Spark Off – Episode 2 – Alan

PRELUDE

When there’s something there where you feel like you’re going to make a difference to people, to society more broadly, it fires a team up and you know you can get behind it as a project.

If you know you’re going to make a difference to someone’s lives, then it’s pretty easy to be up for it.

INTRO

Hello and welcome to Spark Off. Get ready to charge your creativity with our brand new podcast, where we have chilled out conversations with the awesome team, and they are awesome, who bring you alive with ideas. I’m Zoe Hanson, the podcast lady, here to spark off the stories that they share and with loads and loads of amazing stories.

Honestly, you’re going to be amazed. We have on this episode, Alan. Introduce yourself, Alan. Hi, I’m Alan and one of the directors and founders of Alive.

I’m looking forward to chatting. So just give us a bit of background on who you are and what you do, Alan. As I said, one of the directors and founders of Alive are kind of keep an overview on everything that’s going on day to day and chip in on creative projects,

mainly the creative aspect of it, whether that’s on the copy side or on the visual side of things. Yeah, and just try and make sure we’re doing as good as we can.

And how long have you been involved with Alive? So Myself and Alex started alive. About 15 years ago, actually started taking shape. Myself and Alex met when we went to college,

studied design. Okay. We then went on to university and lived together with a couple of other mates at Southampton. So this was written in the stars, really, wasn’t it? Well,

it was something we talked about, even just not long after uni, but we went off into agencies and working life. And then it wasn’t until we got loaded with commitments,

if you like, in terms of mortgages and kids, all of that sort of thing. But we decided to throw it all up in the air and starting the business to try. So it was at a time when the world was financially a little bit messy as well,

which I suppose it still is. So yeah, we didn’t make it easy for ourselves. No. No, not the easy route. So what is this episode going to be sponsored by?

So you can choose anything. What are you going to go for? So my first choice is today’s episode would be sponsored by roast potatoes. Oh, that is the best choice.

It’s just, just love roast potatoes. Why not? I’m amazed. Like, we have a chip shop. I’m amazed that nowhere does roast potatoes, just a sort of takeaway. Yeah, I think it needs to be done,

doesn’t it? Maybe that’s, this is the next big business idea. We’ll be touring festivals and everyone will be queuing for miles to get the roast potatoes that we we make. Roasties.

Roasties, exactly. Do you have any kind of special thing that you do to your roast potatoes? They’re normally in with the chicken, so making sure there’s plenty of chicken fat and juices that they’re cooking in.

That’s kind of the main thing, really, other than a bit of a boil before they go in, which is normal. Yeah. But nothing complicated. Yeah, yeah. Roast potatoes. Anything else that you want to sponsor this episode with?

Well, the other couple of things, I suppose, that came to mind were either walks with my dog, Winston, just because it’s probably one of those sort of moments in a day where you just reset and feel good.

Do you take music with you? Do you listen to podcasts or do you just go, okay, no, I’m going to be with my thoughts? Yeah, a mix of things really. Often, so more recently I’ve been listening to books and actually a bit of a course on creativity and creativity in relation to neuroscience.

But sometimes a podcast, yeah, it just depends really on the mood that I’m in and what’s going on. And, yeah, often catching up on a bit of the football as well if that’s on, and I’ll be listening to that.

Yeah, nice. So roast potatoes, walks with Winston and well it was a TV program yeah it’s for the third on the list I went taskmaster because I love it and and it’s creative it’s stupid it’s funny they’re slightly abusive like the relationship between Greg Davies and Alex Horn just yeah just because I love it really yeah that’s a good one I like those there you go sponsored by roast potatoes walks with Winston and

Taskmaster. A triple threat. So let’s talk creativity. What fuels your creativity, Alan? It comes from all directions,

to be honest, because I think I often think about being creative and your creativity is a bit of a store cupboard that you need to keep stopped. Okay. So by keeping new experiences,

exposing yourself to interesting things in the world, watching different things on telly, listening to different podcasts. It’s all out there for us to absorb. So I think it’s really about, yeah, keeping an open mind to doing new and interesting things.

I think, though, sometimes I feel like I want to absorb too much. Yeah. Do you get like that way? Because you feed on it almost and I’ve become sort of gluttonous about,

yeah, but I want to know about that. I interviewed a professor this week who is looking into dementia. I could go down a rabbit hole and talk to him for hours and hours and hours and say,

okay, what about this and what about that and how do you do that? But actually, I need to stop my brain and just go, okay, no, you can’t take this information. You’ve got to just pull back a little bit.

You’re bang on. I think overload has a negative effect, and then you can’t get your thoughts straight. You can’t pick out what you need to. So I think there needs to be a balance between absorbing and seeing what’s going on,

and then moments where it’s calm, restful, peaceful. That’s, I guess even when think about walks with my dog and going out, sometimes I’m happy to listen to a podcast,

to listen to a radio to sort of have that stimulus, then there’s other times and just need to quiet and the world down a little bit. And I’m quite good on the rest side of things. I’m happy when weekends are quiet and there’s not much going on because the weeks are really,

during the week, really busy. So, yeah, it’s balanced, I think is important. Absolutely. So what sparks you and has it always? So when you were a child,

was it the same sorts of things that built that fire in your belly? Well, I was lucky to grow up in a house where creativity seemed to just be present.

And it’s something I’ve been thinking about a bit just recently. But certainly, mum was always creative in terms of trying to find a way of getting by things were tight so she would always need to be creative just to make things happen at home you know like she was a maker and a mender as well so she would wouldn’t you know stuff wouldn’t be thrown away it would be looked after and she would fix it or do whatever

needed to be done to keep it going and she’d always just make the best out of the situation and try and find a way through through challenges and my dad was a a doodler.

He would scribble in his spare time, do drawings and bits and pieces, whether that was plans for the garden or a portrait kind of drawing and things like that. And we always had spare paper knocking around in our house because he worked at a paper mill.

But it was the paper mill that made the paper for banknotes. So That paper probably should never have been in our house, let’s put it that way.

But there was always something to scribble on, I suppose, and do something creative with. So do you ever try to just draw the queen on it, just in case you might get away with it? Some of them were watermarked anyway.

Oh, really? Yeah, so, but I think it was the spoils, rather. I’m not aware that there was any sort of, you know, printing machine out in the garage or anything like that. You know what? The equivalent of that now is that there’s kids somewhere with polymer,

right? To write on at home, we’ve got no paper, but we’ve got loads of this polymer. And so those doodling that,

okay, there’s always a way to sort of fix this. Has that sort of stuck with you? Yeah, I think so. I think when you’re living in that you don’t see or recognize it it’s just what life is but i think as you kind of as i’ve got older and probably a little bit mum died a couple of years back and you kind of reflect on life and how things were and how that’s influenced you you kind of start unpicking some of this

and understanding about the environment that you grew up in and maybe the impact that it has on me and where I am today, because I think there was definitely a kind of optimism,

I suppose, or not, I suppose, being able to see an opportunity rather than the negative of a situation. Mum was really positive kind of person,

so yeah, and whilst I don’t think anyone would accuse me of being that at times, but I think it’s being able to see an opportunity when perhaps things aren’t quite going to plan that’s important.

Keeping that positivity, hey? Yeah, yeah, and just, well, and just seeing the opportunity, I think, is the important thing. Like even when things aren’t quite going as they should or you’re in a negative place,

it’s like, okay, well, what is good about this moment and how can we turn this moment to our advantage and look for positive ways forward rather than getting sucked down into the kind of negativity of where that moment is.

Those opportunities are important because they’re the thing that says we need to change something or we need to do something different to make this thing work, whatever it might be or to work through this moment.

But also that talking to others about it, you know, random chats often take you off into places. And sometimes I think, particularly now with a lot of people working remotely, those slightly obscure off -the -wall chats maybe don’t happen quite so much.

But when you get together with people and you just let the conversation run, you never know where that can go. And I think that’s a really almost accidental place for creativity.

But when I say accidental, all of the things that you bring into that conversation are things that are in your mind and influence what you see and hear in that moment. And then you extract it to be relevant to your situation.

Those conversations, because we’re always chatting as a team, they’re kind of always there. And what I kind of, not just in our team, but I do some workshops and things with clients and other And I always encourage it to be as open as it can be and people to throw in the silly off the wall or off the cuff kind of thoughts and comments.

Yeah. Because it’s that one thing that someone says and they’re just like messing about or saying something silly. And you’re like, no, that’s brilliant. Let’s build on that. Let’s go with it and see where we can go.

Because that’s when you’re kind of inhibitions are down a little bit and you could just yeah just say what you feel and that’s where things go into interesting places what ignites your passion at work because you you know you studied design yeah you know is it still about design or is it something else no that’s the interesting thing I think for me so I was encouraged to think about a creative career I guess because

I just refer to mom again, but she, when I was thinking about careers and what I should do when I left school, I suggested to her that I was going to be a plumber because I thought, getting a trade,

that’s a good thing, right? Yeah. Or everyone’s told that at some point. And she just asked the question, is that really what you want to do or do something you enjoy? And it’s a really simple statement,

but it got me thinking, I thought, I enjoy drawing, I enjoy being in the art class, enjoy doing that type of thing. Graphic design, that’s the thing. Let’s do that. And you don’t really know what you’re getting into at that point.

You just think, well, that’s got a connection with stuff that I enjoy. So let’s go for it and see where it takes me. And it gave me a focus. It gave me not just at school,

but into college and uni and then into work. I’ve been quite driven in terms of what I wanted to do and wanted to achieve. But today, it’s not about design. It’s about creativity more broadly.

And that can be written, visual or something else. And we’ve recently got involved with a dance -related project. And that’s been incredible to be a part of as well.

So what do you do with them then? So a dance project comes to you uh we need you guys yeah so so to be fair i mean part of that what we’re we’re involved with is still the kind of the branding the messaging the the creative comms that go go around it but i’m not going to get away with not being involved in that actual show when it happens i think anyone that comes near that particular project knows that they’re

going to be involved with it so it’s got a So it’s got a good heart to what it’s going to do as well. So that’s important. That’s always what comes across we’re from Alive with Ideas,

is that you have a very high social conscience. You like to work with organisations that are doing great things, you know, for the right reasons.

Would you say that’s true? It’s definitely true in part. Obviously, we have a lot of, We have a broad range of clients and they all do lots of different things. But when there’s something there where you feel like you’re going to make a difference to people or society more broadly,

it fires a team up. And you know you can get behind it as a project. You know that everyone’s going to be on board. And even if, yeah, even if they’re not, then that’s kind of a choice for them.

But I think if you know you’re going and make a difference to someone’s lives, then it’s pretty easy to be up for it and to put an additional bit of energy behind what you’re thinking about and what you’re trying to achieve.

Go on then. Give me an example. Well, the dance project has got a social conscience behind it because it’s about men’s mental health. Okay. So tell us about all of that then.

Yeah. Well, so a friend of ours wants to highlight an issue around men’s mental health and loneliness and is trying to gather a couple of thousand men to dance on a bridge to bring this issue to life.

I’ve been lucky enough to know Zoe for a while. We’ve worked together on previously and she got in touch and asked us about sort of supporting this project and it fired up the team,

got them on board with what we’re trying to achieve and we reshaped what the project was right from the outset. So it wasn’t just about us coming along and doing what we’ve been asked to do.

It was giving our perspective and input on what this project could be as a whole to ensure that it got the scope for future development and expansion should we want to do it.

But you know, you’ve got a cause like that It’s about raising awareness of a big challenge around men’s mental health. And we’re behind it, you know, in whatever way we can.

So what do you do then? Do you come up with, you know, there’s the sort of, there’s the branding. But what’s the process and what do you come up with? Well, it’s interesting right from the outset.

So originally it was called 800 men as a working title. Or that’s how we saw it and it was about 800 men on a bridge to highlight this issue it was shared with us along with a few other bits of information we went back as a team got our heads together worked through what we thought this was and what it could be and the big movement was born in that moment as a name and as a concept so from there we sort of

um we then start thinking about well we’re going to need to bring it to life visually so that the people involved with the project can understand what this could be and the more you can see it and feel it the more you believe it and the more you can get buy in from people that need to be involved um so we we put down some thoughts in terms of from a design and messaging perspective we wrote a poem uh which has

now I’ve been recorded and it’s going to be the voiceover for the video. So it’s sort of starting to come together bit by bit and it’s almost arming Zoe and a team with the tools that they’re going to need to be able to go out and talk openly about this project to try and bring sponsorship in,

just try and get buy -in from local authorities and all of that sort of thing to make it happen. Alan, imagine you’re an onion.

What are the layers? What is it that makes Alan tick? And what of those layers do you use to, you know, be creative at work or outside work?

Are there creative outlets for you outside work? Yeah, that’s really important, actually, to me. Sorry, that was 56 questions in in one. And I’ve got to come up with 56 layers.

56 layers of my onion. I’m not that deep. Yeah, creative outlets away from work. Drawing and do a bit of life drawing. Happy to sit there on my iPad and scribble on that and do some digital kind of drawings and bits and pieces.

What sort of things? Do you do Winston the dog? I have done. To be it’s to try and not overthink it because that’s often been the thing that’s got in the way in the past is I’ll be so too busy thinking about what I’m going to draw rather than just getting on and doing it.

Okay. And I think it almost becomes a barrier. I don’t know what to draw, so I’m not going to do it. But if you just say, well, I saw that personality last night, I’m going to draw them and off you go.

Don’t overthink it because otherwise you don’t any momentum behind it. So, so a bit of that, life drawing. So going along to life drawing classes, which I do from time to time.

I’ve been going along to print classes where I’ve been doing etching and liner print and stuff since Christmas, been doing that. Well, some of the other things, like reading podcasts and all of that sort of thing,

fuel your creativity as well. Yeah. So, but they’re not, I suppose, necessarily. And music? Yeah, music. Music is normally on, whatever I’m doing. Occasional gigs and things,

but not loads, not loads of that stuff. I’ve been writing a book. Whoa. You’ve waited for 20 minutes to tell me that.

I’ve been writing a book. It’s been since probably 2020, I started. It’s a book on creativity a little bit about my kind of story and perspective in there as well as it started off life actually as just an activity book because I didn’t really know that I’d have anything else to say.

And then I found the voice a little bit too much, it seems. And it’s just spiraled out of all control. But it’s got loads of activities in there to get people thinking creatively. Fantastic. Hopefully it’ll be out this year at some point.

Well, it will be out this year. Can you just give us a little insight? Can you give us one of the exercises right now? There’s one combining things is seen as,

and through research of other kind of other people that are into their creativity far, I suppose, deeper scientifically than me. But combining things is often seen as the simplest way to come up with new ideas,

right? It’s often been said that the iPhone is a combination of a phone and a computer, right? But it’s in your pocket. It’s really simple in that respect. So that sort of sense of just connecting one thing with another and making something new,

we do it all the time with food, right? Every time you make a meal, you might combine different ingredients. And actually on one occasion, you might think,

oh, I haven’t got that thing, so I’m going to add a bit of this instead. And suddenly you’ve evolved it into something different. So that’s a really simple way that people are being creative every day,

but probably don’t give it a second thought because they just go with it. And that’s quite a powerful thing. Yeah, I like that. And now I’m going to try and spot all of those things,

why couldn’t we combine those things over there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that. So it’s just coming up with those things. Okay, what could I combine to make things easier? Yeah.

And I think, well, so another, another activity could be spotting ultimately, I refer to it as sort of negative thinking, although it’s kind of not, it’s along those lines.

It’s like, well, what’s the problem? what’s the thing that’s not working, straight away, you’ve got an opportunity to be creative. You’ve just got to define what the issue is and work out something that solves that issue. And there’s your creative moment.

One of the things that’s been on my mind just recently is this sense of aha moments and eureka moments, which have been sort of popularized throughout history. So Newton under the apple tree,

Archimedes, I think, in the bath, like shouting Eureka, these are the moments that people think, okay, there’s just a moment when you have a great idea,

like whether it’s in the shower or out for a walk or whatever it might be. But what all of those moments do, which is true, they exist, those things happen,

but what about all of the work that’s led up to that and all of the thinking, all of the worrying, procrastination, whatever it might be, research or conversations with whoever it might be to sort of get to that point,

whether, I suppose, penny drops or everything connects in your subconscious, and suddenly you’ve got this idea that seems really clear. So that’s all those moments are just moments of clarity in amongst all of the other work.

I think we can ignore or We choose to ignore the hard work that leads up to that point at times. And also, I think that there is the tendency to not have the eureka moment.

Oh, no, I don’t know if I could. That might just be sort of a British thing, but actually we should celebrate the highs. Yeah. Because we can feel the lows. So actually,

let’s just go with all of it, huh? I think it’s almost human nature, isn’t it, that we look at the negative and that sticks with us more than the moments that we do something well or,

I think I saw something once that said, you know, you need five positive moments throughout rule one negative or something like that. Okay. And it’s like, that’s the balance that goes on in our brains where we’re trying to sort of juggle these things around.

And you’re right. When that moment, when that idea comes, do we actually step back and think, well, how have I got to this point? So there’s a process normally that you’ve worked through whether you’ve been conscious of it or not.

And it’s if you can define that process a little bit, when am I at my best? Yeah, okay, that idea might, that flash of inspiration might land when I’m in shower. But that wasn’t the only moment that,

you know, I’ve been working on this problem. Yeah, you’re right. And it is, and that’s it, in essence, isn’t it? That’s the whole point of this podcast is creativity is a process.

Yeah. You might be sat with a client or talking to somebody and say, I’ve had this great idea. What do you think about this? Yeah. But actually, the process is the whole of your life before that that’s fed all those ideas in to get to this point.

So I’m often encouraging people to draw on everything that they are, all of their experiences, so through workshops and bits and pieces, it’s trying to accept that every bit of your experience,

your life, is going to feed into what you do, whether it’s in your work or other creative outlets, and try and harness that, be proud of what that is, and sort or accept who you are,

enjoy it, and obviously then be aware of the gaps as well where you might need to go and talk to someone else that’s got a different set of experiences and a different perspective on life.

Because if you don’t have that balance and you’re in that kind of bubble of your own world, which isn’t all bad, you know. Now, right, if you were going to do a TED talk, what would you do it on and Why would you do it on that subject?

That’s a good question. So again, I’ve probably had a couple of thoughts on this. I think the one thing that was on my mind, it was back to creativity, I guess, was about how creativity is a part of everyone and trying to explore that.

So you’ve worked with lots and lots of clients, probably thousands of clients over the years. But are there projects or clients that stand out to you?

And what’s the work that you’ve done with them? I’ve been lucky enough to work with, as you say, a huge range of clients from global brands to local businesses,

to public sector, to charities and everything in between. I think the thing, we mentioned it about the social good side of things.

So there’s been particular projects when we first started that were for foster care, children in care. And they were just amazing things.

And there’s a project that’s just come up just recently that’s really similar to what we did as one of our early projects. And there’s a kind of emotional attachment to that work. Because ultimately,

our goal is to go in and help the kids and help families form, I guess from it because we’re looking to communicate and create brands for the kids in places and then sometimes it’s about recruitment of foster carers into that network which is really amazing to be able to be a part of that and it causes some funny moments I remember this was years back I was trying to get some feedback from some of the kids I was

down in Pompey at Portsmouth football ground it was their Christmas party And it was wild. They were kicking off about girlfriends, boyfriends, all of this stuff in the background.

And I was a bit like, yeah, that’s great. But what do you think of the logo? You know, it was just, it was a bit mad. But it’s those sorts of moments that kind of stick in your mind.

On quite a sort of separate side to that in some respects, there’s some stuff we’ve done around sexual health, the NHS and other sort of public sector organisations. And there was one client in particular from NHS Lovian,

Leanne, who’s incredible. It’s just got a really creative mind, visually, really aware as well, and sort of switched on. We went through a few iterations on this project.

We did some initial concepts. They were quite broad, mootboards and sketches, that kind of thing. And we landed on this concept called Where’s Willey? That’s brilliant.

That is brilliant. So the execution of that concept was us animating Willie running down the streets of Edinburgh that kind of had,

I suppose its inspiration lurked somewhere in train spotting, maybe. Got it, got it, got it. It kind of, I was going to say, it grew legs and sort of had a life of its own,

but it sort of did in the animation, but then into the real world a little bit. And I remember we were going along to a pitch. It was for a corporate company,

shall we say. And we went into, we were pitching, we were meeting the head of comms, we went into their boardroom, self and Alex were sat down, waiting a little bit, getting a little bit nervous.

Next minute, the door flung open. And a woman walks in and she said, I was disappointed not to see your knob in your pitch deck. It was like, okay,

well, that’s an interesting kick off to the meeting. Here we are. So, and she was referring to the animation that she’d become aware of. So, um, yeah. Your Willie precedes you.

Yeah. And she was, Yeah. It did in that scenario anyway. Oh, that’s brilliant. I hope you enjoyed that episode.

I mean, look, Alan and Willie, very creative.

 

OUTRO

Now, for all things, strategy, content, creativity and workshops, Alive with Ideas is in your corner. So check out their website and follow Alive with Ideas on LinkedIn to find out more. And make sure you subscribe to this podcast, Spark Off. And thank you so much for listening. Bye from Alan, Zoe and Willie.