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PODCAST

Extraordinary Creatives

Extraordinary Creatives: The Premier Art Podcast Welcome to the Extraordinary Creatives podcast, your gateway to the world of exceptional artists and creative leaders who have defied the odds to make a significant impact in the arts and beyond. Hosted by Ceri Hand, creative coach, curator, and seasoned arts and business insider, this podcast offers a wealth of insights into art and creativity through in-depth interviews. Ceri’s extensive experience and genuine passion for the arts make every

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All Episodes

77:44

Intuition, Research, Ancestry, and the Slow Unfolding...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/05/18

My guest today is the artist Charmaine Watkiss, whose extraordinary creative journey took her through film, shoemaking, and advertising before she became fully wedded to her art practice. It’s a path that has given her work a deep sense of craft, storytelling and material sensitivity and I know will inspire so many of you. Her paintings are held in public collections across the UK, and she is currently showing a new commission in the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition Artists First:

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7:42

When You Think You Said the Wrong Thing at an Event

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/05/14

You leave the event. At first, it’s fine. And then, somewhere between the coat rack and the journey home, it starts - That conversation, that sentence, that moment you wish you could rewind. Why did I say that? That sounded awkward. I should’ve said something else. They probably think I’m ….And just like that, the whole night begins to shift. Not as it happened, but as a story about what you got wrong. We’ve been building this over the last few episodes: what stops you going, what happens when

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55:10

Beyond the White Cube: How The Line Brings Art into...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/05/11

Today’s episode takes us out of the white cube and into the open air.My guest is Sarah Carrington, Director of The Line, the public art trail connecting Greenwich to Stratford along the waterways of East London. If you’ve ever stumbled across an unexpected sculpture beside a canal, or discovered art while simply walking through the city, then you already understand the quiet magic of what The Line does. With more than two decades working across curating, public art and cultural strategy, Sarah

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7:08

You’re Not the Least Interesting Person in the Room

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/05/07

Have you ever walked into a room and instantly thought: They all know more than me. They’re further ahead. They’re more established. They’ve got better work, better contacts, better everything.And before you’ve even opened your mouth… You’ve already decided your position. Somewhere near the bottom. Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at what stops you in these spaces. First, the story you tell yourself before you go. Then, how you interpret what’s happening when you’re

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9:15

Everyone Can’t Be an Arsehole

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/05/04

Have you ever left an event and thought: "My God, those people are dull." "People were so rude." "No one made me feel welcome." "Blimey, I’m not doing that again." And by the time you get home, it’s not just the event. It’s confirmation - "The art world isn’t for me."But if that’s the story you keep leaving with… it’s worth asking what’s really going on – After all, not everyone in that room can be an arsehole. What you think you’re reading in a room is often not the room at all. Your brain is

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10:24

You’re Not Bad at Networking. You’re Protecting Yourself

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/30

There’s something I hear all the time from artists, and it sounds very reasonable on the surface. “If I go to that event, it’s going to drain me", "I won’t have the energy.” “I’ll feel awkward.” Sometimes you are genuinely exhausted, and the most intelligent thing you can do is not push through, but actually attend to your body, your mind, your nervous system. That’s not avoidance. That’s care. But what I’m noticing more and more is that many artists aren’t making decisions from current

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80:26

What Refusing to Stick to One Lane Does for Your Art...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/27

What can an ink drawing and one line of text really do?In the hands of Guy Richards Smit, it can hold horror and humour in the same breath. It can slice through politics while pretending to be an amuse-bouche between heavier courses. It can make you laugh, wince, and then realise you’ve been implicated. Born and raised in New York City, Guy is a painter, performer, musician, video artist and, more recently, a New Yorker cartoonist. But that barely scratches the surface. As you’ll hear, he’s

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7:13

When Someone You Love Laughs at Your Work

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/23

It’s one thing when a stranger laughs at your art. It’s another when someone who knows you well does. Who laughs matters. A friend scrolling your website and snorting at an image. A partner chuckling at a line in your artist statement. A respected curator friend laughing during a performance, but not at the moment you expected. Those laughs land differently. They don’t feel like feedback. They feel like exposure. And in that split second, something primal happens. We think: I’ve done something

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96:35

Disaster as a Gift: The Long Game of Creativity with...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/20

Welcome to the 200th episode of Extraordinary Creatives: two hundred conversations with artists, thinkers, makers and cultural leaders about the strange, beautiful, often messy reality of building a creative life. And I couldn’t imagine a better guest to mark this moment than the brilliant John Lloyd CBE.One of the great creative architects behind some of the most loved comedy formats of the past fifty years. He began at the BBC in the 1970s and helped create programmes that have become cultural

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8:20

When Life Changes You and the Work Has to Change Too

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/16

In the last episode, we talked about rhythm. About what happens when life knocks you sideways and you walk back into the studio feeling foggy, brittle, or slightly foreign to yourself. We spoke about regulation, about re-entry, about restarting the engine gently instead of demanding brilliance on command. But there’s something else that often happens after the dust settles. Something quieter. More destabilising. Sometimes it isn’t only your creative rhythm that’s been interrupted. It’s you -

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95:15

What Performance Art Holds That White Cube Spaces...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/13

In this episode I’m joined by the extraordinary Wet Mess - performer, shapeshifter, and maker of work that sits right on the ecstatic fault line between desire, politics, embodiment, confusion, and joy. We centre the conversation around their solo show Testo that’s been touring over the past year. It’s a work born from a live, personal question: whether or not to take testosterone, and what that decision means socially, physically, psychologically. We talk about how you can stretch a reveal across

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8:18

When Life Breaks the Creative Rhythm

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/09

You know that strange moment when you walk back into your office or studio after something big has happened……and it feels unfamiliar. The light’s the same. The table’s where you left it. Your brushes are exactly as you abandoned them. But you’re not.That’s the bit no one prepares you for. I was speaking to an artist recently who had just come back from caring for a parent after a sudden bereavement. She said, “I’m desperate to get back into my practice. I need it. But I can’t seem to

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61:36

Inside The Artist’s Way: Simple Tools That Sustain...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/06

Today’s guest has shaped the creative lives of millions.Julia Cameron has been called “The Queen of Change” by The New York Times, and whether you’ve done Morning Pages for decades or only heard of The Artist’s Way in passing, you’ve felt her influence ripple through contemporary culture. What struck me most in this conversation was her devotion to simplicity and trying. Her tools are not complicated. They are repetitive. Ordinary. Almost deceptively so. Three pages. A walk. A date with

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8:20

Stop Funding Your Own Burnout: Designing Commissions...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/04/02

You don’t get a medal for exhausting yourself in the name of community.A brilliant artist in my world recently asked a question that so many of you will recognise. Let’s call them Kenny. Kenny runs socially engaged projects. They work with communities over weeks, sometimes months. Workshops turn into conversations. Conversations turn into drawings. Drawings become objects. Objects evolve into sound pieces. Eventually, it all lands as an installation with sculpture and layered audio. It is rich

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74:45

How to Build Creative Worlds That Last with Jenn Ellis

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/03/30

In today’s episode of Extraordinary Creatives, I’m joined by Jenn Ellis, founder of APSARA Studio and a curator whose work moves between institutions, vineyards, churches, theatres, and digital space with remarkable fluidity.Jenn grew up in a family of theoretical particle physicists, studied law, and then pivoted into art history. That background shows. Her approach to art feels investigative, architectural, and deeply relational. She thinks about time not as something measured by clocks, but as

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10:16

Why Do I Keep Building Empires When I Just Want to...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/03/26

Do you ever ask yourself, why do I keep inventing massive projects when all I really want to do is make my own art? Why do I keep building infrastructures for other people when what I actually crave is to be in the studio, in rehearsal, on a stage? And why, at the end of these enormous, impressive undertakings, do I feel quietly resentful?If this lands in your chest, stay with Ceri and learn how to avoid this trap KEY TAKEAWAYS Impressive collaborative projects can be draining. Yet they feel

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119:02

Living Inside the Fourth Wall: Space, Colour and Care...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/03/23

Before we begin, a gentle note: in this episode we speak about death, grief, psychosis and depression. If you’re feeling tender, you might want to pause and come back when the time feels right. It will be worth it. Today, I am joined by the extraordinary artist Eddie Peake. Eddie builds exhibitions the way some artists use paint. Space, for him, is a material. He constructs environments that place you inside the liminal fourth wall, that charged threshold between viewer and viewed, between

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8:43

When Your Brain Says, “I Don’t Know How” (It’s Lying)

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/03/19

When your brain says - I don’t know who would buy this, I don’t know where to find them. I don’t know how this would ever work, it is lying to you.What if “I don’t know how” isn’t a fact. What if its anxiety dressed up as logic. What if your brain is quietly converting uncertainty into impossibility. Once that story settles, you stop try. You don´t need to test formats. You don´t need to ask different questions. You don´t need to risk being wrong. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. In

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95:26

Building a Visual Language of Colour and Symbols with...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/03/16

Today I’m in conversation with the extraordinary Sarah Boris, an artist who treats symbols like building blocks and colour like architecture.Her practice moves between sculpture, drawing, printmaking, painting, and bookmaking, yet everything she makes feels connected by a rigorous, playful logic. You migaht know her Fragile UK Flag, a reimagined Union Jack made from delicate tape and paper, exhibited at the Design Museum in London and now held in major public collections including the Stedelijk

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13:20

How Artist Websites Quietly Lead to Sales, Enquiries...

Extraordinary Creatives ·

2026/03/12

If you’ve listened to the last couple of shorty episodes, you’ll know we’ve been talking about structure. What should be on your website. What can go. And how clarity does far more work than cleverness. So today, I want to talk about what often happens next. Once your website is clear, calm, and coherent, something interesting starts to happen. Sales begin to trickle in. Enquiries land in your inbox. Commissioners get in touch. Brands reach out. Often quietly, often weeks or months after someone

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