seeking connections right now. People were in isolation, people were lonely, people were sad, and people were experiencing grief so I created a platform for these magical stories that uplift and Inspire and give hope. With the sad stories, I would tell my community that in sharing stories let's tell the story like you were talking to the younger you.

I've had women who've come onto our platform who's been sexually molested as children, who've been raped, suffered domestic violence, stories like mine of recovering from different types of illnesses, but we own the story, we tell it from a position of strength so that the story doesn't define who we are and run our lives and there is a lot of healing that has come out of the storytelling you know.

In Africa, we believe that a problem shared or a story shared is a problem halved AND the minute you tell your story to another human being it's not yours to carry alone, there's a lot of healing that comes out of storytelling and that element of my work I had not seen or imagined. Now it's evolved and I was able to share my magic.

Skyler: What a blessing, you can inspire people to open up right, that’s the coolest thing. Tom, you got a question?

I want it to give people access to these thought leaders. We also run workshops, have events one month and the next month our speakers run workshops so that there's a transfer of knowledge from person to person.

Skyler: Wonderful, Ryan, you got a question?

Ryan: Yeah, you mentioned your TED public speaking

journey talks. I watched two of them earlier, very powerful.

I am curious, how did you get involved with public speaking in general?

Getrude: Oh my public speaking journey started a long long time ago. I was one of those little girls who would be at the back of the class talking and cracking jokes. I used to be punished for speaking I tell people now I get paid to do it how about that!

One of my intuitive gifts my father and mother discovered that it was a gift and they channeled my energy and encouraged me to go into drama public speaking debate. I remember growing up in Rhodesia. If you don't know about Zimbabwe's history we grew up in an apartheid system very similar to South Africa. Black and white people didn't mix.

I'm 55 and I remember where we had to walk on one side of the street and not the other and that's crazy in your own country. My dad used to say that the corporate world is white you have to be confident and stand up in

Tom: Well there are loads to ask really but first of all just off the back of that, how do people get a hold of what you do or get to your platform, how do people interact with what you're doing and get in touch?

Getrude: The website is the herstorycircle.com we have a YouTube channel called the Her Story Circle TV and it's really been word of mouth that has grown this community. I have asked every woman who's stepped forward to tell 10 friends so we started with one hundred and we grew to one thousand, we're now at fifty thousand and it's been absolutely incredible. What is possible when an idea spreads? You know, the TED tagline is ideas worth spreading.

I have done three TED talks but I never get access to the thought leaders. You know when you listen to an inspiring speaker and you think gosh I would love to learn more from them that's what I want to try and do with this platform, 62

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front of white people and speak so he used to put us on a bus for all of his children from the age of sixteen we would go and stay in the city during school holidays and we were forced to apply f My dad used to say that the corporate world is white you have to be confident and stand up in front of white people and speak so he used to put us on a bus for all of his childrenor jobs and not take them.

Skyler: Now, I'm gonna switch stories because you know this is Music for Global Change and we usually talk about music. I was raised by my mom, my grandmother and my aun and they were all gospel singers. The beautiful thing is you’ve got 50,000 women on your platform. A lot of them, they got to be musicians right?

I built my self-confidence by going for job interviews and that's how I got my first job with the London Rhodesia company and ended up becoming a Cobol programmer which led to systems analysis and design. I would never have gone into I.T. by choice, but that year my father lost his job, the bank was about to repossess our home and they needed somebody with a pay slip and I said Dad I can go to work. I had four job offers that year. I wanted to be a pilot and fly the plane out of Zimbabwe if I had to pass the aptitude test but failed as the height restriction had to be 1.7 meters and I was 1.4 meters tall.

Getrude: Yes definitely. I discovered the musical part of

I wanted to be a nurse and an air host desk and my father sat me down and gave me the best advice he ever gave me, he said there's this thing called a computer, he didn't even know what it was. My dad was a chartered accountant, fortunately, he got a scholarship and studied in London and he said technology is the future. This thing is like an adding machine and a typewriter, forget everything else. So Cobol programming changed the trajectory of my whole life.

Everything I've done has been technology based.

myself when I was 37. have recorded ten songs. My children are very very musical and yes you're right the women in my community, a lot of them are musicians and some have never had the courage to sing. We have created a creativity section on our platform, we've got six broad categories it's Business, Entrepreneurship, Health and Wellness, Family and Relationship, Social Justice, Spirituality and Creativity. In the creativity section people can express themselves in any way they want if they dance they can come and dance, if they sing they can come and sing, if they do poetry etc. So, we've included that, and it has changed the dynamic. It’s intense in the most magical way because sometimes we have a story that are very sad and now we curate the program that if there's a sad story it's followed by something musical or something that makes people shift and move, the energy and dance are transferred really well Online, infusing this musical part of what we do is very interesting.

Skyler: We're looking for women who write socially conscious music

Getrude: Okay yeah I love what your organization stands for, you’re right that music is the global language, it transcends gender, race, ethnicity, and age it just breaks down all of the barriers that human beings experience. I would love to help bring as many women to your work as possible.

Skyler: This is wonderful because we want to start festivals

where people just do positive music. It's not using lyrics about yourself, it’s music that can help us get out of this crab bucket together you know what I mean. There have been so many big huge songs out that help the world and we like to hear what you're doing too, you say you got an album out can you tell us more about it?

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Getrude: I produced it myself, it was just a karaoke thing.

I decided to leave the sound of my voice for my children, we recorded ten of my favorite songs. I plucked up the courage to do it because I remember thinking these children should have got this voice in some way, I'm pretty sure it's me.

Skyler: I love inspiring people to go at it.

Getrude: Oh I love that yeah the world needs it. You know when I look at the power of music and how frivolous some of these musicians are now going in the direction they're taking. They are generating money, getting popular but not really doing it for good. It really is something that is needed right now. You know I met a young woman called Crystal Star, she's an African-American based in California and I interviewed her for my podcast. An amazing musician, she wrote a song called She. It's an empowering song all about women's empowerment, so we've been using her story as a theme song for our movement. I know a lot of musicians I know a lot of women that I can connect you with definitely.

Skyler: Tom, you got another question?

Tom: Yeah, in addition to everything else that you've been

involved in you've also written several books and you're also a book-writing coach. Can you tell me a little bit about the sort of books that you've written and how that's come about for you?

Getrude: I wrote my first book, it was a memoir, it started off as a journal really when I lived in London and ended up living in Norway.

It was a story of all of the people that I met throughout my travels who showed up like angels when I needed help. It was called Fleeting Angels originally but when I published I decided to call it Born on the Continent Ubuntu. I infused the Ubuntu philosophy into my stories to illustrate what the philosophy actually meant. A lot of people who Google Ubuntu think it is just a piece of Linux software, they think it's an operating system but it’s not…

Ryan: (pointing at himself laughing) That's what I thought.

Getrude: So I wanted to own the word, I wanted to take it back and in a small way. I managed to do that and accidentally branded myself as an Ubuntu expert because 21 years ago there were no books written, there was noliterature, it's a tradition that's passed down through oral storytelling and so that's what the first book is about. Then people started asking how I wrote the book so fast and I developed a process called How to Write a Book in 40 Hours.

How to Write a Book in 40 Hours is about just telling the story recording the audio, transcribing the audio and that's the first draft of your book out of your head quickly. Then you go back, rewrite and work with editors. So that turned into a publishing business called Black Kiwi Publishing.

That's what I've been doing for the last 21 years. I write books for myself but I also go straight for other people as well and help them tell their stories.

Ryan: Wow that’s an incredible business, I saw How to Write a Book in 40 Hours on your YouTube channel and I saw some of the testimonials and I was like how does somebody write a book in 40 hours?

You and my dad Skyler were just talking and I was thinking you guys could maybe create a music album in 4 hours. You know what I mean? I'm fascinated by your journey in technology. Just so we're clear the website

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herstorycircle.com is the platform, it’s a beautifully designed website. I just love to hear some more about what you've got planned for the future. You are very busy with your website you've got the story coaching, got a podcast which is music to my ears, and an App, what future projects & plans have you going on next?

We offer a wide range of talents including actors models dancers and musicians of African origin as well as from a diverse range of ethnicities. We can cater for all your onscreen Talent needs you can contact us through our website www.simsisanicreations.com We hope to be hearing from you soon”.

Getrude: I try and keep myself busy my mother said I had ADHD I just wasn't medicated yeah and so I used the energy that is in this body to do what I came on this planet to do that's right I have a vision right now to create a reality TV show. I was very fortunate when I moved to New Zealand to live and became close to Peter Jackson. In fact, his son and my son went to school in the same area we would see him on a Sunday on the soccer field and when they finish filming Lord of the Rings I'm gonna be honest with you, I started stalking him a bit.

Getrude: Well, the day I filmed this I had made six costumes for six ladies to dance but only two showed up so if you look carefully I'm the third dancer [Laughter] I love it so I shot the piece to the camera. I shot the dancing scene we edited it I hired a marketing company who created this beautiful box it was a Russian woman it was gold folded up in this weird way and instead of giving them the database on a flash drive I burnt a disc with this commercial on one side the database on the other side went and presented and became a filmmaker just by participating in King Kong when they filmed Avatar the same thing happened, I took part in both films - not big parts. My acting actually started when Denzel Washington came to Zimbabwe when I was 19. They filmed Cry Freedom in Zimbabwe.

He was giving presentations and talks all over New Wellington about how they made Lord of the Rings and I would go to these presentations and talks and one day the guy who designed the spider in Lord of the Rings was giving a lecture and I'm at the back of the room and my hand shot up and I asked the question - how can I take part in one of your movies? They were looking for African extras for King Kong which is the next film Peter Jackson made. And of course, there are not many Africans in New Zealand, I was volunteering for the refugee service, I help other immigrants who come to this part of the world to find work to use their natural gifts to make money and so I created a casting agency and a database that I sold to Peter Jackson for the making of King Kong.

I supplied all the ethnic extras for people of color. I was actually in film school at the time and I told my lecturers that I had this idea. Peter Jackson is looking for extras I'm going to create this company and one of my lecturers said go for it I will help you with anything you need I, got a few ladies together and said look if you can come Online and help me film this commercial I might get the contract to work with Peter Jackson. So six ladies said they would come and do this with me. I went and showed them this little video where I say on it “Hello and welcome to Simzi Sani Creations. We are a culturally unique talent agency focusing primarily on black African faces and personalities for the film and advertising industry. Formed in Cape Town South Africa in 1994 since the signing is now an international operator and is based in Wellington New Zealand.

Skyler: Wow wow wow.

Skyler: Oh wow Cry Freedom.

Getrude: Yeah, I had a small walk-on walk-off part. I met Denzel when I was a kid and he would talk to me every day.

We became really good friends during the three weeks we were on set. In the making of my own feature film, I have hand-picked all of my actors who are taking part in this movie. I've been working on the script for the last ten years.

Fortunately, Peter Jackson's wife became one of my mentors and when she read the first script she said there's too big a story to do as one film, break it up into three separate films.

So the first film will start from when I left Africa twenty years ago until now the second film is my backstory my childhood story and the third film is futuristic, it is a prophecy of Africa a hundred years from now.

Skyler: Wow we love you so much sister thank you for all this beautiful, beautiful spirit that you have and thank you for the inspiration. Will you come back to the show?

Getrude: Oh definitely, definitely.

Skyler: We want to ask you for your endorsement for Music for Global Change to inspire people to write positive music, that's what we're all about, blessings and namaste.

Interview with Music For Global Change founder Skyler Jett, Ryan Schewchuk and Tom Bryant.

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The Future Is...

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An increased push for energy efficiency, renewable energy technology, electric mobility-along with the growing digitalization movement and a universal carbon pricing structure-would speed up the carbon-free future and the rise of a global middle class we desperately need.

We can and must all do our part.

Joe Kaeser

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Richard McCloskey-Wall

Author & Illustrator 68

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Interview By Corinne O' Neill Corinne: Hi Richard and welcome to World Equal, can you

Corinne: How many books have you written and which is

Richard: My name is Richard McCloskey-Wall and I’m an

Richard: Since then I have written ten books, most are kids books. I have also written a book for young adults (Geoff Budgie’s Goblin Snatching For Beginners) and a book of dark Irish fairy tales for adults (Mrs. Mulligan’s Mischief of Magpies) this is something I plan to do more of in the future.

My favourite has to be Big Knickers, it is a firm favourite with kids and parents both and I still giggle at the antics of the imps in it.

tell us a bit about yourself?

author and illustrator based in Belfast Northern Ireland.

Since hearing my first fairytale as a child I have had an interest in Irish mythology, folklore, and the Fae. There is a magic in Ireland like no other place I know and growing up there, there was a tantalizing feeling that you might just come across a Faerie or leprechaun hiding in the hollow of a tree or Sneaking through a dew draped thicket on a misty morning. Those images have lingered into my adult life and as an author I hope to pass those magical feelings I had on to a new generation of wide eyed mischievous children.

Corinne: How long have you been writing and illustrating your own own books? And what made you start?

Richard: Like many people, lock-down gave me the time and space to (at the age of 40) take on a project I’d been putting off for most of my adult life, that project was writing my first children’s book. I’d been putting it off for years because life was so busy, suddenly I had all the time in the world.

Corinne: What comes first for you, the characters or the story?

your favourite?

Corinne: What inspired the idea for your books?

Richard: My books have all been inspired by Irish folklore and mythology. I’ve tried very hard to reverse the fluttering Tinkerbell idea of fairies. Irish fairies were always up to no good and my Bog Imps are continuously making mischief.

Corinne: If you could meet the characters in your story's how would you get along?

Richard: If I met my characters when I was about six years

old we would get on like a house on fire as I was a bit of an imp myself but I’m a bit older and grouchier now and the imps would probably spend most of their time playing pranks on me!

Richard: My books came about in a slightly unusual way, as I said I had been kicking the idea of a book around for quite some time but it was a lump of clay that really brought the project to life. I do a little sculpting and one wet weekend I made three odd little creatures, they were full of character and that’s when I decided they needed to come alive in book form as the Irish Bog Imps Muckfoot, Dryleaf, and Hedgeroot.

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I do a little sculpting and one wet weekend I made three odd little creatures, they were full of character and that’s when I decided they needed to come alive in book form as the Irish Bog Imps Muckfoot, Dryleaf, and Hedgeroot.

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You can find Richard at ST George's Market Belfast

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Corinne: What risks with your books have you taken and did it pay off?

Richard: The biggest risk I feel I took with my books was

financially. I’m self published and therefore had to bare printing costs etc. But after book one, the books started to pay for themselves so for me that risk paid off.

Corinne: What's your ambition for your books?

Richard: My real ambition for the books is an animated

series or better still a movie. I’m often told that the Bog Imps are crying out to be made into a movie and perhaps some day I’ll get to watch them on the big screen.

Corinne: What is the most valuable piece of advice you would give to someone wanting to start writing children's books?

Richard: The best advice I could give anyone who wants to write a children’s book is to just go for it, stop putting it off.

Seeing a child laughing out loud at your book is the best feeling in the world, I wish I had done it years ago.

Corinne: I love the models you make of your characters.

What is your hope for them e.g. a toy range?

Richard: I continue to sculpt and add characters to the books and these might hopefully someday be the blueprint for the toys that accompany the movie that might never happen but as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to the conclusion that you gotta dream big, what’s the worst that could happen…

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Since hearing my first fairytale as a child I have had an interest in Irish mythology, folklore, and the Fae.

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My real ambition for the books is an animated series or better still a movie, I'm often told that the Bog Imps are crying out to be made into a movie and perhaps some day I'll get to watch them on the big screen.

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My books have all been inspired by Irish folklore and mythology,

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A melody can make you feel sad, happy, comforted, strong or ready to take on the world. I’ve said before, I believe that music is more powerful than people realise and its healing powers, in so many ways, deserve to be studied and researched much more.

The Minnows Musicians

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www.minnowsband.com

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Interview By

&

Browsing the internet during the isolation period of the Covid-19 pandemic, World Equal (W.E.) discovered a superb original new song called What Was I Supposed To Do? Very impressed and almost certain it was a Beatles song sung

by John Lennon that we’d somehow missed, it had a similar sounding voice to Lennon, a great feel, melody, harmonica hook, harmonies and humanitarian elements to it.

With a fantastic video to match the lyrical content, we couldn’t stop watching and listening to it over and over. So who wrote it? W.E. placed a complimentary comment on the post and now we’ve both arrived here.

“It’s been a long time coming but it was certainly worth the wait. After we released our album, Californian Poppy, we were inundated with requests from all our followers on social media to play live again. So we decided to give them what they wanted with a couple of live dates and the response has been simply fantastic.

“It’s all very exciting, and having played Belfast, we really can’t wait to play in Derry, although that has been postponed due to the sad death of the venue’s owner.

“We’ve realised that life is too short and too precious to be hanging about so you’ll definitely be hearing much more of The Minnows in the weeks, months and hopefully years to come. We’re thrilled to be back doing what we love most, playing music, with no pressure from anyone or anything outside of the band.”

Anyone who hasn’t heard of this band may well be asking “What are they like”?

It would not be a disservice to say some songs at times evoke Crowded House, The Beatles or John Lennon, with a sprinkle of Radiohead and U2. But they mostly sound like The Minnows because that’s who they are. Let’s find out more about who they are with their frontman Raff. frontman Raff.

The Minnows are a Belfast-based outfit that first came to prominence in 1991 with the release of their debut single Time Flies on the famous Good Vibrations record label owned by founder Terri Hooley. The echoes of their sound from that era say they were tipped to be the next big thing to emerge from Ireland!

The band are lead vocalist with acoustic guitar singersongwriter Michael Rafferty (AKA Raff), Paul Maynes on lead & rhythm guitar and backing vocals, Kevin Carson on bass and backing vocals, and Stephen O’Sullivan on drums.

The Northern Ireland band has recently performed for the first time after an 11-year hiatus with a sold-out show in the famous city's intimate Black Box venue on Saturday, April 22nd. With a die-hard following in attendance that still remains intact, this bodes very well for their future.

Frontman Raff mingled with their audience after the soldout gig and shared the following..

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W.E: Hello Raff, congratulations on the rebirth of The Minnows. W.E. attended your recent sold-out gig in the Black Box and were enthralled by the audio-visual combo delivered. The large screen backdrop and the great songs kept our eyes and ears glued to the stage making it a very memorable gig. Who’s idea was that?

Raff: Maynesy (Paul) is our technical guru so all credit for

the audio-visual feast on display must go to him. We’re very lucky to have him, as the rest of us don’t have a clue!!!

W.E: What do you mean by “playing music with no pressure from anyone or anything outside of the band.”

Raff: What I meant by this is that we are our own bosses

now when it comes to what type of music we create, how we do it, what we put out and where we play, if at all. We’re not tied to any record company, manager or promoter, so there are no demands on us to produce the next 3-minute ‘radiofriendly’ hit or play a crappy support gig to someone we hate just to get ourselves heard. We’re now way beyond that.

We’re not looking for a record deal and, whilst it’s always nice, we don’t really care if the radio plays our music or indeed if anyone even buys it.

We are doing it purely because we love it and we’re doing it the way that we want to. Years ago, it would have been unheard of to release a song like What Was I Supposed To Do as a single. But we did it simply because it’s one of the best songs we’ve ever recorded. That creative and artistic freedom is priceless. And the funny thing is, that song has turned out to be one of the most loved songs we’ve ever done. When you work with no limitations and no demands, and because you love it, that somehow seems to resonate with audiences. God knows what we’ll come up with next, but whatever it is, it’ll be down to us and nobody else.

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W.E: We loved the song Computer Game and the visuals for it on the large screen. Many of us will remember that simple Tennis game on the Atari, Golden Axe, Space Invaders, there are so many amazing nostalgic emotions and funny talking points for old and especially new fans at a gig like this during that song. A lot of computer games old and new would have been played during isolation we imagine. Did this song evolve during the pandemic lockdowns, did the whole album Californian Poppy arise during that period too?

Raff: We certainly loved our computer games through the ages! The song Computer Game, though, was actually about a former manager whose decisions we felt were financially motivated rather than artistic, kind of what we talked about earlier. Whilst the music was our love and our lives at that point, the song suggested that he played us (like a game) for his own ends. Whether that’s actually true or not I can’t say but it was certainly a good inspiration for the song.

As for Californian Poppy, the album was actually recorded pre-pandemic but Covid gave us the kick up the backside that we probably needed to get it out. It started with a lockdown video for the first single When You’re Not Here, which we filmed at our homes and posted on social media. The reaction to that was probably the catalyst that got things moving and the momentum just snowballed from there.

W.E: Is it true in the 90s The Minnows were tipped to be the next big thing coming out of Ireland?

Raff: Yes we were. Or the kiss of death as I call it!! We were

getting played regularly on BBC Radio One, with no record company support, we were being invited to play festivals like The Tripp to Tipp in Thurles and the Fleadh at Finsbury Park in London. We featured in lots of ‘most likely to’ polls and ‘song of the year’ lists. Record companies flew in to meet us, and we were even offered record deals, but we’re back to that whole management thing again. Let’s just say, it didn’t work out. We’re pretty philosophical about it all though and realise that things could have turned out a lot worse. Had we made it big in those days, I would never have met my lovely wife Catherine and my kids, who I love more than life itself, they would never have been born. So that alone extinguishes any regret that might start to creep in from time to time.

Besides, despite our clean cut image in those early days, we were quite the party animals and who knows how we would have ended up if we had made it rich and famous. At least we’re all still alive and able to make music, albeit for a more select audience!

W.E: Sandino's venue in Derry/Londondary (or as some of us call it - LegenDerry) is the next gig in October 2023. Will old and new fans and followers be getting the same treatment of sound and vision as the Black Box gig?

Raff: We certainly hope so. I haven’t been there before but I hear it’s a really cool venue. The stage is smaller than the Black Box but we’ll certainly try to incorporate our projector show somehow, without forcing Stevie to drum from the far side of the room! Even in the Black Box, we had to move him to the side so as not to block the visuals. Some people were complaining that they couldn’t see him, but serves him right for stealing all the women in our younger days!!

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W.E: What happened, did you guys break up or fall out or as the saying goes among musicians did - life just get in the way?

Raff: Definitely the latter. We’ve never broken up or fallen out. We’ve always been working on things in the background, admittedly at a snail’s pace sometimes. As you say, life just got in the way and there comes a time when you’ve got to make big decisions that will impact on your future, and those around you. It’s incredibly difficult to find a balance between being an artist, whether that be a musician or otherwise and earning a living in this increasingly difficult world. It’s best to think that whatever is meant to be is meant to be. We’re actually lucky that, as a band, we can still enjoy incredible moments together as we did at that Black Box gig. That was more than just a gig for us. It was such an emotional rollercoaster ride and experience that I will never forget.

W.E: Let’s talk about that incredible song that started us all

off - What Was I Supposed To Do? The one we thought was a Beatles song that had escaped us, with John Lennon on lead vocals. Who wrote that and was it the spark that reignited The Minnows?

Raff: I wrote that one, almost as the third in a trilogy of Minnows songs that started with Familiarity Breeds Contempt and Why Don’t You Phone Me Anymore. That’s probably been my comfort zone, writing really depressing songs about lost love and failed romances, that people can relate to. The boys used to joke that they couldn’t wait for my relationships to end as they were always guaranteed an album’s worth of songs from it.

In reality, even in a happy relationship, I’ve always been able to transport

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myself into these melancholy musical scenarios. When my wife heard our first album Holyland, she thought I was a manic depressive and I had similar comments after our second album, which was cheerily titled Leonard Cohen’s Happy Compared To Me. I’m not really that miserable though, I just have a good imagination.

As for What Was I Supposed To Do, I wrote the song years ago and always thought it had something special, one of those perfect combinations of lyrics and melody that occasionally land out of nowhere. From watching the video, a lot of people thought it was written about the love story between performance artists Marina Abramovic and her long-time partner Ulay. It wasn’t though. I had the song already written when I watched an amazing movie documentary about Marina Abramovic called The Artist Is Present. As I watched it, I thought the story would make an incredible video for WWISTD so I plundered YouTube for as much footage as I could find and edited it together in line with the song. It turned out really well but I’m still waiting to be sued by someone for it!

Releasing the song as a single from the album was certainly a turning point as it showed a very different side to The Minnows to a lot of different people. I talked earlier about the freedom to do what we want and how we could never have released this song as a single back in the old days. But we did and it worked. And all of a sudden, a Dublin radio show has playlisted the song and people are hearing it every morning on the breakfast show on their drive to work. It’s crazy but it’s taught me that there’s no substitute for quality and to go with your heart.

W.E: Is it reasonable to say the era of musicians making vast amounts of money through hard copy sales in vinyl, tape and CD is over? Especially in the face of illegal downloading and streaming of music and film?

Raff: Yes I feel sorry for anyone trying to make money in the music industry nowadays, which is really sad. I don’t think the power of music and the impact it can have on our wellbeing and mental health has ever been truly recognised, studied or researched. A world without music is unimaginable so to think that the public is relying on new artists making music purely for the love of it, is unfair at best and really pretty shocking.

I read that Gary Numan said he received £39 for a million streams on Spotify. Most up-and-coming artists won’t even receive a million streams, so there’s no money to be made from their recordings. And as a new artist, it’s notoriously difficult to get paying gigs. It’s a lose lose situation for so many hard working new artists.

Big artists like Springsteen, U2, Neil Young, Coldplay etc can command big enough concert ticket sales to compensate for the lost earnings through streaming and downloading. But once that generation has gone, who is going to fill the void.

Ed Sheeran? God forbid. It’s quite depressing actually but again it makes me thankful for what we actually have with The Minnows.

W.E: It’s such a confusing and difficult time for songwriters who perform to make money these days with illegal downloading and streaming. Have you any good advice or knowledge to share with our budding songwriters out there on how to profitably navigate these areas if they are thinking of making a career out of it?

Raff: I really wish I did but I refer to my previous answer. I

don’t know how anyone can make a career from it nowadays if they don’t already have a foot firmly on the ladder.

Something has got to change but when I don’t know. Maybe vinyl and CDs will come back into fashion? Maybe for the future of music, artists will no longer allow their music to be streamed? People just cannot afford to invest the time and effort into making quality music anymore as there is likely to be no reward at the end of it all. Great topic for debate but I certainly don’t have any answers I’m afraid.

W.E: Where would you recommend fans can go online for your music and since you all like the visual aspect of music too, can we order a Minnows T-Shirt from somewhere?

Raff: Our website www.minnowsband.com and our Facebook page are probably the best ways to keep up to date with us. We used to make tshirts and I see people post them on social media from time to time. They’re real collectors' items now. We have no plans to make any more at this stage 83

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but you never know, we had no intention of playing live again until we couldn’t ignore the demand. How many are you after?

W.E: Rumour has it that possibly due to there being much more privacy for fans and folk in general when they shop, a shift back to tape may be happening, away from online access to music and video. Are The Minnows available on vinyl and tape or considering it? Do you think there is any meat on the bones of this topic?

Raff: I can’t see the cassette thing happening to be honest.

Why would anyone want it… because they saw it on Stranger Things? In this case, it would be just a passing fad if it did happen. I still like CDs even though I can no longer play them in the car, which really annoys me!! So, as far as The Minnows are concerned, I doubt if we’ll ever put out cassettes. We’ll probably stick to producing limited edition CDs and we would certainly consider vinyl if sales covered the cost but it’s expensive so unlikely.

W.E:

How is the songwriting process for the band currently, has the renewed momentum stirred up a creative bloom for future albums?

Raff: We’re very busy doing a lot of things but we’re

definitely inspired to keep writing and creating music. We’ve another song almost finished in the studio and you can really see the years of experience starting to pay off. We’re very much at home in the recording studio. We have lots of ideas and completed songs still to record, even old ideas from many years ago. Like Prince, there is a vault of ideas and clips that we can dip into to create at least another three or four albums.

We’re actually debating whether the concept of an ‘album’ is actually a thing anymore. There’s a strong argument for putting out songs individually as and when we finish them.

Then maybe an album at the end. I don’t know, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But you might be hearing more new recorded music from us sooner than you think.

W.E: The Steepest Hill is your latest single, delivered with

The Minnows melodic mastery. It acknowledges the stresses and struggles of modern times, a topic many musicians, artists and people, in general, are discussing. Do you find this is some kind of therapy for the band as much as it is for the audience?

Raff: Yes, music is very therapeutic in so many ways. For the artist, it’s an opportunity to vent feelings, get things off your chest and share your thoughts with the world, not to mention the escapism and the pure joy of simply performing. After a hard day, there is nothing like a rehearsal or a gig to help you escape from the sometimes harsh realities of life.

For the listener, music is therapeutic from both a lyrical and melodic point of view. Lyrics that you relate to can validate your own feelings, show you that you’re not alone, inspire you and make you feel better. Then there’s the uplifting or emotional power of the melody, which we know can transport us back 30 years in an instant. A melody can make you feel sad, happy, comforted, strong or ready to take on the world. I’ve said before, I believe that music is more powerful than people realise and its healing powers, in so many ways, deserve to be studied and researched much more.

W.E: There are always funny and wild stories with most

bands and we know you guys love a bit of craic, so, to end on a high note in your key Raff, can you tell us of any hilarious moments on the road or onstage, offstage after a gig that will give us all a giggle in this time of modern madness and stress. Every band usually has one or two gems up their sleeve, there is no point in any band ever trying to deny that :-)

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Raff: As I said, we lived the rock and roll lifestyle for many

years and a lot of it is a blur, but I’m sure if we all got together over a few beers, the stories would come flooding back.

Off the top of my head, I remember Maynesy falling off the stage in Maddens, Antrim, wrecking his back and having to play the rest of the gig on a stool.

On another occasion, we were playing at the famous Baggot Inn in Dublin, which had a very low ceiling. I used to jump around a lot on stage and I remember one gig in particular. It was jammed to the rafters and the crowd were going bonkers.

I leapt up at the end of a song and banged my head on the ceiling, nearly knocking myself out.

I remember playing a gig in Limerick and we were drinking a carry-out in the van on the way down. By the time we arrived at the venue, Kevin was so drunk he could hardly stand. He was literally sleeping on his feet on the stage. Of course, one drunken punter described it saying he was ‘the best bass player he’d ever seen in his life’.

On another occasion, our van broke down just before we arrived for a gig in either Drogheda or Waterford. We had We had to push it the rest of the way to the venue I remember, in pure Spinal Tap style, we were all shouting ‘Hello Cleveland’ and ‘Rock and Roll!!’ as we pulled up outside. There are lots of other little stories and a few that definitely aren’t suitable for print, but it’s safe to say we had a lot of fun on the road!

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We’re actually debating whether the concept of an ‘album’ is actually a thing anymore. There’s a strong argument for putting out songs individually as and when we finish them.

Then maybe an album at the end.

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On another occasion, our van broke down just before we arrived for a gig in either Drogheda or Waterford. We had to push it the rest of the way to the venue I remember, in pure Spinal Tap style, we were all shouting ‘Hello Cleveland’ and ‘Rock and Roll!!’ as we pulled up outside.

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We've learned how to swim and enjoy all the flowers, We've learned how to sing and swing through the hours, Absorbing the splendor that nature provides, Many millenniums live in our strides...

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Nurture

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Why change what is working so perfectly fine?

Why all the hurry to shorten our time?

Stop, look and listen to our earthly goods There is nothing wrong with our natural foods...

Nature

Photography Shelley Rodgers Creative Designer Corinne O' Neill Makeup & Hair Mary Louise Mc Combe

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Disney is globally huge and if your voice is your power, your job could be to sing and do voice-overs for animation films, TV and/or, tour live for them, and who knows, win a Grammy along the way like Genvieve Goings.

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Singer Actress Disney Voice Over

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Genevieve has a remarkable career simply using her voice. With a fantastic talent and zest for music and life it has taken her on a roller coaster ride through musical landscapes she never expected. Hop on board her train with Skyler Jett and his team at Music For Global Change. Who knows who you’ll recognize or remember on this journey?

Tom: Welcome to the show Genevieve. In 2017 and 2019 you earned Grammy nominations for writing children's music and in 2018 you earned a Grammy as a recording artist in the children's music category. You are a writer and producer of music for television. Your career started in R&B and Hip-Hop in the San Francisco Bay area. You’ve done voiceover work in cartoons and are a recognized voice in children's entertainment. You've had over a decade of experience appearing as the singing train conductor in Disney Junior's Choo Choo Soul. This was originally crafted as an audio CD by a video game developer Greg Johnson whilst you worked for him on the game Toe Jam and Earl The Mission to Earth which we'll talk about a bit more later on. There are loads more to talk with you about Genevieve and thank you so much for joining us. Please do tell us more.

Genevieve: Oh thank you wow. It’s just weird to sit there as your bio is read, I know it's not the traditional career you hear about every day. It's been a blast, it's been a wild ride and now I'm coaching kids on how to record themselves and write and hear harmonies and all that good stuff. So it's a wild ride it's super fun thank you. Why did I get the feeling you knew Toe Jam and Earl?

Ryan: Oh…listen, what an amazing video game, it brings me back to my teenage years of my Sega Genesis. I think you're in the third iteration of the game.

Genevieve: Yes. Ryan: I was a die-hard original and when I saw your bio I

thought how do we not talk about this? How do you get into it? I'm more fascinated now, so how do you get into this whole voice-acting world right? Um, that's kind of where I wanted to start to be honest.

Genevieve: I love that well what was so cool I was working

on Hip-Hop and R&B music in the Bay Area. The Bay area is big time, you know a melting pot of many things including genres. So I was singing in this audition came through for Toe Jam and Earl. They were looking for female rappers and so that was kind of like my vibe at the time and so I auditioned for the part. One of my favourite stories of my career to share is the fact that I did not get the part that I was auditioning for! So it's kind of a cool thing. How it all started was not being chosen for that and not because I'm not talented but because I just wasn't the right voice. It's something really good for a lot of us to hear and be reminded of how it's nothing personal and then you hear the person that got the part you're like oh yeah that was perfect but something in my audition they liked about me.

They were like, you know but-there's some background characters and I was like okay cool let's do it and so it was just like this thing I wasn't even quite doing yet but I just dove in kind of like well I can do that I could be could be a little girl I could be this I could do that and each character had to fall off a cliff which was really cool like now you are the kid that was so fun so I kind of got thrown into this and during that session um there were gospel singers and they were the Gateway into this next level that you were gonna go to on the game and so it was like we've got a mission in mind we've got a mission to find I'm like that's their line and they're singers I'm like why aren't they singing it so I just was like we got a mission in mind we got a mission to find and he was like come back tomorrow I was like oh what happened when I came back the next day he had written all these new lines as songs and he had like so much fun with it that deep in his mind he had this whole like love of trains and this whole secret songwriting ability Greg Johnson who

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created Toe Jam mineral that was like the beginning of Choo Choo Soul he was like hey by the way would you ever make a kids album okay and it's kind of like where we went but I think that the idea was the first question was about getting into voice acting work and I think the cool way to do that is to identify that ideal job then you know fake it till you make it just kind of make it sound like you did it you know it's like if you want want to do commercials like find pick up your makeup thing and just read it in that way and you know it's like just actually making it sound like the job you want is basically how the beginning of making your demo to try to get work for said project so it's kind of like rather than waiting to be hired for it it's just making it sound like you've already done it.

Ryan: Was there an aspect of being in the Bay Area or

Genevieve: (laughing) I think so, like before it was a program baby.

Ryan: (uses his hands to mimic a circular motion and says jokingly) Yes rewind that tape all right.

Tom: (smiling) Back in the eight-track days.

Ryan: (smiling) Splice those two together.

Genevieve: (laughing again) Yes exactly.

Skyler: (bashfully smiles) I'm a dinosaur, you know I gotta

hold it up for the dinosaurs. Making all that money from home, I like all that stuff.

California as a whole, I mean what if you're just the average person who's like I want to be a voice actor dude well I think let's relocate you know?

Genevieve: (laughing harder) Yeah, dinosaurs tiny hand fist bumps yeah (Everyone laughs and smiles)

Genevieve: I don't think so, not if you have the recording

laughing)

equipment and the technology going on. Covid showed those of us fortunate enough to be working in the animation industry that it was the type of production that could keep going, it was busier during the pandemic you know because there are so many great technologies, it's fun. I wasn't even going to try to be like a salesman on this but, it's kind of like what I'm showing people, how you can start with something as simple as a USB microphone from your home. It's easy to just start that with a recording setup, I'm sure you guys know the deal. If you get booked for a gig and you're able to send samples of your audio recordings to a lot of places that are cool with that I'm sure. There are these programs that run like plug-ins I think we all have worked in recording software before, yes? (laughing

Skyler: (chuckles)

Ryan: (mimics a tiny dinosaur fist bump while everyone is Skyler: Oh man, you might not know that Genevieve is a

humanitarian too and I love you for that sister because we've written some songs on the humanitarian tip, you know for the George Mark Children’s House. You know for the hospital we did it for that, I mean it's just it's wonderful you know the duets that we've done over the years.

Genevieve: Oh I know it's amazing and I mean some of them we co-wrote, yeah I watched in awe while he wrote it in like seconds and then was kind enough to say we cowrote it I'm like I think I only suggested something there somewhere.

Skyler : It all started with us at your dad's studio, right and then did I send it to Robert Damper, Kenny G's musical director and he played on it, then Kitty played, incredible and didn't charge us a dime!

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Genevieve: There it is!

Skyler: You know we're doing it but you and I were already

doing it even before it came to this right here. You do a lot of work helping kids. I want to help kids, to help them to write the kind of lyrics that you and I exactly started doing for others because we can do that right?

Genevieve: Music is the best translation tool we have.

Skyler: It’s the number one language in the world. Tom, you got a question?

Genevieve: Those are collaborations. I feel just so honoured to even be chosen to be a part of those albums.

Two were with the Alphabet Rockers which are this amazing group you guys should talk with them, talk about change makers oh my gosh. They're just incredible, they really do walk the walk. On their albums, I wrote a few songs with them over the years and some I featured on I simply just wrote on. Their albums were nominated and they were just nominated again this year which is outrageous and I got to write on that as well. Oh my gosh is this I feel like I'm just piggybacking off someone, but that is the way it goes. Then I worked on a children's album called Building Blocks, by fellow artists Tim Kubart. I was on his Block Party song so that one I was singing, we were kind of featured together and that one was nominated as well. So it’s just so cool that we even have that recognition in the children's genre because it really is a genre you know. I have a two-year-old about to be three and I see how easy it is to just hand them the iPad and go on YouTube and find whatever. We have to be mindful about what we're playing for them and what we're creating for them because they have incredible palettes for sound like we do. They don't need to be sunk down to some rinky-dink song. They love music you know, so yeah it's cool to be acknowledged in that way as a genre. I wish they had a singles category but we'll wait (laughing) Skyler: What is it like to perform to 15,000 kids out there in front of you how does it feel?

Genevieve: Man you mean performing live, yeah oh it's so Tom: Yes, off the back of everything else you've got your Grammy nominations for writing the children's music, almost back to back it looks like from 2017 right through.

Your nominations how did they come about?

great I mean it's been a while since it was that many in an audience because I haven't been touring as much. But it's just incredible it's definitely changed me as a songwriter too because when you see the kids in the crowd it's like they just want to be involved and they want to succeed immediately!

You know, so if you're going out there with a mentality that you're an incredible musician, check out this chord

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Ryan: Absolutely yeah the Choo Choo Soul, I saw it was around 2006 or something.

Genevieve: Yes that was it when it first came out.

Ryan: Yep okay so yeah my son is seventeen so he would have been right in that age where he probably saw it. I'm gonna play this back for him today.

Genevieve: Oh my gosh, just play the little “all aboard the choo-choo train” line and see what happens. It's been great too because I had this reacquaintance with myself on Tick Tock where through the pandemic I came on Tick Tock and it was like opening a door and everyone was like “Oh my God you were my childhood”.

Ryan: You are huge, massive on Tick Tock, I checked out

your Tick Tock and people just like finding you and want to sing with you and stuff.

progression and check out this modulation I did - they're just like - how do I sing along to that? You can find the right place, but I really like starting out right from the beginning of the song, this is how I want it to go you know for example I’ll sing a number count - one two three four five five six - seven eight nine ten…and the kids already know what to do and sing back the same to me, so let's get them to sing along, let's show them how we want them to be involved. Over the years I've met families and kept in touch with them. I've made incredible friends through this all and it's just it's crazy watching these kids graduate from high school and I'm just like oh my gosh you were jumping with me on the Choo Choo Soul Train, you know.

Genevieve: Oh outrageous yeah, so cool, so fun.

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Skyler: I love that song about inside voice and outside.

Genevieve: Yes that that right, that's my method for

teaching it's like we're gonna make them scream but we're showing the difference yeah between inside and outside voice, it’s so fun I love that one too.

Skyler: Then there’s the potty song, about going to the bathroom, gotta do my business.

Genevieve:

Hilarious, hilarious you know there's something so special about that and I thought I could probably put that out on Tick Tock or something but it might go viral, I don't think if I want to be known for just that song, but it's pretty good.

Ryan: It can go sideways pretty quickly. (laughing) Tom: Down the pan as it were. (everyone laughs) Skyler: What are you working on now?

Genevieve: Yeah so right now I'm working with the Disney

Junior channel. I'm making some music for little short-form stuff that's going in between their other shows and it's great.

I started doing that about six years ago now I think where they wanted to do some new nursery rhymes remaking nursery rhymes. They went on some big summit and they came back and Disney was like - Disney needs to own nursery rhymes - like okay guys yes you do because it's like they see all these billions of views going on with this like.

Ryan: I mean they gotta want some of that baby shark money you know what I mean.

Genevieve: Exactly they're like - come on now we're Disney we need to - and I mean what an honour that they would come to me to make some of them, cool you know and so that was really fun and through that animation company OddBot, which has grown so much even since

then they've done the uh the new action-packed show on Netflix and they did the Muppet Babies reboot on the Disney Channel.

They would make really cute animations based on all the Disney Junior characters oh right that are going on in their shows and so through that then we moved on doing ready for preschool which is another short-form show with like tying your shoes um morning afternoon and night places in your town things like that and then now we're going to do a little bit of just some fun songs for the Disney 100 year Anniversary so it's been a blessing amazing.

It's great to move into the producer role because I've been kind of backseat driving for a long time as far as production so the pandemic certainly helped me with that too where it's like you can engineer it you can mix it you can you hear the baseline do it you know it might take me longer than others but then I've released some in independent songs well independent with a small label called eight-pound gorilla and done some kids songs I did a Christmas EP last year that's going to come back around again this year crazy for Christmas lady kind of fun like going from being the young artist into like the crazy mom so that's really fun that's a song about you know the lady who has Christmas everything it's just a Christmas explosion lights everywhere ugly sweaters.

Skyler: I think you told me he was writing for other countries too right?

Genevieve: Yes so I did, I did work for Disney English where they were teaching English in China as a second language and I wrote a lot of musical curriculum for them which was really yeah really cool to think about it that way that was like Songwriter 101 because it was like here's what they need to learn and here is the property we're going to teach it within like make it sound like Lion King makes it sound like Peter Pan make it sound like Aladdin and then

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here's the list here's a spreadsheet of the only English words that they know so far so you're like okay that was incredible that that was my songwriter college right there. I work really well from creative briefs where it's like we need it needs to have this and that to when I'm trying to write and release my own music I kind of having to do that to myself you knowit's like okay I want it to give me royalties forever so let's attach it to a holiday and then what's the idea let's say this and that it's like I'm telling myself this is your to-do list so I really want to next year like just write songs just for fun.

Skyler: Do you do adult music anymore?

Genevieve: I do, I have friends that I write will write you

know adult Pop R&B songs and for pitching them out to other artists and TV and film and things like that I haven't been doing it as much but I do love it and a lot of my hiphop and R&B you know friends that are doing adult music.

Still, I'll sing backgrounds on their stuff or on the hook, that's how I started, it was singing on rap hooks so I love I still love doing that.

Skyler: Right, hey Tom you got a question?

Tom: Yeah, you mentioned it right beginning there that you now uh wrote and produce uh music from your home studio there in LA and you're coaching adults and young people on doing their own kind of recordings from home and stuff like that firstly how did you get into that and get the idea to start doing so, can you tell us a bit more about that?

Genevieve: It's funny I would do this for fun. We would have friends come over it would be a very different setting they would have some beverages and just a bunch of fun and I'd be like come in the studio come on go over there now say this and say that and I've always just loved that aspect of recording and I've noticed in living in LA and slowly I've had some I'm not a professional Voice coach but I certainly have a lot of experience and techniques and things to share and so I had clients they would just coach with me you know it started with just their parents ask me

as she has an audition or can you do this or that so it kind of started there it's like it showed itself to me over time and I would notice a lot of the same questions I would hear from people a lot which I've noticed over like different sales training and things they tell you kind of like the napkin test it's like what would your Online course be if you were to sell one if basically if you could write down five questions people ask you the most on a napkin and then you take those blocks and turn those into your thing so I was realizing that I was hearing that a lot from people my daughter loves to sing how could I set up a studio for her.

I realized that I was hesitant to dive in and call myself a coach in just as a singing coach but I realized like no my strength is in the actual recording you know in the program and editing and that's how I can help people so once I had that light bulb moment I was like okay that's what it is I'm doing so and there are free programs now there's Garage Band on a Mac on a PC there's a program called Audacity and so I use Pro Tools um but of course then there's logic Studio One. There are so many different programs but they all essentially do the same thing which is a multi-track recording so that you can play a music track and then layer your voice layer your voice again again and for kids especially working a lot of my clients um here in L.A. there they have agents already they're getting auditions and what happens a lot is you'll the kids will get an audition let's say it's for a Disney show and it's like okay here's the script of what you need to say and then here's a song they'll send them an instrumental the full song and just the vocals only now if you don't know how to record or you don't know what and you're the parent and you get that and you're just like how do I do this but I want my kid to audition for this.

I'm realizing there really is a need for that and it's in my opinion very easy so much that a kid can learn to do it themselves so their parent is not there editing all night every single audition which they will do we all love our kids but these kids are smart they can they can figure it out they can

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figure it out I have clients that are 10 I have one that's eight that I helped her do it all like they can figure it out you know yeah and so that's good money too. You know it can be all right per hour, you know what I mean kind of lucrative, it's a good bit I feelyou know what it's a good bit I feel good about it and they feel good about it you know it feels fair so you know what you probably just need is just some Scripts it's like it all starts with that you're like oh this is all you say you know it's just like well you do what do you make them up yourself or I do for some of my classes I'm actually about to do group workshops. I keep just saying I'm gonna roll this out I'm trying to find a time because there are all these different time zones in this beautiful world but yeah just like getting in groups and trying out those lines and hearing how there are notes in spoken words as well right so it's like if you're just reading something like oh no it can't be this we have to run where are they like my mom's coming, hurry up you know like all that sounds exactly the same learning how to be like oh no they're coming oh wait my mom's here it's okay you know what I mean it's like taking them on this ride.

Genevieve: But, I still have some free, I haven't paid for a while to get in but I can't go whenever I want and I do wait in lines yes,

Ryan: I can see the animations in my head already.

Genevieve: Whoa okay yeah exactly, I'm definitely not saying don't buy but I certainly don't have any Insider anything… (holding her hands up)

Genevieve: Oh yeah this is why I have wrinkles over my eyebrows because I also act with my face.

Ryan: Listen I can't get off this Disney tip, okay, I got two

questions, do you ever have to wait in line at Disneyland or do you just get to cut the queue?

Genevieve: (Laughing) I am nobody when I show up there.

I used to have the free pass to get in all the time. That's because I was actually an employee okay so now I'm doing contract work. It's a lot if they had to give every contractor a card.

Ryan: I get it.

Ryan: The second question real quick all right, Bob (Robert)

Tiger is back in charge at Disney do you have all right SEC don't listen to this if you're watching Youtube do you have any Insider stuff that I should be like buying and selling are they going to sell to Apple who knows you know what you can't go wrong with Disney stock that's not a secret over time it's the long game of Disney I mean I can't imagine a world where Disney is cancelled or taken down I don't know I've never met such fanatical people.

Genevieve: Yeah right yes I know, I mean that that whole thing is so interesting, probably in another six hours from here my dad's eyebrow is twitching, he manages me, he's like don't say anything on the show.

Ryan: (Smiling) This is YouTube too so you know we're trying to get these views and keywords to people… you’re not saying buy but you're not saying don’t buy, who knows?

Ryan: (Smiling) Ok, I tried, I tried.

Genevieve: Other than the 100-year anniversary next in 2023, merchandising.

Ryan: Okay so would you do merchandise and things

would be when you get your new music done will you come back on?

Genevieve: Oh my gosh yes please hello, I will be here we'll do more of a performance thing can we all do something together we want to promote what you're doing.

Skyler: I love you so much, we’ve known each other for

years.

Genevieve: I know it's crazy and you've helped me a lot you helped me really to take that step from I wish I could into I'm going to.

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Skyler: You were born with it you know, I didn't do anything but say keep going that's all I said, get out of this corporate job what are you doing at this insurance company you need to get out. We used to go get Vievi when she was working at an insurance company and people would tell her why are you still here what's wrong with you?

Genevieve: (Laughing loudly) Yeah, those insurance meetings, additional death and dismemberment benefits etc.

Ryan: Wow, you just hit her with a nickname and everything man.

Skyler: All right.

Genevieve: Yeah listen I love you too, thank you guys so

much how fun it was talking about myself the whole time but, I suppose it's an interview.

Skyler: That’s why we asked you to come on you know.

Genevieve: I love it I am so excited to be here thank you so much have a great day.

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One of my favourite stories of my career to share is the fact that I did not get the part that I was auditioning for! So it's kind of a cool thing. How it all started was not being chosen for that and not because I'm not talented but because I just wasn't the right voice. It's something really good for a lot of us to hear and be reminded of how it's nothing personal and then you hear the person that got the part you're like - oh yeah that was perfect but something in my audition they liked about me.

Interview with Music For Global Change founder Skyler Jett, Ryan Schewchuk and Tom Bryant.

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Success Through Persistence & Perpetual Motion

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How does one go from being unknown in the entertainment business to the very top of the regional theatre business?

Needless to say, there are enough cliched answers on the internet ether to drown a sea of entrepreneurs, some of whom might take online classes, read books and listen to podcasts. And many will talk the talk but never walk the walk to make their dreams into a reality.

So, I’m happy to tell you about Mike Lee Taylor, because he is someone who actually walked the walk step by step in a forty-year journey that started with him being a comic and a singer, an experience he eventually turned into a family business with his son James, that sells millions worth of theatre tickets each year.

One of the most interesting and satisfying parts is that Mike and James are nice down-to-earth guys, the kind of guys you would be happy to meet at the pub for a chat and a laugh. The father-and-son-run company is called ENTERTAINERS (entertainers.co.uk). Located in Essex on Canvey Island where they have evolved over a forty-year period they have become the powerhouse of regional theatre in the U.K. Entertainers specialise in tribute shows that are booked in theatres in small towns and hamlets throughout the country, as well as overseas where local people want a theatrical experience at prices they can afford. As the entertainment director for Butlins Holiday Camps way back in the day, Mike Taylor had a keen eye for what customers wanted, and came up with the idea of packaging tribute shows for Butlins and then extended the idea and offered his shows to local theatres. At first, it was a struggle because the local theatres weren’t really interested in tribute shows until Mike proved to them that he could consistently deliver quality shows that people would come out to see. Learning as he went along, he eventually built up a catalogue of shows including the hits from Motown, Queen, Elton John, Abba, the

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Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Tom Jones, Disco Classics and more.I had the opportunity to attend one of his shows a few years ago and was gobsmacked by the level of professionalism as well as the marketing efficiency that the show displayed.

Now a couple of years later, Mike is still expanding the company with his son James who is at the helm and running the day-to-day business; which now includes a fleet of articulated lorries and vans as well as purpose-built production facilities that includes a recording studio, rehearsal room, sound stage and costume rooms; all to produce their constant stream of shows that they have played around the country at any given time. They are even geared up to train young people how to operate sound, lights and other stagecraft so they will have a ready supply of technicians as they continue to grow.

World Equal Magbook recently met up with Mike's son James Lee Taylor to talk about how he got into the business and transformed the growth of the company which now consistently employs over 100 people.

Teddy Hayes: James how did you get started in the entertainment business?

James lee Taylor: I got started right here. I’m from Canvey

Island, I went to school here. At 13, I started doing children’s parties, D-J’ing. A guy called Muhammed used to work with me and drive me to gigs and help me set up. I’d DJ at children’s parties and went by the name Just James. I played for £150 a night. I’d have £100 and give him £50. And then when I was 17, I could drive myself. I got my little Mercedes sprinter van, and I’d go and do a full set up on my own, doing everything from weddings, to bar mitzvahs to the local social club, playing Engelbert Humperdinck and songs that any 17-year-old shouldn’t know. But they were 60th birthday parties and anniversaries, so that’s what I did. I then got a job at West Ham Football Club. I was there from 17 to 22, doing all their players’ parties and function suites. They had a hotel and function suite in the building, so during Christmas, I’d literally move into the hotel in

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November and DJ every day for seven days a week for four weeks. So I learned about music and I learned about how to move an audience and what songs go together and how that all works. From there, I then went on to all sorts of celebrity parties. Then, I got a job in Cannes at the Martinez Hotel.

And met people there and was flown all around the world, to Boston, to Australia, to Moscow, DJing, doing sort of high-end parties. Getting paid from £150 to sometimes £10,000 a night.

So, at the same time as doing that, I was modelling. I remember when I was 16, I was on a set as an extra on The Bill. There were two buses, one for the extras where I was meant to be and one for the actors. I’ve always been quite industrious so I snuck onto the actors’ bus. There was this guy called Scott Maslen, one of the actors in it, and I asked him how I get cracking in this business. And he gave me some ideas and some people to go and see. I went and saw them all, Select Talent Agency, Models One and Storm and they all said no.

I then joined a smaller one, called Bookings and the owner really loved and nurtured me and we grew. I was with him for five years but then he retired and I joined Select, the biggest one, again one that had said no at the start, and did modelling for everyone, from Calvin Klein underwear to Tesco. I had a good modelling career. At about 25, I wanted to become an actor. Obviously, growing up with my dad as a comedian, and seeing him on stage all the time, it was in my blood to perform.

Teddy Hayes: I didn’t know your dad was a comedian.

James Lee Taylor: Oh yeah, so I’d always go and watch him as a two-year-old. He used to do comedy and sing Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennet. He set up a whole studio with a little karaoke machine. When I wanted to act I moved to New York. I went to Lee Strasberg Acting School.

And then I auditioned for a play. And I got the lead role in a play called The Tiger about Stockholm Syndrome.

We rehearsed for a month straight. I loved it. It was the first sort of theatre I had ever done. We opened, did one night and then it was closed down because the producer didn’t get the rights from the writer. Everyone had flown out the owner of the First Model agency, my dad, they flew out to see it and then it didn’t go. But the writer and producer liked me and then they cast me in their next show called Tesla, about Nikola Tesla. Again, I got the lead role. We opened off-Broadway and did a month-long run on Theatre 18, St Marks Place in New York.

Teddy Hayes: Yeah, I know it very well, on 14th Street.

James Lee Taylor: Yes. So, it was great and all was going

really well. From there, I moved to Los Angeles. I thought, why not? and rolled the dice again. I got an agent. I went up for Christian Grey. I got in the final round for that. I actually had (the actress) Sheridan Smith help me to read the lines as she was a friend and I got quite close to getting it. I didn’t get it though. So, there I was in LA, and you know the hustle and bustle of learnings things, the stretch of your day; I’d do yoga between 10 and 11, American accent from 12 till 1, I’d do the movement from 3 till 4. It’s every day.

That was my education in acting. Being from Canvey Island these things were unheard of it. And it really taught me a lot. And I had some success; I landed a lead role in a TV show called Being Mary Jane with Gabrielle Union. I played her boyfriend in Atlanta. And then obviously, you’re only as good as your last thing.

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Teddy Hayes: Yeah, that’s L.A. alright.

Teddy Hayes: So that was like a blessing in disguise?

James Lee Taylor: Obviously, with the acting, you work

James Lee Taylor: Everything happens for a reason. So, I

backwards with that, you’re seeing yourself, why you do the things you do. I subsequently learned during Covid that I have ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) which fires me up. I had a tough time with bullying at school. And it really, I guess it forces you in different ways.

For me, my whole thing was “I’ll show you”. And it fired me like a rocket, so everything I’ve ever set my mind to, I’m like “You don’t think I can do it? Okay, I’ll show you”.

So, I did the TV show, and then I was auditioning for Days of Our Lives. It was a five-year deal. It was like a few hundred thousand pounds. It would have been lifechanging. And I went through the first round and there was like one bloke in a room and then three, four, five, ten. I got to the final auditions and there were eight guys and me up for it and they really tried to test you to your limits. So, they give you like 17 pages of dialogue that you’re forced to learn for the next day. And with ADHD, it’s a curse and also a gift. So, I learned this stuff. I arrived and they put the eight guys into their own rooms in the studio in Burbank to get ready for the show. They said go and get ready and in a short while two girl actresses on the show will come and read with you, run lines with you before you go on the set.

That really is the finishing touches to get you ready to go.

So, I'm waiting and waiting and waiting. And then no one calls my name. So, I inquire - what happened? And I find out they flipped the order and I was eighth. And then they flipped the order backwards again and I was first. So, from finding out that I wasn’t going to get to read yet and then suddenly to “James you’re on, stand there and action”! And I started and I fumbled and I blocked. I said I’m so sorry.

Can I go again? No. Next. It destroyed me. After that, in every audition I went into, every movie, and I was getting big rooms with big casting directors but I kept choking to the point where I couldn’t do it. My agent dropped me, and wouldn’t take my calls anymore. I was a mess. It completely broke me down. My dad said to come back home. So, I did.

I moved back and joined the company.

moved back home to London, to Essex, and no one ever called for me, but I had a job in the company. I grew up with it and I knew how to market things. I knew from my life experiences and from watching my dad, being a DJ, how to make music and how to brand stuff and market stuff, how it should look, feel, and smell.

So, I started building that. And then there was an audition coming through from my English agent who had stayed with me, and was very loyal to me, to play James Bothwell in a show in Spain called Queens. I didn’t want to do it but my current girlfriend at the time, kept on going on for me to do it, so I did it. I got the lead role playing James Bothwell. So, I flew to Spain. I learned to horse ride, I learned to sword fight. We shot this thing for six months. It was just like, oh, wow, okay, we’re back. And then we finished filming it, but then the guy didn’t pay us. The funding fell out. It went out in Spanish, dubbed in Spanish and wasn’t shown on BBC like it was meant to be.

So, after that, I said that’s enough. Then I really focused on doing this, what I do now. Around that time, George Michael passed away and I started devising a show called Fast Love which then went on to be one of the biggest tribute shows in the world, it was in 28 countries. It sold a million tickets worldwide. Then it was on to my next show which was Lost in Music, my big disco show. We’ve got The Rocket Man show based on the music of Elton John, and I’ve just built a new one, a glam rock show called Don’t Stop Believing.

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So, I turned our family business from four staff into 50 staff.

We are now doing 1,600 shows this year. I’ve obviously diversified a fair bit. Now I’ve got our normal musical tribute shows where there’s a genre or a specific person. I’ve also now got a show called Cirque: The Greatest Show which is a family content show and it’s selling out everywhere. Last year, we had a good year. Obviously, Covid was awful. Covid was desolate. But last year, we sold 500,000 tickets. It’s just April this year, and we’ve already sold 335,000 tickets.

I’ve got a new show which is premiering tonight. It’s in the west end of London at the Adelphi, called The Makings of a Murderer with David Swindle who was a former detective who found Peter Tobin, the serial killer and it’s a show about how he did that. So, we’re really firing away now. We now employ 500 people a week. We’re on track to sell a million tickets this year. Pretty good for a father-and-son business from Canvey Island.

Teddy Hayes: This is great because I’ve always been a big

believer in people taking something and making it their own and then moving it around. And this is exactly what your company is doing. In fact, you’re the first company that I’ve seen do that. And you can do that in England because theatre is so entrenched in the culture.

James Lee Taylor: Yes, theatre is a release, particularly in

these times. You know people are not always going to see the heavy shows at the moment. They want some light relief. So we go to every pocket and corner of the country and we give people a night out to escape and to let their hair down and to relive their memories, for an affordable price. I have an army of people behind me. The speed, again, my ADHD, I can turn something around as my Ghosts show very quickly. I thought of it and in the following week I had a hundred dates, the next week I had 200 dates. When I get an idea for something, like a rocket ship my ADHD propels it like no other.

Teddy Hayes: Because England is not that big, you can get the shows out everywhere.

Teddy Hayes: Because you have a wide vision, where would you like to see yourself in five years?

James Lee Taylor: Right, and, I drive everywhere. I’ve done

James Lee Taylor: I didn’t know seven months ago, I’d

20,000 miles in the last 10 months. We’re the backbone of English theatre. I mean in most venues I do between 5 and 20 shows. There’s a theatre in Sunderland called the Sunderland Fire Station and it opened 18 months ago, I’m doing 53 shows in there. So, it’s all come to life. And then now, it really has gone full circle. One night in October, I woke up and I had an idea for a ghost show called, “Do You Believe in Ghosts?” It’s about ghosts in theatres. It opens a month today. It’s got 200 dates in every theatre around the country. And then we are in the West End at the Adelphi for the West End premiere of Halloween. And we’re in talks to put it in the West End full-time next year.

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have a West End show, now I do. I’m opening one tonight as a one-off and I really have high hopes to be a West End producer full-time, you know, but still not forgetting my roots. Getting back to my Dad, he built the business and was and still is my inspiration for doing all that I’m doing now. We’re from a working-class family, my dad was once a bus driver and grew up with seven kids in a threebedroom house. Now no one’s selling more tickets than us.

With 330,000 in four months, no one. I’m very thankful to my dad. My dad taught me everything. Even when I was 16 he gave me money to take the train to London and he encouraged me to follow my dreams.

Teddy Hayes: About your new show, The Makings of Murderer, is it a musical?

James Lee Taylor:It’s a one-hander with the spoken word.

I produced it. I love all my babies, so I go around, I go see them all, three nights a week all around the country, from the top of Scotland to the bottom of Cornwall, supporting my teams. And even today, Lost In Music just got to Perth, on its Australian tour. I never see them all, but I’m really

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Mike Lee Taylor and Tony Bennett ''circa 1990'''

Everything happens for a reason. So, I moved back home to London, to Essex, and no one ever called for me, but I had a job in the company. I grew up with it and I knew how to market things. I knew from my life experiences and from watching my dad, being a DJ, how to make music and how to brand stuff and market stuff, how it should look, feel, and smell.

Father and Son enjoying the fruits of their labers

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proud of them and I care and that’s what translates, that why again, we’re out there. But the Ghost one is the one I’m most excited about at the moment. It’s co-created by myself and Julian Watford. And yeah, it’s going to be special, and we’re opening it up in Bedford on the 18th of May.

Teddy Hayes: I’m looking forward to seeing it and thank you so much for your time.

James Lee Taylor: My pleasure!

Interview by Teddy Hayes

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Mary Ginnifer 109

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My name is Ayo Onatade, and I am a freelance crime fiction critic and commentator. I write and blog about all things crime fiction related, and my research interests include historical crime fiction and crime fiction literary criticism.

Everyone is passionate about something in his or her life. For some it is travelling, football, shopping or even just hanging out with friends. Mine is crime fiction (in all its connotations) and has been for over forty years of my life. I am often asked about my love of the genre, when it started and most importantly what was the first book that I ever read, and do I remember where I was and what I was doing at the time?

Those questions I can easily answer. I started reading crime fiction nearly four and a half decades ago. I was nine, going on 10 and it was my mother who introduced me to the world of mystery fiction by giving me my first mystery novel. I of course now lovingly blame her for my love of not only the genre but also books and libraries.

What was I doing? I was on a flight from London to Nigeria which was to be my home for the next ten years of my life.

The book? The Mysterious Affair at Styles which was first published in 1920 by that doyenne of mystery fiction and one of the founding members of The Detection Club Agatha Christie.

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My copy (which I still have floating around somewhere) was one of the famous Penguin green paperbacks. Any discerning reader of the genre will no doubt recognise the fact that it was also the book that introduced readers to her most famous character the Belgian Detective Hercule Poirot!

To be fair I do have to admit that like most other children I did read other books, but most of my reading was always and continues to be within the genre. I read all the classics including Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, and other Golden Age books but my reading tastes did change. I can’t remember exactly when, but I do remember what caused the change. It changed after I read Raymond Chandler’s 1950 essay The Simple Art of Murder. I was intrigued and as I had made my way through most of the classics it was in hindsight a great introduction to why I should read noir books.

Nowadays I do get asked who my favourite author is and if I have a favourite book. My response to that is are we talking about living authors or just authors in general? If we are just talking about authors in general, then I can easily say that

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my all-time favourite author is Raymond Chandler, and my favourite book is Farewell My Lovely. I know that Farewell My Lovely is not considered to be his best, but it is my favourite. A close second is The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.

If we are talking about authors still writing, then that is a bit more difficult. My taste is quite eclectic, and I do not have a firm favourite. I do however have authors whose books automatically move to the top of my TBR (to be read) pile when they have a new book coming out. These authors include (and are not restricted to) James Lee Burke, Val McDermid, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott, John Connolly, Sarah Paretsky, S A Cosby, J D Robb, Lee Child, Laura Lippman, Walter Mosley, Donna Leon, Gregg Hurwitz, Lindsey Davis, Andrew Taylor, Denise Mina, Dennis Lehane, Louise Penny, Robert Crais, James Ellroy and Attica Locke to name a few. And yes, I am aware that I read predominately male authors and US authors. The other question I often get asked is whether my day job has anything to do with my love of the genre. My answer to that is no. I just happen to work with some very senior judges and have been working with members of the judiciary for at least twenty-years now. My love of the genre predates my working with senior members of the judiciary.

Also, none of the judges that I work for and continue to work for hear criminal cases. They have either worked in the Family Division or the Court of Appeal and currently at the Supreme Court.

I started becoming involved in reviewing books and interviewing authors in a rather round about fashion. Many years ago, there was a bookshop in Covent Garden called Crime in Store. I became very good friends with Thalia Proctor who worked there, and she also had an influence on my reading as well. Thalia was the one who introduced me to so many new authors especially US authors such as Harlan

Coben, Laura Lippman, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane and Dana Stabenow to name a few. If I am not mistaken, Crime in Store hosted Harlan Coben’s first book launch for his first standalone novel Play Dead in 1990. I was introduced to Mike Stotter at the event by Thalia. Mike Stotter at the time was the editor of Shots Magazine and we started talking about crime books. Before the end of the evening Mike asked me if I would like to do some reviews from the Magazine to which I said yes and that is how I started reviewing and doing interviews. Over the years things have moved on. The Magazine went online and then a blog was also started. Now, Mike Stotter looks after the website, and I have taken over the blog which is called Shotsmag Confidential. Unlike some other blogs that solely post book reviews on Shotsmag Confidential you can find information about forthcoming crime fiction events, Calls for Papers, results of crime fiction related book awards, a roundup of what infrequent criminal splattering’s or news. In fact, anything as long it is related to the genre.

This also includes films and television news.

My involvement with the crime fiction community has evolved and has continued to do so. I have taken on several roles. I was a judge and subsequently became the Chair of the CWA (Crime Writers Association) Short Story Dagger panel for nearly 10 years. I am currently one of the judges for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and I am also a CWA Committee Member. I currently the Chair the HWA (Historical Writers Association) judging panel for the Debut Crown, and I am currently doing my second stint as a judge for the Ngaio Marsh Awards (New Zealand).

I have also found myself not only moderating and chairing panels at various crime fiction events over the years including CrimeFest, Hull Noir Capital Crime (where I also sit on the Advisory Board), Bloody Scotland, Deal Noir, Bouchercon and Bay Tales but I have also been involved with helping select winners for publishers who have had competitions for authors of colour. I was also the Chair of the Bloody Scotland Mcllvanney Prize and a Judge for the Mo Siewcharran Prize both in 2022.

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I have also given papers at several academic conferences as well. I have given papers at St Hilda’s Crime and Mystery Weekend, the Queen’s of Crime Conference which took place at the University of London School of Advanced Study and the Lee Child Symposium which took place in March 2022 at the University of East Anglia where I gave a paper on 75 Years of Thriller Writing. The symposium was arranged to celebrate the donation by Lee Child of all his papers to the University.

I have also taken part in a talk on Eric Ambler as part of Bodies From the Library, which was held at the British Library, Fatal Shore part of Shoreham Wordfest (October 2022), The Golden Age of Crime (Bournemouth 2022), Edelweiss - Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem (October 2022) Left Coast Crime (2006). I have also jointly edited an anthology Bodies in the Bookshop (2014) with author L C Tyler and was a contributor for the two volume British Crime Writing: An Encyclopaedia (2008) One of the other frequent questions that I get asked is when I am I going to write my own novel? Let me start by saying I have an enormous respect for authors and whilst I like doing research, I am not likely to write a novel. Why may you ask?

The reason is that my reading taste is too eclectic, and my thought process is too academic. Would I write about the genre? That is a possibility. I am as Barry Forshaw (the author of such Pocket Essential Guides as Euro Noir, Historical Noir, Brit Noir, Nordic Noir and Crime Fiction: A Readers Guide) his unofficial researcher. It is something that I enjoy doing. One of the joys of what I call my crime fiction life is getting to hangout with the crime fiction community. It has brought me a lot of joy. In 2018 I was Fan Guest of honour at Bouchercon in St Petersburg, Florida.

For those who have never heard of Bouchercon it is the biggest crime fiction conference that is held every year in the United States. However, each year it is held in a different place. In 2018 I was also awarded as a member of the Shotsmag Ezine the CWA Red Herrings Award. This award is given to someone who has given generously of their time and expertise, benefiting not only the CWA but the wider crime-writing community.

The very first time that I attended St Hilda’s Crime and Mystery Weekend, I found myself staying up to the small hours with Val McDermid amongst others. My very first interview with Laura Lippman was at Harrogate Crime Festival in 2004.

During Covid I found myself moderating several panels online as well amongst them a panel on Narrative Voices in Crime Fiction as part of Malice Domestic.

As part of Black History month in 2022 I organised and moderated an event at Gray’s Inn with several black crime writers where we talked about Black Crime Fiction on a Modern World. Even though I have said that my involvement in the genre does not have any connection with the day job, this was an event that did tangentially involve my day job. I was asked if I could organise and moderate this panel by Baroness Hale of Richmond. For the few that know what my day job has been about then you will recognise the name. Baroness Hale was the President of the Supreme Court from 2017 until 2020 and I was her PA. I have been a judge for Killing It: The Killer Readers Competition for Undiscovered Writers which was launched

by Harper Fiction which encouraged submissions from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic writers with an aim to support crime writers who are looking to take the next steps in their writing career.

I am also currently a judge for Penguin Michael Joseph Undiscovered Writers Crime and Thriller Prize.

So, what is it about this genre that draws me to it so much? I am not sure that I can put it into words. I love the different stories one can read, the fact that you can read a crime novel that can make you laugh out loud one book and the next book could be incredibly dark and bloody. There was a reason why I decided to do my Master’s degree dissertation on Crime Fiction as Social Documents. I always say that if you want a good grounding in social history then read a crime novel.

Ayo Onatade February 2023

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Nurture Nature Please do not spike our rich dark soil Don't turn it to dead dirt with pesticides toil Let rains do their work and let the grass grow Don't plough it all up or trill as you go...

Draw down the carbon the soil has released Replant the forests, the trees made deceased Bring back our planet to its former glory So we can grow up to tell a great story…

Photography Shelley Rodgers Creative Designer Corinne O' Neill Makeup & Hair Mary Louise Mc Combe 115

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B arry Perkins Invester' Corproite Development' Entrepreneur & Idealist

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Barry Perkins meets Music For Global Change Interview by MFGC founder Skyler Jett with Tom Bryant.

Tom Bryant: Welcome to the show Barry Perkins. You are

the founder, chairman and CEO of Tesseract Group former Oracle executive investor and entrepreneur, and co-founder of Global Mental Health and Wellness Foundation also Hived Music or Hive Incorporated as well, there is a lot to talk with you about Barry thank you so much for joining us and please do tell us more.

Barry Perkins: It's a pleasure to be here thanks for having

me on Skyler. I have spent a lot of time on email, phone, and Zoom over the last while with you so we're very closely aligned in what you guys are trying to accomplish with Music for Global Change.

Skyler Jett: Right, it's wonderful because you get it and God bless you for that man.

Barry Perkins: It's been such a pleasure Skyler to meet

you, somebody who actually is so aligned with what I've been doing my whole life trying to make the world a better place. It gets a little lonely sometimes when you read in the news and everything you hear is gloom and doom and yet you know, life keeps going on. Why can't we focus on some of the good things as well? When there are problems I always see them as opportunities to fix something and that's what I do, it's like the salmon swimming upstream, but I like it.

Skyler Jett: The wonderful thing about it is that once we do depart this side of the dirt, we can say we helped a lot of people.

Barry Perkins: I certainly hope I have. I always ask myself

in he background, the road to wherever is paved with good intentions. I sometimes worry to make sure that my good intentions are actually good intentions for others and that they're not self-serving good intentions.

Skyler Jett: I love that because like I said leaving here

knowing that I helped some young people write about positive vibrations as an alternative negative. I say - give bad news some competition.

Barry Perkins: When you talk about young people, I think

that is very very important. As you know I've been focused on the mental wellness and health space for quite some time and one of the areas that I found disturbing and frustrating (partly because I've been in Tech my whole working life and we build Tech but I treat Tech as a tool for humanity) is the concept of most social media platforms out there is in theory to connect people but it actually tends to disconnect people more.

It has become a problem for young people because when they're on other platforms they see a non-stop feed of all of the problems in the world. Even though they're analog beings they were born and lived digitally. They look at the news, everything through a screen and all they see is bad stuff then they go on something like Facebook or Instagram or Tick Tock and they see these people living wonderful lives and they start to say well what's wrong with me?

It's been shown in studies that this leads to depression in young folks and then there's this high rate of suicide for young folks. They grow up thinking, well gee, this is a world that's going to hell in a handbasket.

What you're doing about the whole idea of positive music and positive lyrics and teaching them to look for the good things and sing about the good things, I think that will go a long way to help draw young folks into - ‘Yeah you know there is some good stuff, it isn't all bad’.

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Skyler Jett: I love that we have these conversations right now

because back in the United States I was trying to get this going.

I've been doing this for 20 years but I try to get it going and nobody says ‘Good luck with that Sky’.

Barry Perkins: Everybody when it's something it's for social good it can't be good business

Skyler Jett: I'm only saying.

Barry Perkins: I'm sorry, one of the things I tend to be quite good at is I'm really good at helping businesses monetize and commercialize their business and grow. I can do that at the same time as making it good for the social good of humanity and I've shown that over and over and over. When I was at Oracle working with other companies we did that and now on my own setting up companies, the investors would say ‘Oh well you know it's a wonderful idea good luck with that’ - yeah you know, then they're done.

Skyler Jett: That's right. I get to see the young people when they actually do write a socially conscious song because I challenge them. I say you know what right your love songs whatever you want to say, your personal stuff and then change it up and write something about something that could help us.

Barry Perkins: Yeah and that's a good point something could

help us but also not just always about ourselves. If we go through and we look at just ourselves all of the time, that's a pretty narrow focus on life. Either you get too caught up on all of the little bits of yourself because you can never compare them.

There's always somebody better at something and they're better looking or they're more intelligent or they're more athletic or they're more social.

Skyler Jett: It's like a competition.

Barry Perkins: Yeah it is a competition and it shouldn't be

because each person is beautifully unique they are who they are and I think one of the important things in life is finding out who we are and who we are in relation to others. Not everybody should have the same focus as us, but the focus on serving humanity I think is a challenge but it's a good challenge. As you said earlier I hope I leave this side of the dirt feeling that I have actually made a difference positively.

Skyler Jett: That's happening right now because this

conversation will be in a web land forever. People will be able to look back on this and say - When did this happen? When did people start waking up to the benefits of socially conscious music? It has no competition. Now, you start to put all of this positive music everywhere. And people start gravitating to that like man finally life ain't all bad right? I mean, you make that contagious man that's what my move my movement is about. I love it when I speak to maybe 500 kids and maybe only 25 or 30 of them call me back and they go ‘Skyler I get it’ - because I tell them you know socially conscious music it's not flamboyant or anything like that, it's about your lyrical content and how you feel about the world and how you can make others feel about the world.

Barry Perkins: Maybe contrast that you know, you start with that and then put something that's a little positive to take it somewhere else. Maybe this is where you feel you are at this moment, but it doesn't mean you have to stay there. You Skyler, had a lot of challenges to face and to overcome, it was not a party and you had to find a way in a path and realize that you didn't have to stay there, you could change it and make a difference and now you're passing that on.

Skyler Jett: I'm watching it happen. It's beautiful because I asked people, I say have you written any socially conscious songs? I know they've written thousands of love songs because there are over 5 billion love songs and only 192 million socially conscious songs. Let's raise the level, we just got to spread that to the young people so that we can go do the good news concerts.

Barry Perkins: Right. I do think love songs can also be positive lyrics they're all not Achy Breaky Heart.

Skyler Jett: No no no no no. The socially conscious songs I was writing at first had to do with the environment and homelessness. Once I did this one positive song, I said that's what they're looking for right, if they start singing along with you, you're on to something. Tom, you got a question?

Tom Bryant: I have, I just want to talk about Hive

Incorporated. What were your reasons for going into that and how music is involved?

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Barry Perkins: That's an interesting question and it has been an

We as humanity created that problem because it's no fault of yours that you got in a car accident, got hit by a car or whatever, broke your arm, you go to the hospital and they give you opiates.

In fact, you don't get a choice about that when you're there. Some people become addicted right away some take a little bit longer and now they wind up addicted and fighting with an addiction use disorder that they didn't step into intentionally. so I thought well, the whole purpose is that they were trying to address pain.

As we know in the world of cannabis, there is the marijuana plant and hemp and they drive products. They've been used by humanity for over three millennia for health. Humanity as a total is not stupid enough to use a plant for that long a time thinking it has health benefits if it did not.

I'm an engineering background guy but also a business guy! So I helped him realize there had to be business protocols and we added that layer on top and we looked at where it was going.

Initially, we started off way too big we were trying to boil the ocean, that's my nature. It's along with my two greatest challenges in life - I try for perfection and forever - neither of which is possible. The only way you deal with the future is living in the moment and that’s really, really hard for me to remember.

But, when we built up the tech platform, we had to have businesses that would run on top of them and leverage that. So we looked at two different areas of the market that we saw a need that was matching. One was in the world of spirits and alcohol and I didn't want to go there because there's way too much history in the past with addictions in that space in my life, and the other one was in the world of cannabis.

It is a growing world out there that's recognizing that and I thought that's why I stepped into that cannabis space. It's a market or an industry that needed help I had good business experience and background, and I know a lot of people who struggled in that space and there's a whole part of the world of social equality and social justice that needs to be fixed where people were profiled as you know for colour right, and because they had some weed they were thrown into jail and they weren't a criminal, now they are a criminal, and now they can't get a job at all. So, I thought that's a great business so I stepped into that one.

I realized that to help that drive go to market, music made sense!

interesting Journey. When I left Oracle I vowed that I would work on and with businesses that were making a positive difference in the world not just out for a dollar. I founded a number of different tech companies and have supported many others and we've gotten along. About three and a half years ago I was at an event and I met two people there, Amit Rathore, he’s a friend and Nancy Riviong. Amit is somebody who is really a thought leader in where the world of tech is going. He really lives out on the wild blue horizon of the ‘world of possibilities’ and he was talking about a concept that he had for a technology platform that he was building. I helped him refine that and he defined the protocol's technical layers.

I wanted to take that one on and somebody said well ‘why would you do that? and I said well it's interesting - first of all it's complex, I've spent my life taking on problems that other people think are impossible and my teams have always been successful.

It doesn't matter how hard it is. Sometimes it takes more time, more money, more ingenuity but we always get them done.

When we're looking at the world of cannabis as I mentioned, I and a business partner designed an addiction transformation program we were doing for the Department of Health and Human Services and working with Dave Mara who works for Governor Sununu in the state of New Hampshire. In that program, I was looking at the root causes of what happens to addiction because we were looking at helping people out of addiction. To get to a role where they're working in life and contributing to society but they have to have a fulfilling life so we added all of that in the program. I wanted to look at the preventive side and I realized that underneath that a lot of the people that got into opiate addictions got it through our medical system!

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So I started talking with artists in areas I realized I could go to smarket programs for the social commerce platform that we had and we could drive awareness for cannabis brands. I started working with LL who's at Super Bad Inc and she works to manage Lil’ Kim. So we went to look at setting up some concerts for Lil’ Kim and part of the focus was to advertise and launch her cannabis brand called Aphrodisiac.

Now, Lil Kim is very, very fashion-conscious and has a really polished eye for branding, so I realized I couldn't step into that until my business was ready to step up at that level. So we've been holding off on that one because I'm not quite ready yet. But as we did this, the world of music said ‘Hey you got to expand’ so we changed the name of the company to Hived. The concept being we have social commerce platforms we Hive people together around a topic area and then you have a place where you can live together safely and communicate, learn what goes on, talk, advertise, market, and sell all in a place where our motto or so the slogan is Express Yourself - to express yourself safely!

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Barry Perkins: I was planning on May 1st but then I had a

gentleman reach out he had a tour with six shows in April and he wanted to start ticket sales on the 23rd of March he really needed what we were doing because they didn't want to be screwed by Ticketmaster. So that's what we're setting up, an alternative for that where the artist gets the money.

Skyler Jett: What a concept! people who actually create the

music.

I will not play the game that Mark Zuckerberg does where I believe he will ignore anything as long as he makes dollars out of it until such time as public pressure or political-legal pressure requires him to change it. I don't believe in that, I believe one has to have a moral and ethical standard in life and so that's what we do.

I will not do a censoring of content on the network, I will not shut people down because they disagree because I think we all have different perspectives and should in many cases disagree, even have heated debates but as long as they're civil! If it becomes uncivil like hate speech or name calling you know, this stuff, that’s when we step in.

When we were children we would have had a bit of a whooping from our parents you know when we grew up that kind of behaviour can't be tolerated. People need to learn to grow up so that's my base for it and we stepped into Hive Music and the interest and demand have been far greater than I currently can satisfy but we're getting there.

So we have a social commerce platform where all of the businesses are involved. On the 23rd of March 2023, tickets went on sale as we have our own ticket-selling software.

Skyler Jett: That's my birthday!

Barry Perkins: (Laughing) That is auspicious, right?Skyler Jett: (Smiling) That is amazing man.

Barry Perkins: I know mind-blowing right? I'm not a musician, yes I was involved in music my whole life, I never was good but you know my wife is exceptional and I've been watching when people were looking in San Francisco, people will pay house cleaners more than they'll pay their piano teacher or music coach really.

Skyler Jett: Waitresses make more than musicians on tips

alone.

Barry Perkins: Yes I know I mean yeah if you're a musician

you shouldn't feel privileged because you got paid enough to cover your expenses to show up for the night or you had to get your roommate to give you a ride.

Skyler Jett: Oh my God bro you know what's wonderful

how we connect like this and bless you that you understand what I'm doing with Music Global Change. Because we can change it with music, I've seen it, I've been here for six and a half decades I'll be 67 on the 23rd and going through all those decades I can tell you what people were wearing in those days.

Barry Perkins: You and I grew up pretty close to the same

generation I'm 65 today right just like you know and we grew up in a very different era right we saw there was so much going on as you said you know when you were in Oakland and there were and with Berkeley and Oakland it was all of the stuff going on in the streets and um you know there was

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Skyler Jett: Tanks! Yeah, I saw tanks coming down the street man.

Barry Perkins: I was at the young end of it, I desperately wanted to be a hippie. I liked the idea when I was a teenager of - Make Love Not War! But it was that whole movement, people that I knew went off to Vietnam and some didn't come back and those that came back were messed up. Then we've had endless series since then you know my psychology teacher at high school had been a POW in the Korean War and that's what I grew up with every night on TV, it was the body count watching the news and they'd sit there and how many were in Vietnam and how many on the U.S. What a way for a young person to grow up.

Skyler Jett: I had like four TV stations back then.

Barry Perkins: (laughing) I know that's how old we are right to remember when colour TV came out?

Skyler Jett: Oh wait my mom had a colour screen thing that we stuck on the TV.

Barry Perkins: (laughing) Okay and then the best part is

explaining to the kids that when you wanted to change the channel you had to get your butt off the couch.

Skyler Jett: (Laughing) You go, no you go this time I went last time etc.

Tom Bryant: There were like 10 channels we had.

Barry Perkins: There were three literally and it was all over

the air and you'd have to sit there and move the little bunny ears around to get them just right and at midnight you got you know that pattern and they played the national anthem at the end and then they turned off.

Barry Perkins: Oh my goodness there was a famous segment on the Nightly News with Walter Cronkite and at the end he always said - and that's the news for blah blah blah good night - and somebody, a kid wrote in a letter and said Mr Cronkite please don't say good night in the end because that's when my parents put me to bed. He read the letter and he said something to the effect of - well you should listen to your parents so tonight blah blah blah good night man.

Skyler Jett: Bless you for coming on the show brother Happy birthday.

Tom Bryant: Happy birthday.

Skyler Jett: Go have an amazing time tonight man.

Barry Perkins: I'm going to be around home today

because today is March 14th it's Pi Day 3.14 right, so it's talking about things that are round. I spend my day eating round Foods I started this morning I made a breakfast sandwich and then I'll have a pizza for lunch and then we're having uh fajitas for supper and a ‘pie’ of course.

Skyler Jett: Whoa you got an agenda for your birthday!

Barry Perkins: Absolutely.

Skyler Jett: Well listen, man, we thank you for coming on brother.

Barry Perkins: Thanks for having me and you know I'm really looking forward to all you're doing, partly the Music for Global Change but also what you're doing as Skyler Jett right, where you are going. Thanks for having me on.

Skyler Jett: They tell you when to go to bed okay ‘that's enough’. Yeah, you've been watching this screen all day.

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After Marinalva de Almeida lost her leg in a car accident in her teenage years, she went on to become a mother to three children and an accomplished athlete who represented her home country of Brazil in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio. Mari also made the front cover of EQUAL Magazine - Reboot Vol 4 in 2016. She is a model in the fashion industry but also a role model to people with disabilities. Mari also appeared on Big Brother Brazil 2017.

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Preserve Every Drop Water is life's medium and matrix.

Mother and medium. There is no life without water.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

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Corinne O' Neill 135

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If you can't feed a hundred people, 138

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then just feed one WorldEqual_Final_3mmBleed_Outlines.indd 141 145

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World Food Programme World Central Kitchen is first to the frontlines, providing meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises. We build resilient food systems with locally led solutions. World Central Kitchen started with a simple idea at home with my wife Patricia: when people are hungry, send in cooks. Not tomorrow, today.

Everyone knows that food is central to life and family all over the world. What we learned very quickly was that food is even more essential in a crisis. It all began in 2010 after a huge earthquake devastated Haiti. Cooking alongside displaced Haitians in a camp, I found myself getting schooled in how to cook black beans the way they wanted: mashed and sieved into a creamy sauce. You see, food relief is not just a meal that keeps hunger away. It’s a plate of hope.

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It tells you in your darkest hour that someone, somewhere, cares about you. This is the real meaning of comfort food. It’s why we make the effort to cook in a crisis. We don’t just deliver raw ingredients and expect people to fend for themselves. And we don’t just dump free food into a disaster zone: we source and hire locally wherever we can, to jump-start economic recovery through food. After a disaster, food is the fastest way to rebuild our sense of community. We can put people back to work preparing it, and we can put lives back together by fighting hunger.

Cooking and eating together is one of the things that makes us human. Since those early days, our journey has taken World Central Kitchen all over the world. We fed an island after Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico. We fed tens of millions struggling with the Covid-19 pandemic. We put boots on the ground when a blast devastated Beirut, bushfires ripped through Australia, and a volcano transformed a Spanish island.

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Over two billion people do not have regular access to safe and nutritious Food

We were under a bridge with thousands of asylum seekers in Texas, in a demolished Kentucky town after brutal tornadoes, on the Louisiana coast when yet another enormous hurricane made landfall.

We have travelled a long way together, with support from people just like you. We have witnessed enough disasters to know that food relief is not enough. So we have invested in our Food Producer Network to help create resilience ahead of the next disaster. We train aspiring chefs in skills and safety to build their careers and the food economy. We advocate for more hunger relief and better nutrition. We want clean cookstoves in the homes of the one billion cooks whose health, and the climate, are in danger, when all they want to do is feed their families. And we launched our Climate Disaster Fund: a $1 billion commitment over the next decade to support communities impacted by the

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climate crisis. Because food is not a luxury reserved for the lucky few. It’s a universal human right to live free from hunger. At times like these, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of the challenges we face, and the speed of each new crisis.

But many complex problems have simple solutions. Sometimes you just need to decide to do something. Sometimes you just have to show up with a sandwich or some warm rice and beans.

You’d be amazed at the power of a plate of food. It can change the world, and so can you.

José Andrés Founder

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To keep our team, volunteers, and everyone safe, we have robust COVID-19 safety precautions in place.

Masks must be worn at all times on-site and additional protocols are outlined on our volunteer site. Before you can sign up to volunteer, you must create a profile using the button below. Once you are a member of the World Central Kitchen Volunteer Corps, you will be able to sign up for specific shifts as needs become available. Please note, our volunteer needs change quickly, so continue to check back for updates. If you are interested in volunteering with our #ChefsForUkraine response in Poland Since the invasion of Ukraine, World Central Kitchen’s Relief Team has been on the ground supporting families sheltering in the country as well as refugees arriving in Poland, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, and most recently, in Spain. Cooking out of our own Relief Kitchen in Przemysl, Poland and mobilizing a vast network of chefs and volunteers across all six countries, World Central Kitchen is providing nearly 200,000 hot, nourishing meals every day. We’re also making daily food product deliveries into Ukraine and throughout the country for World Central Kitchen restaurant partners' cooking.

Emergency Food Relief. For food relief efforts, World Central Kitchen activates our Chef Relief Team, comprised of professional chefs, logistics experts, and other specialists to establish and oversee the emergency kitchens we operate after a disaster. Our work wouldn’t be possible without amazing volunteers, most of whom are local from the communities we are serving. Some people do drive or fly in to assist, but they do so at their own cost and by making their own arrangements.

We train our volunteers on the lines, and can use people with professional cooking experience, 4×4 vehicles to help with food purchases and deliveries, and anyone willing to serve a fresh meal with a smile. In many cases, we welcome children accompanied by adults. Different emergency relief kitchens will have varying capacities to accommodate our younger helpers, so be sure to check when signing up for a volunteer shift.

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What began as four women making 500 sandwiches a day has now turned into a full-scale operation of 10,000 sandwiches – as well as 16,000 hot meals – being prepped every day at World Central Kitchen’s FEST kitchen in Lviv, Ukraine. The team has been cooking since the war started and continues to do so, even though consistent air raid sirens that force them to shelter for safety multiple times a day.

Dishes include marinated pork, roasted potatoes, beans, cabbage, and hot soup!

It's is in your hands to create a better world for all who live in it

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Nurture nature with natural intelligence With care, with brains please do this with elegance The magic is made for us all to have fun Don’t press the buttons that make it undone.

Poem by Kieran Sherry.

Photography Shelley Rodgers Creative Designer Corinne O' Neill Makeup & Hair Mary Louise Mc Combe

Nurture Nature

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Genevieve Going's

Singer Actress Disney Voice Over WorldEqual_Final_3mmBleed_Outlines.indd 364

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