Spark Off – Episode 1 – Kat

PRELUDE
The illustration is my bag, so I’ll do anything from kind of digital to traditional things with watercolours. I do a lot of stuff on a screen now, a drawing tablet. It’s so nice.
It’s something that I’ve done, I’ve physically made it and now it’s a thing and it’s in the world.

INTRO
Hello and welcome to Spark Off. Get ready to supercharge your creativity with our brand new podcast where we have chilled out conversations with the awesome team who bring you alive with ideas.
I’m Zoe Hansen, the podcast lady here to spark off the stories that they share and who doesn’t love a good story.

So let’s welcome Kat to this first episode and Kat,
If this episode could be sponsored by anything at all, what would it be sponsored by? Probably the obnoxious amount of garlic that I ate last night.
And every night, actually. And actually, I know. I can feel it. I can feel it. You can smell it on me. I’m sweating garlic out. Isn’t that how that works,
that as soon as somebody mentions garlic, you can smell it somewhere. Is that how it works? I’m sure of it, I’m sure of it. It’s just a perpetual cloud bit around me. The Spark Off podcast,
of course, is all about creativity. So really, we should start by asking New Cat, where does your creativity come from? I think for me,
it’s inbuilt. My parents were both teachers, they’re both If people, my grandad was an artist, my lovely grandpa, so it’s always been there, it’s always been kind of ticking away.
And what kind of art did your grandpa make? He was a naval officer, so he used to do the cartoons for the navy news. Okay, yeah.
He also used to do a lot of portraits through my grandma and he would, every year he would draw us a Christmas card, a personalised Christmas card where he’d put me and my siblings in funny little situations.
– Oh, how wonderful. So do you think that sort of created a love of these things and I want to do those for other people? – Yeah, certainly. I mean,
I do, I’ve taken over that role since he passed away each year. I design the Christmas cards now and send them out to the family. And I’ve always found that drawing was a way that I could kind of communicate with people and please them.
I would make drawings as gifts for people or little models, toys. – Right, is that something that you did as a child sort of maybe for your parents? – Yeah,
very much so. My parents, they, as teachers, both of them, probably shouldn’t say it on, well it’s not camera, but they would kind of steal office supplies from work.
So they We come home with these beautiful sugar papers and lovely sets of fine -line pens. So we always had those resources at home. We were really lucky in that sense. So I used to make my parents these little booklets of stories of foxes going to places with scrawled kids handwriting.
They’re barely legible to other people, but I was so proud of them at the time. And my mum, I really remember her saying, Oh, Catherine’s so good at coloring inside the lines,
which is just such a silly comment to make. So it wouldn’t mean anything to other people, but for me, it was huge. And as a kid, it was huge. And I held onto that my whole life.
I’ve always known. I’ve always had this sense that I am really good at coloring within the lines. And even as an adult, I’m like, yeah, I’m shit hot at that. I know it to my core that I am good at colouring within the lines.
– Well, that’s a great thing though, isn’t it? Because it’s such a gift to you to say, you’re great at colouring within the lines. Because what it says is, you’re great at being creative and neat,
right? – Yeah, my mum always encouraged that in me, always did. She loved, or at least she pretended really well. Now that I’m her mum, I kind of look back on it and go,
was she just pretending brilliantly but she always genuinely seemed to appreciate the little stories and trinkets and drawings and scribbles that I made her and I cleared out there loft recently.
I know a lot of it stood the test of time. There you go you see and and actually that must make her so proud. Do you still make those little books? I don’t tend to anymore. I did quite a lot in uni and then I went travelling after Well,
years and years ago, I went travelling around Asia, Australia, Japan, all over the place and made little sketchbooks and drawings then. I would kind of just draw what I saw and then collect those bits together,
sometimes bind them together. I quite liked bookbinding at university and college. I’m doing things with my hands, which you can’t see because obviously you can’t see my hands, but I like tactile things.
I like to physically make a thing and bring it to life and have it and keep it. So what does creativity mean to you? Because the conversation that we’ve already had is about art and making those stories and characters and illustrations.
Is that what creativity is to you? Not always. I think creativity goes beyond just kind of art, doesn’t it? It’s creative thinking,
it’s problem -solving, it’s thinking around a situation, thinking around a problem. For me, I deal with things that I find problematic,
maybe, through my personal skillset, which is drawing, but creativity isn’t just drawing, is it? No. And so what fuels your creativity?
Did you do art at university? I did photography. Okay. I really shouldn’t have. I was going to say, you sounded like you were questioning that. Yeah, I just, I think my late teens was just a series of bad decisions.
And do you think that was because you didn’t know which path to follow? You didn’t have that sort of concrete thought of, okay that’s what I want to do. Yeah, of course.
Like what teenager does? No, of course. Well, I knew that I wanted to be in five -star. So that was pretty concrete. Yeah, I wanted to be a paleontologist at one point.
Big fan of dinosaurs, right? Dinosaurs, dirt, two loves come together, paleontology, that’s what I wanted to be. And I was good at science. I was a smart kid. I was a challenging kid,
but I was smart. So I really thought that that was the direction that I would take. But I think I was really easily influenced by people saying to me, you’re good at that thing. So that’s the path that you’ll go.
And I showed a skill in photography. And I just went for it. I would encourage any creative young person, if you have the opportunity do the foundation year because in the foundation year you explore so much and then you choose a specialism and then you go on to study it but I just I wanted to get out of where I was and just picked a course and just went with it yeah which you know dumb ass move but I was but
look you learn that’s not what you do right yeah and I think photography I find really helpful now because I refer a lot to photography when I’m making my drawings and I look back on I mentioned going traveling I look back on a lot of those traveling photos and they will help spark little experiments drawings whatever in that point so I still use it but it’s not yeah it’s just not my love it shouldn’t have been
what I did I would have loved to have done printmaking or illustration. – And is illustration your passion now? That’s your sort of creative outlet.
– Yeah, illustration is my bag. – Yes, and what kind of illustration do you do? I sort of say that with a bit of trepidation, thinking you’re gonna come back with anything. (both laughing) – Well,
in terms of work, yeah. I’ll turn my hand to anything and everything. It could be as varied readers, drawing poo for the NHS, which recently done, or very…
Hang on, how realistic did it have to… No, I didn’t need to ask that, did I? I went realistic and they doubled it back, yeah. But that was great fun.
So I’ll do anything from kind of digital to traditional things with watercolours. I’ll do a lot of stuff on a screen now, a drawing tablet. – My personal work tends to focus on portraiture.
– Okay. – Realistic portraiture. – And is that something that you’ve always enjoyed as well? – No, hated it. – Really? – Yeah. Drawing faces, it’s the hardest thing to do.
Because we know– – Because everybody looks like they’ve come from the witches. – Yeah, pretty much. We all know what a face looks like, don’t we? Without even thinking about it. We all, we have a sense of what a face should and shouldn’t look like and you get the smallest thing wrong when you’re drawing a person and you can really lose who they are.
You can go so wrong with a portrait especially if you’re trying to do something realistic and I as a person struggle with people always have social interactions.
I contact, I hate, I force myself through it but it’s exhausting And for me, drawing faces was something that I had to do in my last role.
I was working in a studio drawing a lot of Premiership footballers. I had to get really acquainted with people’s faces. In my head, it’s almost like Tudor times.
You’ve got a Shazelonge. Footballer comes in and sits there. he’s got to sit there for three hours and he’s got to sit still, is that how that works?
No, wouldn’t that be dreamy though? Every art studio should have a sheath and static footballers. No, it was, you know, it’s working from reference photography.
So again, the photography, it remains important in what I do. And when I do my personal portraits, I take photographs of people that I feel captures them or I steal pictures that are out there and then work from them.
It sounds like you put a lot of effort into that and that you are showing them to be them. Sometimes when I’ve seen portraits they say oh no that’s what’s on the inside and you think that’s terrible.
Do you do that as well? I would love to be that. Not your pictures, but do you see that in other places and you think, “Oh, I don’t know about that?” For me, I think I feel the need to make it recognisable rather than the abstract.
I will quite often really hone in on the eyes because those are the things that I find hardest and for me, I need to get those absolutely spot on. But I will and I quite enjoy leaving other elements of the portray unfinished or more abstract or bringing in things that aren’t there,
but I’m not creating kind of dreamscapes of this is a representation of yes, so and so soul coming through their skin or blah, blah, blah. No,
I’m not not arty enough for that. So what fuels your creativity? What sparks something off in you,
what do you see, hear, feel, touch, whatever that gets your energy going? It can be anything. Actively, I will seek inspiration.
So I’ll go to bookshops and rifle through zines or I’ll go to grad shows or dive headfirst into Pinterest and get lost in there for hours just looking at what other people are doing.
But in terms of creativity being sparked by everyday things, it can be just the texture of something as I walk past it, I’ll find interesting or I’ll see a colour on somebody’s scarf and those things will just kind of stick with me in my head until I’ve done something with them so I feel kind of compelled to try and recreate it or use it or it just kind of niggles away at me.
Yeah, Yeah, it just sits there saying, “Okay, I’m just gonna stay here until you do something about me, right?” Yeah, you remember that lime green Pashmina you saw three weeks ago and it was like,
you need to do something with that. How is the work creative process? Is it the same kind of thing or is there a sort of set structure to what you do?
I think it varies depending on the project and the client and the budget and the timescale and all of those things. Give us an example of maybe a client that you’ve worked with recently and what you had to do and what you had to go through.
NEA comes to mind, National Energy Alliance, just because that’s been quite recent and I’m working on it at the moment. So they came to us wanting to make some educational videos about saving energy in the home and about children that were living in energy poverty.
They’re a lovely client. They’re a charity. We believe in what they do and they love what we do. So that’s always nice. We’ve got a great relationship there. If you’ve got those shared values,
you’ve cracked it already, haven’t you? What was the process of working with them and getting to the end result? I wasn’t in on the really early stages, I was brought in to do the illustrations because it was a hand drawn stop motion style animation that we were making and we were trying to communicate a child who was living in energy poverty from their point of view.
So it was drawn as if the child had drawn it themselves. So it was these kind of lovely scrawly childlike drawings which in the early parts of the animation were kind of quite rough and gloomy and representative of his emotional state really.
And then as they progressed and the child and his family got the support from the charity and as his life improved, his home situation improved, the feeling of those drawings changed,
so the textures, the handwriting, the feeling of warmth in the drawings changed. So it gave a visual representation of him and his journey,
I suppose. But it was supposed to have come from his hand, so it was great fun to do. – Oh, that was a really lovely one. And how many of those illustrations do you have to come up with for something like that?
– That one was, we went through them the other day, there was in excess of a hundred. – Wow, do you have to do all of those by hand? – Yeah. – Wow. – Yeah.
Yeah, but the animation team at Alive did magical things with them and made them move and really brought them to life and gave them personality. I just kind of provided these building blocks for it,
but the entrance of the animation was a kind of looking over the boy’s shoulder at him doing the drawings himself. So it was kind of a story within a story within a story. And that every single frame of that had to be drawn individually.
So that tick a fair amount of time. But it looks lovely. They’ve done great things with it. And the client was so pleased they’ve come back and they’ve asked for another one. So we’re exploring further what this little boy is doing now.
Oh, how wonderful. And how does it make you feel when you’ve done in excess of 100 drawings for this? The animation team are alive with ideas,
then takes it on. When you see that, when you see the finished product, how does that make you feel? That’s brilliant. Yeah. It’s so nice. It’s something that I’ve done. I physically made it and now it’s a thing and it’s in the world.
It’s that storybook that you made for your mum. Yeah, it is. Right? It’s become that tangible thing, is it? Yeah. It’s come to life. We did a cookbook as well. That was the first time,
I think, as an adult that I’ve seen my work come together in print, in these bound books and this real physical thing that you can flick the pages and you can smell it. And that’s a really lovely,
albeit weird experience for me to be able to just smell the pages of my own drawings. – Yeah, yeah. What’s the cookbook all about? – We work with the comms community. So it was kind of a collaborative piece.
We reached out for them. What recipes kind of are important to them. – 54s, forgettable analysis came back. (laughing) – Endless bangers and mash.
We got some like amazing recipes in there. Some of them were, you know, recipes that’ve been handed down for generations and had beautiful emotional stories that came with them. Others were stories of people who were kind of in the trenches of early motherhood and somebody had bought around a casserole and it just lifted them that little bit but I did all the illustrations throughout for that.
Just talking about illustrations and food for a second. Food’s my favourite. Oh is it? Yeah. Right you’re going to love this then. Bake off. Yes.
When you see those illustrations of the most beautiful cakes and food and whatever on Bake Off “Oh, I could do it better than that.” (laughs) – No,
I don’t think I do. I’m not that confident. – Do you critique it? – No, I’m not. I’m very rarely critical of things that other people make because I’m genuinely interested in how they’ve approached it.
– Yeah. – When I was a teacher, I loved seeing what kids made, what the young people made. I found that hugely fascinating and inspiring to see what came out,
whether it was in exam terms, the right or wrong answer, didn’t matter. So I rarely see things that I’m like, oh, that’s just right. And what were the things that sort of grabbed you most about the children’s sort of educational process or their creative process that stood out to you that you go,
Oh yeah, I can use that or I like where you came from with that. I’m going to take that on board. I think in the time that I was teaching, there was a lot of discussion around creative thinking and how creative thinking was important to young people in terms of solving the problems of the future.
So a lot of what we did was just really exploratory, which I loved. They didn’t have to be an end goal that looked like we’re going to do this copy of this van go and we’re going to use this specific pen set.
There was no kind of right wrong answers. It was just here’s a pile of things that I’ve put on your table that I’ve gathered out of every cupboard. Yeah, do a thing with it. And invariably,
I would love the thing whatever it was. It was lovely to watch them be in a subject where they could just explore without their being all right or wrong. It was just the process was the goal.
Do you know what I mean? It wasn’t about a final piece. It was about how they got there and their creative journey. And I found that part really interesting. So you’ve talked about the school children.
What else inspires you? And what do you see in your industry that sets a spark off in you. I really love seeing what new graduates are bringing out.
I really love going to grad shows. Like what? What would be your favourite? So if you go to a grad show, what’s going to be the one thing that sort of inspires something in you?
I just like a rifle. I like a rifle through someone else’s process. I like nosing through sketch books. I like seeing what people have And along the way, I’m not so much interested in the things that end up being framed or put on a wall or celebrated as the finished article.
I like seeing how people have got there. So I did a portfolio review, an in -person portfolio review just before Christmas this year with Creative Lives in Progress. They’re based in London,
so they facilitate access to creative careers for people from all sorts of backgrounds. So it was an in -person, free event that anybody starting their creative journey could come along,
show us their stuff, and then we, the industry professionals, I was never quite comfortable with that term, would sit and go through it with them and just answer any questions. – Amazing.
– And give them a bit of advice. – You’ve got sort of an on -hand mentor really there, haven’t you? – Yeah, I mean, that was our role. And I definitely had a huge case of imposter syndrome going into it.
There were some amazing people there reviewing and there was some incredible talent of people coming out of university or not even kind of any professional training, just coming into the industry showing us what they’re doing.
Just the things that people can do with kind of multi -disciplinary approach, so rather than being just a fine artist or just an illustrator.
People that somehow have the ability to do incredible things in graphic design and also wonderful illustrations that they then bring to life in 3D technologies. There’s just,
there’s so much exciting work out there. And it’s a really difficult time for young creatives, especially after COVID. Why is that then? I think there’s kind of unwritten expectation that you will work for free,
or you will work in a low -paid role, or you will work for experience or exposure. I’m 84 and people are still saying to me, “Oh, it’ll give you an exposure,” and I’m like,
“Oh, okay.” Exposure doesn’t pay the bills. These are kind of talented, brilliant people that are being expected to do these rubbish jobs,
frankly, for rubbish pay. And they’re competing with so many other people, particularly because, you know, people graduated during COVID, they weren’t able to go directly into the market because everything kind of shut down and went to shit for a while.
And then the people that graduated in years after are then competing with those. And then people that never went went to university because it was right for them or they couldn’t afford it.
They’re all trying to get on the market as well. So it’s just a really tricky time for them. And it’s giving employers who are less than conscientious, less than nice, the opportunity to take advantage of people a little bit.
Yeah. So it’s, yeah, it’s tricky. What advice would you give to those people then? They’re wanting to come into the creative sector. But How did they get there?
Wow, I mean, that’s a huge question. I think I had a few bits of kind of just take away key advice that I just kept giving to people over and over again,
which is what I did myself. If you’re not qualified for the job, if you don’t meet all of the expectation, all of the criteria in the job role,
just go for it. just show people what you can do, be confident in what you’re able to do, and a bit of personality goes a really long way, just show who you are, just approach people,
and just say, look, all right, I can’t do that. I’m not a 3D specialist. I can do this, this, and this, and I think I’d be wicked at doing that for you. And that will get you a long way,
I think. And just knowing your worth as well, and not, But that’s really tricky, isn’t it? You know, to know your worth, to know, you know, you work with,
alive with ideas who are completely at the brilliant end of the spectrum of employers. But you know, when you’re coming up against these other businesses, they’re not quite so nice.
You know, they’re gonna take the mic. And what do you have to do? Do you I suppose do you have to sort of work through that and to get to the nice bit. – Yeah, a lot of people do have to work through that.
And the sad reality of that is that there’s a certain amount of privilege that comes along with the people who are able to be successful, the people that are able to work for free or in a low paid role,
or the people who know someone who can get them a placement here, or the people who can travel to or go to London or Brighton or where the creative hubs are. I mean they are privileged in being able to do so and not everybody has that privilege and it’s not a level playing field and that’s where organisations like Creative Lives in Progress really shine because they are trying to enable anybody from any background to
have access to the conversations and have access to the employers. – It sounds like your life, you know, you’ve been traveling, you’ve been to university, you’ve been teacher,
you’re an illustrator. You know, this is quite varied, isn’t it? What are your strongest beliefs? What are your strongest sort of values that you hold?
And do you use them in your creativity or for your creativity? I think in more recent years I’ve been able to do that just to be able to accept that I can make work for myself and work that benefits other people as well.
I think pre -COVID it was something that I was interested in but the whole pandemic and the lockdown gave me an opportunity to really deep dive into a lot of social justice issues and do a lot of learning and unlearning and a lot of my recent work I was representing the LGBTQ community,
my community, people that were under represented in art and with the Black Lives Matter movement and with their recent atrocities in Palestine I’ve been able to make a lot of work around that which I’ve been offering up is kind of free downloads for people and stickers that they can raise awareness,
they can take to protests, things like that. So that’s been nice. I’ve never really made work with political kick to it or a real drive or purpose to it other than kind of self -serving my need to look at people’s eyes.
Yeah, so that’s my work’s kind of progressed into into that in recent years. – And that must sort of feed you because that’s obviously a value that you hold in high regard. So it must feel good to be able to help those causes along.
– Yeah, I mean, it does feel good. When you’re angry about something, it can be really frustrating to not be able to physically do or to fix problems. And there’s only so much you can go and physically protest or donate or lobby your MP but this is something that I can do.
This is my niche skill set. It gives me an opportunity to do something and if somebody on the other side of the world can download one of the posters that I’ve made and print it out and use it in a protest then great.
And what are your passions away from work? Because they normally find that this is probably quite creative as well. Yeah, I mean, does cake count as creative? Hey,
depends what you’ve got. What kind of cake are you making, Kat? Anything with chocolate. Anything. The more chocolate, the better. Outside of work, I am outside as much as I can be.
I love being in the woods. Just the smell of the woods. The sounds it just makes me feel peaceful as soon as I get out in there And we’re so lucky living here being near the new forest.
Yeah, so anything I can do there and then and keeping my three -year -old twins Reigned in and enjoying their lives. So that leaves you with what seven minutes a day Approximately approximately maybe four and a half at the weekends.
Oh, yeah, there’s two of them. Yeah, they do keep me busy. But I get to do other creative stuff as well. I get to do my own artwork. And my dad was a jeweler,
as well as a teacher. My dad does everything. So at his place, I’ve got a kind of jewelry bench set up and I can just melt metals and carve wax and make things there as well,
which is awesome because I get to make a tangible physical thing, which I love it so much. And I get to hang out with my daddy as well and get a few more stories out of him.
And then I’ve got to ask you about this, ugly ceramics. I mean, you need to get yourself to a DIY art market,
go to a ceramics fair, find yourself the ugliest hamster you can find and I promise you it will bring you joy for the rest of your life. I’ve got one called Barry who I picked up in Winchester a few years ago and he lives prior to place in my house.
He moves around from place to place actually if I find I’m not looking at him enough I’m moving to a new spot. He is hideous and brilliant. – Yeah, ugly ceramics, anything wonky,
anything like you can see the person has just, just loved what they were doing and made it. And it can be the wonkiest vase, the most smashed in guinea pig,
it could be just any, and yeah, just ugly ceramic things. I’ll send you some pictures. – Oh, well, I can’t wait. – Yeah, you need to open your heart to crack pottery.
– Exquisite corpse. corpse. Yeah. Tell me about that. You thought you will have done this when you were a kid. You know, you get the kind of concertina folded paper and one person will draw the shoes and then you’ll fold it and then you’ll draw the shins of something and then somebody will draw like an octopus’s ass.
Do octopuses have asses? I think they’ve got eight. Maybe seven because it will just be in between their legs. Something to Google when I get seven bottoms. Yeah,
that is an internet rabbit hole. I’m going to go down. And then you kind of, it’s a collaborative art piece, isn’t it? And then you unfold it and you’re like, Hey, I made this monstrosity,
probably, but there’s an online version of it. There’s a few, but I got involved with doing one on Instagram where they would kind of set the composition. So So they’ll say,
“Well, you’re doing straight airport. You’re doing round this corner.” And these are the four colors that you get to use. Go. And that was it. And those are the kind of non -specific things that usually make me panic because I do like very clear instructions.
But this was just wicked fun. It was just people from all around the world would draw something and it would join up with the next and drawing and just it’s created this ongoing,
it’s been going for years now, just this continuous art piece. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it’s still going. Yeah, it’s still going. And so what was your bit? What did you do? We need to know what the outcome was.
Oh, don’t know. Yeah, I keep going back to them. Is it the octopus, though? No, I don’t think an octopus is needed. Come on, an octopus arse has got to be in there. Well, maybe next time. There’s definitely been sea life.
I’m not sure about an octopus’s ass. That’s very niche If you were having to do a Ted talk cat so a cat’s talk What would it be on and what would feature in it?
And why would you be talking about that subject? I think first off the idea of doing a Ted talk in front of people is terrifying. I can’t imagine myself possibly in that situation.
But if I was going to talk about something that I was interested about and not necessarily knowledgeable about, it would be art and grief. Using art to kind of unpack some of the things that come around,
losing someone. I think I mentioned that my grandad was an artist and when we lost him I had access to all of his sketchbooks and scrapbooks that he kept throughout his naval career and all of his drawings and he would do these drawings for us and part of mourning him has been me taking on some of those drawings so doing those drawings has helped me feel closer to my grandad.
I also lost a friend to suicide seven years ago and drawing them after they’d passed allowed me to kind of almost spend time with them spend time with their face studying their face and helped me process the grief.
Do you put those pictures anywhere or is it the process that kind of helps you on that grieving journey? Yeah, it’s very much the process.
I think that that in itself is the important thing. I’m really interested in art as a therapeutic. things.
And we think about it I suppose sort of in its rawest way that’s kind of how they get children to sort of express themselves isn’t it you know it’s it’s some paint and some paper or a sketchbook or you know what colours are you using to try and understand what’s going on in their minds.
A scribbly bi -ray, A crumpled piece of paper, a piece of clay that they can just push their fingers into. It doesn’t necessarily have to even be using art materials. It can be any form of expression.
It could be musical. It could be movement, dance, that act of being creative and the processing of something in a visual way or in an expressive way.
I think it’s fascinating. I’d love to learn more about it. And I would love to, if I had to do a TED talk, if I had to get up in front of all of those people, I’d do my research, obviously, but I could draw on some of my personal experiences and some of the things that I’m really interested in.
But yeah, the process is more important than the final outcome, surely. That is fantastic, Kat. Thank you so much for that. I hope you enjoyed hearing all about Kat’s creativity,
where it comes from and where it goes.

OUTRO
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