Elizabeth Bananuka is a PR professional and the founder of BME PR Pros and The Blueprint, both of which promote racial diversity in the PR and communications industry. She's delivered diversity workshops for agencies, lobbied industry publications to diversify their judging panels, speakers and commentators, and in 2019 she organised the first BME …

Matt Sewell is an artist, illustrator and author, best known for capturing the beauty of birds through his vivid watercolours. Over his career he's illustrated for The Guardian, The National Trust and The V&A, painted walls for Greenpeace, BBC’s Springwatch and Countryfile, and the RSPB, and his work has been exhibited in London, New York, Tokyo an…

Blake Howard is a writer, movie critic and podcaster, and the founder of One Heat Minute Productions. After starting out making my favourite ever podcast, One Heat Minute, in 2017, Blake has gone on to produce hundreds of brilliant podcasts under the One Heat Minute Productions brand, on a bunch of movies, including Last of the Mohicans, Miami Vice…

Adam Gibbons, better known as Lack of Afro, is a musician, multi-instrumentalist and producer. His first studio album, Press On, was released by Freestyle Records in 2009 and he's since gone on to release six more, all of which are infused with his unique take on funk, soul, break beats and rap. In our chat, Adam tells me how he became inspired to …

In 2010 Oliver Jones founded Deer Shed Festival, a family-focused music, arts and science weekend camping festival in North Yorkshire, with his wife Kate. Since then, it's gone on to become one of the best family-friendly festivals in the UK and celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. Oliver spent more than a decade working in the music industr…

Andrew McMillan is a poet and lecturer in creative writing. His debut collection, physical, published in 2015, won a host of prizes and was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award. Earlier this year, it was voted one of the top 25 poetry books of the past 25 years by the Booksellers Association. Growing up in Darfield, sout…

Joanne Harris is the author of more than a dozen novels, most famously Chocolat, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Born in Barnsley, Joanne started writing at an early age and worked as a teacher for over a decade before the success of Chocolat allowed her to become a full-time writer. Her books …

John Nicholson is a football writer, novelist and web entrepreneur. Born in Hull and raised in Stockton-on-Tees, John has enjoyed a wide-ranging career which includes setting up the online t-shirt businesses DJTees & TShirts365, submitting a weekly column for Football365 for almost two decades, and writing 16 novels. His 2010 book We Ate All The Pi…

Matthew Cope is a magician and magic teacher who performs under the name Matthew J Magic. Growing up in Yorkshire, Matthew started juggling at the age of 10, performing magic as a street entertainer at 14 and was playing all over the country as a magical illusion act just a year later. Now, after a stint as a school teacher and extensive travel aro…

Rebecca Swift is global head of creative insights at the world-renowned photo agency Getty Images. Since joining the photography industry over 20 years ago, Rebecca has pioneered the use of analytics to find out why we are attracted to certain images rather than others, and been instrumental in ensuring Getty’s stock photographs portray women and p…

Rahaf Harfoush is a best-selling author who focuses on the impact of digital technologies on society and working life. Born in Syria, Rahaf grew up in Canada and became fascinated by digital technology as a teenager, particularly social media and blogging. Her first book, Yes We Did: An Insider’s Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand, chro…

Emma Kennedy is a best -selling author, TV writer, actor and presenter. After growing up in Stevenage and Hitchen then studying at Oxford University, where she met and performed with comedians Richard Herring and Stewart Lee, Emma spent three years as a solicitor before quitting to become a full-time writer. Since then she’s written for and starred…

Greig Johnson is a comedy writer, performer, musician and filmmaker. His comic creations include Belgian action star Lunge Dolphin, music production guru Woody Brown and northern poet Brian McMorley, and he has recently appeared in BBC Two’s The Mash Report and CBBC’s Class Dismissed. After growing up in Harrogate, Greig studied and then went onto …

Ian McMillan is a well-renowned and much-loved poet, journalist, playwright, and broadcaster. Known as ‘the bard of Barnsley’, his warmth, humour and way with words shine through in his books, regular TV and radio appearances, and frequent tweets. Still resident in his native South Yorkshire, he’s also held the position of poet-in-residence for a w…

Heather Greenwood is a senior executive at film and TV production company Fulwell 73, whose documentary production credits include the smash hit about the return of Bros, After The Screaming Stops, Sunderland Till I Die and I Am Bolt. After growing up in a small village in Lincolnshire she and her family moved to Birmingham when she was ten. While …

Martin Newman is an internationally-renowned expert on customer experience and e-commerce who has been involved in multi-channel retailing for over 30 years. After growing up in Glasgow and starting out working for the family firm he went on to hold senior positions at Ted Baker, Harrods, Burberry, Pentland brands and Intersport before founding the…

Sulene Fleming is a singer/songwriter from Bradford. After starting out singing in competitions as a teenager she’s gone on to appear on countless sessions for all sorts of artists and producers – including Nowegian duo Stargate – and front funk and soul bands like The Brand New Heavies, The New Mastersounds and The Fantastics. In this honest and f…

Diane Brown is the founder and president of RxArt, a non-profit organisation which installs contemporary artwork in hospitals, particularly those that treat children. Now based in New York, Diane grew up in Ohio and originally started out in medicine before pursuing her lifelong passion for art, eventually running successful galleries in both Washi…

Tony Husband’s brilliant and funny cartoons are familiar to millions of people in the UK and beyond, thanks to regular appearances in publications like Private Eye, The Times, Punch, Playboy and many others over the last four decades. In that time he’s won numerous major awards, including the Pont Award for depicting the British way of life. Meanwh…

Portia Jones is the creator of the travel and lifestyle blog Pip and the City. After growing up in South Wales with a passion for travel, Portia went on the first of many solo trips abroad as a teenager. More than ten years of extensive travelling later she launched her blog and has since been shortlisted for a Vuelio blogging award, become a brand…

In a special podcast looking back at some of the highlights from Creative Forces episodes 11 to 18, record producer Steve Levine talks about his friendship with Boy George, technology evangelist Dr Sue Black remembers what she did in the first few years after leaving home at 16, drummer Simon Allen explains how his band, The New Mastersounds, got s…

Nick Johnson is a pioneer of property development and urban regeneration. After starting out as a surveyor he went on to become a director of the hugely successful city centre regeneration specialists Urban Splash, chair of Marketing Manchester and a teacher at Yale. In 2011, though, he went into “self-imposed exile”, leaving those and several othe…

Julian Richer is one of the UK’s most successful high-street retailers. After buying and selling his first piece of hi-fi equipment for a profit at the age of 14, he opened his first Richer Sounds store in London just five years later. Four decades on that store has grown into a nationwide chain of more than 50 shops, 400 staff and an annual turnov…

Priya Lakhani is the founder and chief executive of the cloud-based education platform CENTURY. After training as a lawyer, Priya quit the legal profession in 2008 to set up the Indian cooking sauces brand Masala Masala and within weeks her products were being stocked in major retailers including Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Waitrose. She also set u…

James Ingram is the chief executive of the e-commerce photography and video specialist, Splashlight, and host of the Creative Intelligence Podcast. After growing up in Chicago where he showed an early interest in creative design, James moved to Brooklyn at the age of 19 to start working in the printing industry. Over the next three decades he worke…

Dave Fishwick is a self-made millionaire and the star of Channel 4’s Bank of Dave. After growing up in Nelson, Lancashire, and leaving school at 16 with no qualifications, Dave started his entrepreneurial journey selling used cars. More than two decades later his eponymous company has grown into the biggest supplier of new and used minibuses and wh…

Dr Felice Gersh is a multi-award-winning obstetrician and gynecologist and the founder of the Integrative Medical Group of Irvine. After completing her medical training at the University of Southern California Medical School she spent many years working as a doctor of obstetrics and gynaecology where she developed a unique take on women’s healthcar…

Dr Sue Black left home and school at 16, got married at the age of 20 and was a single mother of three at 25. After completing a degree in computing and then a PhD in software engineering she’s now a technology evangelist and digital skills expert, a UK government advisor, Honorary Professor of Computer Science at UCL, social entrepreneur, writer a…

Musician, record label manager and photographer Simon Allen is a founding member of funk and soul outfit The New Mastersounds and runs the band’s label, One Note Records. Born in Warwickshire, Simon moved to Leeds at the age of 18 where he met guitarist Eddie Roberts and started a musical relationship that is still going strong today. In this insig…

In a special podcast looking back at some of the highlights from Creative Forces episodes six to ten, DJ and author Dave Haslam explains why he chose “Sonic Youth Slept on My Floor” as the title of his memoir, food waste entrepreneur Tessa Cook talks about the moment she came up with the idea for her smartphone app OLIO, writer and director Keith F…

In a special podcast looking back at some of the highlights from Creative Forces episodes one to five, new media visionary Ajaz Ahmed explains whether he knew what he wanted to be when he was school, dating industry expert Charly Lester explain why she loves taking on challenges, author Nick Royle outlines where his ideas come from, health food ent…

After joining CBS as a trainee tape operator at the age of 17, Grammy and Brit award-winning record producer Steve Levine has gone on to enjoy a hugely successful career in the music business, working with artists like The Clash and The Beach Boys and producing the first three Culture Club albums. A pioneer of digital recording techniques, he’s als…

Jason Wingard is a multi-award winning filmmaker, writer and director. His latest film, the critically-acclaimed comedy Eaten By Lions starring Jack Carroll, Antonio Aakeel & Johnny Vegas, premiered at the 2018 Edinburgh Film Festival and won the Audience Award for Best Film at the Bagri London Indian Film Festival. His short film In Another Life, …

Paul Blanchard is a PR guru, author, media commentator and creator of the hugely successful Media Masters podcast. As well as his two decades working in the media industry, Paul has created and sold an IT business, served as a local councillor and stood for parliament. In this episode hear how he started the Media Masters podcast and how its format…

Keith Farrell is a writer and director. After several years working on period drama documentaries, including the multiple-award winning A Terrible Beauty, the story of the the 1916 Easter Rising in his native Dublin, Keith has most recently moved into writing and directing contemporary drama. His 2017 short film, Rabbit Punch, about a young refugee…

In 2009 Rowan Hoban and Sarah Bird spotted a gap in the market for family-friendly festivals and decided to co-create the Just So Festival in their spare time. Just under a decade later, Just So has gone on to win multiple awards and Rowan and Sarah, through the arts organisation they created alongside it, Wild Rumpus, organise events all around th…

Dave Haslam is a DJ, journalist and author. After setting up his own fanzine, Debris, in the early 80s, Dave DJ’d over four hundred and fifty times at Manchester’s legendary Hacienda nightclub before going onto gig at festivals and club nights all around the world and play alongside bands like the Stone Roses and New Order. As a writer he’s now pub…

Tessa Cook is the co-founder of OLIO, the smartphone app which connects neighbours and local businesses so they can share surplus food rather than throwing it away, and since its launch in North London in 2015 it’s now being used by hundreds of thousands of users in more than 30 countries. After leaving the family farm in North Yorkshire Tessa went…

Andrew Bloch is the co-founder and group managing director of Frank, one of the UK’s leading consumer PR agencies. After starting life with just three people in 2000, Frank now has offices in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Sydney, and counts Disney, Volkswagen and Sir Alan Sugar among its clients. In this episode Andrew explains how he got into PR…

Charly Lester is an entrepreneur, dating industry expert and journalist. After creating the hugely popular 30 Dates Blog as a twenty-nine year-old financial contractor, Charly went on to become the Guardian’s dating editor and created The Dating Awards covering the UK, Europe and the US. With professional matchmaker Caroline Brealey she’s now launc…

Ajaz Ahmed is the chief executive of AKQA, the digital agency he founded when he dropped out of university at the age of 21. With a client list over the years that includes Nike, Virgin, Rolls Royce and Netflix, Ajaz and AKQA have consistently pushed the boundaries in their field and hoovered up more awards than any of their competitors along the w…

Stanley Chow is an artist and illustrator whose iconic and instantly-recognisable portraits of celebrities, footballers and musicians have received worldwide acclaim and generated a client list which includes the New York Times, The New Yorker, Manchester United and The White Stripes. In this episode hear how Stan’s love of drawing developed from a…

At the age of just 22 Julianne Ponan became the owner and chief executive of the superfood brand Creative Nature. Just six years later Creative Nature products are stocked in the UK’s biggest supermarkets, and she and the company have won a ton of awards. In this episode find out how Julianne has grown the business, from prospective customers spitt…

Nicholas Royle is a writer, publisher and editor. He’s written seven novels, two novellas and three volumes of short fiction​. He’s a senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School and head judge of the Manchester Fiction Prize. If that wasn’t enough, he also runs Nightjar Press and works as an editor for Salt Publishing. In t…

Creative Forces is a brand new podcast. Each episode is a conversation with a creative individual, hosted by Guy Kilty. Launching March 2018.Di Creative Forces Podcast / Guy Kilty