Meeting People
Amul Pandya converses with independent, adventurous and sometimes courteous free spirits. Creativity is an act of rebellion. Whether they are entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, investors, chefs, or corporate antagonists, Amul's guests all share a common disposition of not just pushing boundaries but re-drawing landscapes.
Meeting People
#4 Matt Cooper: Imagination and creativity through film making, writing, people and adventure.
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Making new friends gets harder as one ages which makes it all the more joyous when it does happen later in life. It is a privilege to count Matt Cooper as one and I was thrilled to be able to sit down with him and talk about his journey from hobbledehoy to award winning filmmaker and budding writer.
Matt puts his soul into his craft, whether it's filming in Ukraine or South American prisons, writing about creativity and mental health here at home, or as a youth worker in his local community.
We have a wide ranging conversation including his transition from employee to entrepreneur, the role of the imagination in maintaining a healthy state of mind, and the false dichotomy between science and religion.
Please enjoy the conversation. You can see Matt's work here (https://www.thisismattcooper.com/) or find him on the following platforms:
https://www.instagram.com/mattjamescooper/
https://www.tiktok.com/@thisismattcooper
This podcast was produced by Matt Cooper with music composed by Loverman.
Youth Work and Filmmaking
Speaker 1Hello and welcome to Meeting People with me , amal Pandi . Meeting People is a podcast where I have long conversations with adventurous , rebellious and sometimes courteous free spirits , and today I am very excited to have a new friend called Matt Cooper . Matt , let's just get straight into it , rather than me try and preamble the intro , because people want to hear from you and not me . Really , here I've got you down as a filmmaker , a youth worker , a writer a creative genius ?
Speaker 1maybe A creative genius , no ? Okay , let's roll it back , let's let people decide . A creative artist , perhaps . I'll take creative genius , take it All right , well , creative genius , let's do that Now . I'd love to do a bit of background actually , because , although we are friends , I don't actually know that much about you . Yeah , and how did you end up getting into filmmaking ? Let's start there and then take it from there .
Speaker 2Yeah , so I guess my real background is actually started in music . I was involved a lot in producing short films with my cousin who was a bit of a more than an enthusiast about filmmaking . He was super obsessed with the idea of filmmaking when we were like kind of 14 , 15 years old , and when he started about producing his own films I was then pulled in alongside . I was like , oh , I want to help .
Speaker 1Yeah , Let me do the music .
Speaker 2I was like he's best friend , like let's just be part of something interesting going on and then kind of fast forward . The music thing was always there and particularly I had a love for writing music for film . I wasn't necessarily amazing at it but I definitely enjoyed it until such a day where I actually moved to Romania for about four months to work for a charity in a hospice when . I was 18 years old .
Speaker 1And when was ? What year was this ?
Speaker 2This must have been around 2012, . Maybe Got it 2012 , 2013 . So good , good , 10 years ago . And I went there as part of a charity that was connected with my church and I went there working in a hospice . Through that time , you know , I exercised really my skills of pastoral care and community engagement more so than music or any other kind of technical aspect of my life .
Speaker 2So when I returned and I was trying to figure out what I should do next with my life , I was kind of an 18 year old , had no real forward plan about what was going to happen after that . I had a few suspicions about whether I might go do music . But my granddad actually came up to me and he's a bit of like a wise old wizard type grandfather . He looked me in the eye and he said Matt , I think that you should go study youth work because you have such a passion and such a skill with working with people , and I thought that was lovely .
Speaker 2And , being someone without direction , when someone that you respect comes up to you and says I think you should do this , I was like , oh , let's give it a go . So I ended up going to a university called Ridley Hall , which is a training place for church of England vickers and priests , but they were running a youth work kind of degree as well , youth work on practical theology , and I think community work was kind of somewhere in the title as well . I went and studied there in Cambridge at the same time as having a job in East London in a church working with young people and for three years I really gave my life to the pursuit of becoming a good community worker , becoming a good youth worker and working with people to really , I mean I guess kind of do what I could .
Speaker 1So describe to me what youth work kind of entails .
Speaker 2Well , in essence , youth work is about creating safe spaces for young people to flourish , and other than that , there's kind of I guess there's a multitude of agendas which goes alongside the practice , the professional practice of youth work around education and growth in terms of is this person growing into someone that can contribute to society ? But also , is this young person growing in such a way where they kind of feel fulfilled , where they're safe ?
Speaker 1That was always a really big one , especially in East London , as we were rising in the knife crime and safe spaces is quite a loaded term , isn't it ?
Speaker 2These days .
Speaker 1I'm guessing you know you wouldn't use that term unless most of the people we were working with were in unsafe spaces for most of the time that they were probably not at school .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1So does that the use of that term safe space kind of frustrate you sometimes when it's you applied wrongly ?
Speaker 2I think it's said in optimism more than anything else . I think there's an absolute necessity in our country , particularly given the lack of resource that's been put into it by the government in terms of creating safe spaces for young people . Also , I came into youth work at a time where the Labour government was very much like their work , some of what I thought was their good work . That was like ending their youth spaces , their career services . They were all kind of dying out . So these third party organisations had to step up and provide what they could . In my experience it was mainly the church that were doing that or other faith-based organisations who were stepping into the kind of fold and saying , well , someone's got a credit . Safe space , because literally our streets are full of young people being stabbed . They're full of underage pregnancy , rape , all manner of you know intense , horrific things that young people living through .
Speaker 1But it's suboptimal ways to kind of grow up and become a useful part of the world .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah exactly , don't get me wrong , I'm not saying useful as in the kind of I don't want to . I never wanted to filter young people into being this narrow kind of good citizen . You know for many a times when , if it came about conforming to rules like I , kind of almost actively didn't want to help young people conform to rules , because if you push that too far that's not necessarily helpful .
Speaker 2However , you know , I don't want to pacify young people from being courageous and loud and balshy and making big statements Like never want to crush that . But certainly there's something about if you're a criminal or you're overtly violent , then you can't contribute to society and you can't be part of the bigger picture of making you know whole communities better for everyone . So in terms of creating a safe space , it was very much about if we create somewhere safe as youth workers where you can come , explore who you are , away from danger or prejudice , or even school where the pressure is so high of kind of achieving academic success .
Speaker 1Well , look , I just want to rewind a bit then , because you know what was school life like for you and how did you end up . Did you have any idea ? You know , you said you got some pointers from your grandad who kind of gave you a bit of direction , and you said you were maybe lacking in direction before then . But was school there for a source of frustration because it didn't give you direction ? What frustrated you about it ?
Speaker 2I mean , I think I was always quite independent . I wasn't necessarily that great at making friends . I probably sat closer to the kid that walked around the playground on his own than anything else . I don't even think .
Speaker 1I was which , looking at you now and talking to you now is , you know , as ever , these . You know , not everyone's a popular kid at school , but you know it does surprise you sometimes that people just take time to To flourish .
Speaker 2I mean to be honest with you , I think late puberty did good things for me . Like , really I didn't grow in confidence , even physicality . It wasn't until I was closer to 20 where I kind of really leveled out in more kind of key attributes and characteristics for kind of being happy . I'm not happy , but I really felt like for me , my body and my mind caught up with something that would be helpful to me and achieve , and what I wanted to achieve much later .
Experiences With School and Youth Work
Speaker 1There's a term coined by an author called Antony Trollop , who wrote a series of fictional novels in the 19th century called Hobbledy Hoy . I think I've told you about this before but like , he described one of his characters as a hobbledy Hoy , and it was very much he was writing about himself as well when he was growing up . And Hobbledy Hoy is the kind of boys who sort of into their 20s they haven't quite , they're gangly , they haven't , they've got bad posture , they mumble and they can't . They don't have the kind of they're not like the boy that's been well-coached by parents to kind of , you know , stand up straight with the violin and run the 100 meters with bravado .
Speaker 1And all of a sudden this character kind of emerges from his hobbledy Hoy-ness .
Speaker 2Absolutely , and I have a lot to thank for my girlfriend at the time , who's now my wife . She kind of , I think , she saw a diamond in a rafi and she kind of shaped me a little bit . But school definitely was not a place of thriving for me . You know why not .
Speaker 1Apart from your .
Speaker 2From an academic perspective , very dyslexic . It could be argued that I have whether or not I have ADHD . I certainly have ADHD tendencies that make it very hard to sit still and concentrate for any prolonged period of time , Guilty guilty yeah .
Speaker 2Well , no , I'm happy sitting still for things that I deem useful , and completely uninterested in sitting down for things that are boring and don't have some kind of relevance to where I'm engaging . But if someone's going to teach me Spanish and I'm like , but I'm not interested in learning Spanish , like there's far more priorities in my life than Spanish . You know , I was like that when I was younger , but then at the same time very much alone . So socially there was no kind of place to retreat to . So even when I didn't want to engage with school , I couldn't exactly retreat into a friendship group that didn't want to engage in school either . It was very much kind of me on my own , doing my own thing , and I think that drove me , probably when I was younger , to you know self self , teach myself lots of instruments , be very creative at home , make films with my cousin , who was probably my best friend and close friend through them years . So for me school was a massive kind of mere experience of not really loads of friends , no real success .
Speaker 2And no fulfillment , because I can't say that I was like savagely bullied or anything like that .
Speaker 1But I , I , I , everything that you're saying is kind of you know chimes , resonates , you know , and I've . It's something that I've had to grapple with for a while where I really struggled to kind of be , get my head down and focus on things , and it was only until a few years ago I was reading a book by an author called Naseem Taleb and he talks about . It was a book called anti fragile , which I highly recommend everyone reads if they're going to chance . But he talks about procrastination and in it , you know , and procrastination , if there's a you know gold medal , you know I'm going to be a consistent competitor for that top spot and I'm sure you know many people listening and watching , and yourself included there .
Speaker 1But he said that procrastination is actually not a bug , it's a feature of of life , because it's your body , it's your soul telling you . You know this , this isn't for you . And you , when the work feels effortless but you know you , it feels , you know important and it feels effectively , you know you do it because you want to do it and it drives you to do it and then you kind of you screw it up and then you want to do it better .
Speaker 2I mean cause , certainly , like I , I was never worried of having the ability to pay attention or work hard . Yeah , you know that's always made sense to me , but , like you said , it's it's been in environments of no one's telling me that this is how I should spend my time , no one's forcing me into or backing me into a corner where I have to give it to some arbitrary which is how . I do feel about a lot of our schooling system .
Speaker 1This will be the third podcast where I start moaning about , so we're not going to go there , cause I was at the other two we don't need to .
Speaker 2But I think if jumping into my youth work there was , there was a sense of and this is actually why I exited youth work after the three years of studying it was because I couldn't . I couldn't what would be the right word bring together this idea of building a safe space for young people , but also seeing them and witnessing them having to go through our academic system in this country , and I felt like , if anything , I was only going to be a bad influence for pushing against that too hard Right and being like , yeah , don't worry about paying attention to school because school sucks Right , right , right .
Speaker 2But you've got . These kids have to live through it . Yeah , you know they have to go to school , relatively that . There's no good being a youth worker sitting outside of it again . Yeah , no , you're right , it sucks . I couldn't like bring them two things together , them two ones together , and be like I'm fully endorsing , like the way that we're doing , we're looking after and educating young people in this country . It doesn't make sense to me and thereby I'm not actually an advocate for , like , helping them through something , or at least I'm an advocate for them being healthy and educated just not the way that we're doing it .
Speaker 2So it made there being impossible tension of being a good youth worker .
Speaker 1Yeah . So basically you , you had the same time . I'm guessing in your spare time you were doing a lot of creative stuff , your music , your making films and then what you went ? You decided to go to Romania . So what ? What ?
Speaker 2so Romania was actually before the university thing , so Romania was the catalyst for working with young people . Got it ? I think there does seem to be . I grew up in church and I'm still very much Christian . Spend less time in church these days than I used to . Covid had a big effect on my relationship and my life with going to church every Sunday morning . Right , that's probably the longest lasting effect that Covid and lockdown really had on me , but the we can dive into that later . The kind of continuity ? For what ?
Speaker 2was the question I've got . I've lost my track of thought , yeah .
Speaker 1So basically , you decided that youth work isn't for you , yes , and you were at the same time in your spare time , doing kind of creativity stuff .
Speaker 2Thank you . So through church , through working and studying youth work , working in youth work , there was obviously this creative thing growing in me that mainly played itself out in music . Even still at that point in time I was playing a lot of music . I was doing a lot of music in church , in my job . But it got towards the end of my degree and we got asked about it .
Speaker 2It got to dissertation time and I wasn't a big fan of the writing , still still being dyslexic . That hadn't gone anywhere and I was kind of still . I was growing in my enjoyment of writing but certainly wasn't like kind of thriving in that art form . And when it got to the dissertation time I was like screw it , I'm just going to make a film . I didn't own a camera , I didn't know how to make a film . I'd never , apart from helping my cousin make films where I was doing music , I had never held a camera in my life . So I took the opportunity when it got there to say to the people leading my course , could I make a film instead of doing the writing ? And they were like you can't avoid doing a writing , but you can do less writing if that helps . And I was like less writing is good for me . So I borrowed a camera from my cousin , who I'd been making these films with when I was a child , and proceeded to make a documentary instead of doing a dissertation , basically , and that was my first real leap into the filming world , like right away at the end of a film Of my youth work degree , where I put together this documentary , which is all about contextual theology , which to this day is probably one of the the forming kind of pillars underneath all of my work .
Speaker 2It's this idea that the way theology is is the way of us thinking about God essentially , and the contextual theology is about the influences and the sources from which we draw our understanding of what God is like . And so , along for Christians , for example , the contexts of the theology would be really heavily invested in the Bible , the Holy Book of Christians , all the way through to . I see God in just the person walking down the street or the tree over there , and there's like a spectrum of all of them contexts . Don't want to go into it usually here because I don't remember super loads of it .
Speaker 2But I made this documentary that I then presented back to the organization I was working with and said here's a . This didn't go down particularly well . I was like here's a really honest reflection of what you say that you're doing , but I've done all these interviews with people in your organization and your church and they don't quite line up . I don't remember exactly why they don't line up , but it was this moment of stepping into I could communicate really effectively through making films and I kind of brought together the two kind of fundamental pieces of my work for the last five years really .
Speaker 1You finally found your voice effectively in a way that you couldn't through the written word Absolutely . And then what you decided , to kind of build your career around that . Is that right ? Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2And the written word is combat brown now .
Speaker 1Well , that's the thing . So it's funny how it works .
Speaker 2But what , basically ? What happened after that is I needed a job , so I finished my degree , made this film real high , have six weeks , basically somewhat off in preparation for getting married to my fiance , and I'm basically being a bum during that kind of six weeks , just like living the free life after finishing a job and uni and going what the flip happens next and the only thing I'm actually like .
Speaker 2this film that I made was , no , any good enough to actually get me a job as a filmmaker . Like it was it was , it was probably shockingly awful .
Speaker 1Have you seen it back since ?
Speaker 2I mean , I found a couple of the interviews and it's not pretty , it's not good , it's really not good , but some people might think people are watching .
Speaker 1Why ? Why are they podcast ? But yeah , no , that's always the way . So okay , you , you
Transition From Employment to Entrepreneurship
Speaker 1.
Speaker 2So I have like all I've got to my name is is a youth work degree and I get offered a job from a colleague friend who says I think you could probably come and do what we do . He ran a schools work charity where they basically was working with primary school kids and secondary school children and going into schools and talking about the Christian faith and doing basically lessons on Christmas , Easter , the Holy Trinity , communion , all aspects of the Christian faith and doing education .
Speaker 2And that was particularly prevalent where I was living , because we were I was living and working in Redbridge , which is super high population of Hindu people and and so I haven't talked to you for Muslim like people with Islamic faith . So actually it was like a lot of the teachers working in my community just didn't have any idea about Christianity and they're like but we have to teach it , so could , could you help us ?
Speaker 1So that was an outsourced solution . Yeah , exactly .
Speaker 2But I was doing that for about a year until I had a really big falling out with the new boss actually it was the second boss that I had at that job and we just had a cataclysmic fallout which led me to having a full on mental health breakdown .
Speaker 1What do you don't have to go too deep if you don't want to . But what was the kind of general ?
Speaker 2I thought that See , I didn't say it . We had a disagreement in how the work should be done best , and I was , at this point , a 21 year old , full of energy and ego , that was probably slightly bigger than a 21 year old should have . I was probably a very big fish in a very , very tiny pond , and I wasn't aware that that was the case either .
Speaker 1And maybe the pond was a bit bigger than you thought it was .
Speaker 2So we had a big falling out and then that led me to kind of have this breakdown for a good month . We moved back in with my parents in law not back in , we moved in with my parents in law . For a month . I didn't . I didn't have a job because I'd resigned from this job that I had and I was like , oh gosh , I've literally got nothing . I'm back to square one . My ego had been like taken out , like a reset yeah , just absolutely destroyed , and I was really back at the beginning .
Speaker 2To be honest with you , it was the most humbling moment of my life where you , I built this kind of career of with being , or I built a character of being , larger than life .
Speaker 2I'm really confident and , particularly because of all the youth work you know , you're this gathering point for lots of people in your . Your not not a hero , but you're very much a center point of a community , and that , you know , all of this reinforces 20 year olds egos , and then to then have a like a massive crash down , and that's when I was faced really with the , the moment which which ultimately no means my life is like well , it is now where I was like I'm just one , I'm not cut out for . I'm definitely not cut out for working with young people and children . Two , I can't do this being employed thing because I'm suffocating and I need to rest . It sounds really on my selfish when I think about it but at the same time sounds like just super normal for human beings . I need to rest when I need to rest , because I don't work between the hours of nine to five , so I can't plan my rest . Like my brain is either on or off , like I relatively don't have much control of that .
Speaker 2And then I want to work , when I want to work . I'll work hard when I work , but I'm not . I was struggling with being subject to someone else's opinion of when that work should be being happening , so that like kind of sent me right down to the bottom and it was like okay , I'm left with nothing . And it was like the here's the moment to get up and go again .
Speaker 1Well , it's not uncommon for the types of people that I want to talk to who will feel that way in employment or at school it's a kind of running theme and part of the reason I think that is is that the you know , school and employment are based on the factory and the factory is the kind of based on the average of how to get the best average output per worker at scale and that therefore , by definition , the average ignores the tails or the extremes . And too many people force themselves into that average because they feel like they have to and they live deeply unhappy lives , and some of them get out through virtue of luck or privilege , because they don't have to work , and others , I guess , come out through episodes of forced humility , which is kind of sounds like what you went through and but ultimately it's like the concept of kind of post traumatic , post traumatic growth , which is good , for you know , it's not not nice at the time but it's .
Speaker 1you've definitely seen like you've grown . So like fast forwarding to today , look , you've got what seems from the outside to be kind of fairly , fairly flourishing , creative business . You're writing a book . So that you didn't know this at the time , but how did you start the process of kind of acquiring independence ?
Speaker 2So I guess that the first thing was doing . Well , I had two , two real needs at the time . One was I still have to make some money , because , you know , eating is quite important , living in general , having a roof over my head and being a married man as well . I didn't want to just kind of let my wife , like , just bear all of the responsibility . She did that for a time when I was really unwell , but then it got to a point again where I was like I can't just turn into a freelance in bomb who just waits for the next creative opportunity . I still want to help our family be have a foundation with consistency , which yeah with with a level of consistency .
Speaker 2So I found a part time job which was in training people to do tell stories to young children , and that kind of worked for me because I got to work from home relatively . It wasn't like a clock in , clock out kind of set up and I just had to teach people how to do what I used to do . Yeah , and that was nice because it meant I got to work with adults primarily and that was very much just a . This is a part time job to make some money .
Speaker 2On the side of that , I was taking every creative opportunity that I could find , with with or without pay . Right , it was jump into everything . It was have a camera in your hand and go film everything . Every time you meet someone say I can make a film for you , I can make a film for you , I can make a film for you . And slowly , you know , I went from earning zero pounds for making a little video for that person to someone else paying me 250 pounds to film their spoken word , to jumping into making a really awful website for a small charity and just , slowly , slowly , slowly taking skills , different skills .
Speaker 2At the time I probably was very invested in the idea of becoming a filmmaker of sorts . When I say filmmaker I don't mean like blockbuster or narrative filmmaker . I was always much more interested in telling real stories , not that narrative filmmaking like blockbusters don't do that , but interviewing real people and much more documentary led filmmaking . And that led itself quite nicely into the charity sector , which I had obviously experience in working with church and kind of kept with these routes of community work which was still familiar to me and I didn't completely want to throw them out . I still was deeply interested in social justice and helping people , you know , move their way through life and grow . So it was a natural kind of pairing together of I could make films for charities .
Speaker 1Do you have any heroes in the kind of film world that you look up to , or documentary makers or practitioners that you kind of inspired you , or is it all just bottom up ?
Speaker 2Not specifically . So you know , I think there's a lot of YouTubers out there that we , a lot of filmmakers , have so much to like , so much to be thankful for , like Peter McKinnon and Matt Diavara and people like that , who have done astronomical amounts for the filmmaking community and have probably been instrumental in you know they're a bit like Moses lead the slaves out of Egypt .
Speaker 2Like these people on YouTube have given people the resources to leave their full time jobs and go get a camera and go start making films and hustling . They've been instrumental in that . So I guess at a time they probably were my heroes and very much giving me the tools to do that , but not in the niche down that I was really concerned with , which was this charity world of work .
Speaker 1And you mentioned a really word that means a lot to me hustling .
Navigate Discomfort and Witnessing Humanitarian Crisis
Speaker 1Would you define that as basically taking on things that you maybe you know objectively weren't a kind of had no proof that you could do them and then just doing them Absolutely yeah ?
Speaker 2that was . That was my get up for like three years was just straight up . I have no idea what I'm doing . No one else knew that , but that was definitely my way into everything . You know my mouth did the majority of the work for me . And then I was always okay and I still am okay with learning under pressure , Like that has always got me out of bed in the morning , Like a good example was when it got to COVID and lockdown . I was like , well , I'm a filmmaker , Like I have to go and make films and stuff .
Speaker 2There's nowhere to go , I can't go film anything . So I was like screwed , properly screwed , and I wasn't self-employed Because I had a limited company at that point . So it wasn't small enough , if you like , to be entitled to any of the government support or anything like that .
Speaker 2But then my business wasn't big enough to get any support for that either . So I sat right in this weird middle ground where I could make no money as a filmmaker and it was worth . That's when I decided . I was like , well , I guess I just learned how to animate them . So , you know , I started walking around to people and you've been like doing an animation . I was like I don't know how to animate anything , I think literally nothing .
Speaker 1And what the internet ? You just go on the internet .
Speaker 2YouTube again . Just YouTube has taught me . You know , my career is built off of YouTube videos .
Speaker 1Yeah 100% .
Speaker 2So hustling for me is very much . That is the I need to do something . And if anything and this is when I've asked my dad what I was encouraged by someone on my podcast to ask parent , your parents , what your values were . And I asked my dad what my , what I was interested in when I was growing up and what my values were , and he's always been of the opinion that I'm more interested in learning new things than I am in just anything else . So there was like inherently the hardcore learning process of some of these things was just driving me . So the excitement .
Speaker 1Does that follow a period of sort of feeling , you know , slightly uncomfortable with being comfortable because you've hit a kind of plateau ?
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1And you've , you've , the learning curve is flattened and you're not afraid and you miss the feeling of being afraid on certain and so you kind of throw yourself back into okay , it's going to be animation now . Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2For sure , and that's been the kind of every year , there's been this sense of oh , I feel too comfortable now , how do I make myself uncomfortable ? Yeah , and that was where , like this skill set of and that happened a few times you know , filmmaking , photography , animation , web design , that's kind of been like the story of the last we'll talk about four years , talking about kind of throwing yourself into discomfort .
Speaker 1Ukraine yes , tell me about that .
Speaker 2So I still had maintained quite a lot of contact with . Well , actually , no , I had dropped contact with Romania from my time of when I lived there , when I was 18 . And it just so happened , by chance , that two of my really close friends were starting a charity to work in Romania . Did , I say , remain ?
Speaker 1No , you said remain , I said Romania .
Speaker 2Yeah , they had started a charity in Romania and they invited me out there to go , initially go make one film , and this was in 2021 . And I went out there , made a film with them there , and then it just so happened that it was March 22 , isn't it that Ukraine really kicked off ? Or February 22 , that I'd been invited to go back and make more film work in Romania right in March 22 . And it was literally as we were , you know , going that week or something , that we hear the news of a war breaking out in Ukraine and we're faced with a bit of a predicament because we've got tickets to the neighboring country , right , the place where we were going was quite near the border of Ukraine and we're hearing this news of all of these people mass leaving Ukraine and where we , the project that we were going to spend time with their main concern , has just overnight gone from here's all the day to day projects of working with Roma , gypsy communities and the already huge levels of poverty and need that there into , oh dear , there's a whole country leaving and they're coming into Romania , poland and anywhere else they can get . And you know , you're faced with a moment where they're like are we still going ? Are we still going to one of the new , most like refugee , like intense crises on the planet at the current moment ?
Speaker 2So we get on a plane after a few conversations and I felt like a right numpty , having like a camera in my bag , being like , really , is there anything ? Is this ? I felt almost insulting in a way , to be like everyone's running away or not everyone's . Obviously there's people stand to fight a brutal war and that that must have taken so much courage for the people that stayed in Ukraine and fought . But I felt like such a bit of an idiot , to be honest , because I'm like there's people trying to escape . I don't want to kind of be a spectator who's going over there to go see what's happening , because you know you felt sheepish because there was a sort of sense of prurience or a sense of like .
Speaker 2I didn't want to take advantage of people's extreme situation because it might be interesting on camera and that I think that's a real . That's something that anyone that works in any kind of journalistic activity always has to reconcile is that these are real people's lives and if everyone's running away , do you really want to be the guy with a camera who's running in Like that's ? There's a lot of questions to be asked and I remember that being a really profound struggle internally for me right up until the moment that when we were in Romania it was coming to the the day where we were going to go to the border and basically been start making a film , and today it's not really one of the most interesting films that I've made in some ways because I was just in shell shock the whole time . I've lost all ability to be able to do my job .
Speaker 1Will you kind of numbed by the wave of human kind of misery that was coming away ?
Speaker 2So we're kind of driving to the border in a minibus .
Speaker 2I'm with one of my friends from here , in England who started one of the charities that I work with called Big Love , and I'm with four or five guys that live in Romania and we're all driving to the border , kind of having no idea what's going to go on . But they're going with their mini bus . We've got a whole bootload full of stuff like aid blankets , food , toys , whatever they can find , coats . We're all driving and our Romanians , particularly Romar gypsy Romanians , don't really have a fond relationship with Ukraine in general . There's a bit of tension there . Anyway . They don't have a great relationship with the Romanian police and authorities . So going to the border , which is full of Ukrainians and government authorities , is not really where Roman gypsies who are with . It's not a natural place for them wanting to be , but they're so concerned at this point with this is so devastating and they just want to do something .
Speaker 2So that in itself is kind of magic .
Speaker 2Yeah , the kind of human barriers sort of yeah just completely fell down and we're just driving in relative quiet towards this border . And literally do you know the term ? Prophetic fallacy ? Yeah , where the weather echoes the emotion it was like we were living in prophetic fallacy . It went from kind of a healthy five degrees where we were staying about an hour from the border , and , I kid you not , it went from green fields to white fields . It went from five degrees to minus 10 in literally an hour's drive and get to the border and it's the coldest place I've ever been , like straight up , yeah , before any .
Speaker 2Before we talk about any crisis , it's freezing , it's unbelievably cold . I can barely keep my hands out of my pockets to hold my camera in my hands . And then you look at this river , which is called the Danube River and it's maybe 100 meters wide , and you hear the news from different people . There's that there's queues of people , that thousands and thousands of people long waiting to get on this tiny little ferry that crosses the Danube River , normally designed for going across , you know , twice a day , for one truck is now you know extra dieting , helping people get out of Ukraine , and you're standing there going what ?
Speaker 2what the flip is happening . And the most striking thing about the whole experience actually was that , unlike some of the other places where I've been and done humanitarian documentary work , where people look poor , they look like life has really hit them hard . Everyone coming out of Ukraine looked like me .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2You know they're wearing their North Face coats . They're not . These aren't poor people .
Speaker 1This is war hitting .
Speaker 2This is people like me who live in a four bed house with you , know the same luxuries as I do , and they're running away and that hits you hard , because you know if they had nothing and they were running away from nothing , then it's almost like the same kind of humanitarian story you hear . Yeah .
Speaker 1De-sensitized to it and I definitely found that , you know , amongst my friends and peers and people I work with this war in particular because it was so close to home and it was , you know , one kind of European nation on another European nation just with the concept of crossing the border and invading and you know we did .
Speaker 1There's all sorts of justifications and counter justifications we don't need to get into , but it really captured people here . Yeah , you know you everyone has and it almost became political after a while , but the initial reaction was quite , quite stark . Well , you know , you got the WhatsApp profile photos being the Ukraine flag and people just kind of trying to show their solidarity , absolutely Not necessarily with the politics of it , but with just people who you know , as you described . Just one day they're going to work wearing their North Face jacket and the next minute they're trying to get a boat across the border and you , you saw that .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , straight up , and I think that that was kind of fundamental for me in terms of a filmmaker . As a filmmaker , with this wrestling with this juxtaposition of there's a really good photo opportunity there , but I shouldn't take it . And that has definitely , when it comes to my documentary work , that's become a if you could , if you , in order to take a photo or a bit of film of someone , there's this sense of you've either got to leave them with the same amount of dignity that you found them in or you've got to increase their dignity by taking the photo or filming them . If there's any chance that their dignity will be decreased because of the photo , then don't take it .
Speaker 1How do you take that call ? Because there's the same . The same situation with two different people will have completely different outcomes and you know one person may go . You need to tell , you need to spread this message , you need to take this back home . It's your duty . You're here as a messenger so that people know what's going on and the other side of it , someone might be like how dare you kind of visit the zoo in my time of misery to then profit , not profit off it in advance of comments or build your own profile ? So I guess it's down to kind of what you've .
Reflections on Poverty and Personal Challenges
Speaker 2I think there's . You know , it would be wrong to say there's a science to it .
Speaker 1Correct . Yeah , I can see that .
Speaker 2It's a human looking at other human in the eye situation and just gauging in that moment . You know , particularly on that day , there was these moments where there was there was only women and old people coming across and children . There's no men anywhere . So , straight away at being a man who's there , straight away you're feeling the absence of their husbands and their partners and their brothers . Straight away , there's like a natural call upon you . I don't know how best to describe this , but straight away you become very I felt very protective of everyone and wanted to , you know , create space for them , create safety for them , by virtue of the fact that their partners , their husbands , their brothers , their fathers weren't there to do that .
Speaker 1You had a genetic conditioning that kind of kicked in . Yeah , survival .
Speaker 2So , straight away , I'm at war with myself because of that . In that particular situation where you're like the people that stereotypically would do their protecting , they're not here or they are protecting them by fighting a war . They just happen to be a hundred miles away over there . So , straight away , there's like a if they were here , would I still take the photo . If their husband was standing next to them , would I still take the photo . If their son was next to them , would I still take the photo I see .
Speaker 1So you were questioning whether you were kind of taking advantage of their lack of yeah right .
Speaker 2I hope that doesn't come across as kind of overly stereotyping gender roles , but there was some that was . That was a real feeling that I was experiencing in that moment . The second thing is that you know it was . It's like these people were broke , that's it .
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2You know , and it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a photo to tell people that that they were broke You're upping sticks you're leaving everything behind . Yeah .
Speaker 1I don't know if you've ever watched Schindler's List or read the book .
Speaker 1I mean , it's a phenomenal film about set in Germany , about the kind of about the Holocaust , effectively , and there's a scene where this Jewish couple , this old Jewish couple , get their home taken away from them . They get , you know , they're obviously a very wealthy couple they kind of dress and they've got these suitcases and that's all they've got with them and they get put into this sort of . The Nazi state reallocates them into a kind of much more cramped , squalid little flat and they walk in and the wife's like you know it could be worse and then the husband kind of looks at her and kind of disgusts going how how could it possibly be any worse ? And he shouts , not , you know , in the grass , but in a kind of out of frustration . And then , right after he shouts that , about 40 families streaming after behind them because they're all going to be living in this little . They thought they had the flat to themselves , stepping down from their kind of whatever you know lifestyle that they were used to before the Nazi party took over .
Speaker 1And then all of a sudden , just as he felt he was at rock bottom , the react , the kind of another another bottom came and many more bottoms were to follow from there , but I've completely lost my trail of thought as to why I was saying that , but it certainly yeah what was I talking about ?
Speaker 2I think we're just talking about when , in face of real correct .
Speaker 1So that's a . That's an example of you know . Again , the reason why that scene was so powerful is because you know you're sat watching it in your on the back . I watched it back when you won't know what these things are they're called DVDs and you know , in the comfort of your own you know living room , and it felt much more real because it could have been your living room and you were turfed out of whilst watching this film and versus the kind of the desensitization that you get from from films and documentaries about poverty where it's kind of the norm .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1Your thing about the North Face jacket . You know the kind of people who've just been turfed out with nothing but their own belongings .
Speaker 2Yeah , and I think that's the , and it's forced poverty . Yeah , I mean don't get me wrong when it comes down to poverty is poverty is like there's , and it's hard to say , oh , their pain is kind of more pain or less pain than someone else , or . But certainly in that moment then things resonate with you really deep .
Speaker 1It's that . It's that kind of hedonic treadmill . I don't know if you've heard of that term , but I haven't .
Speaker 2Yeah , but I think I know what you're getting at , yeah .
Speaker 1It's sort of like well , some people say you know happiness is expectations minus reality . And when your , when your reality overtakes , you know when your expectations are here and all of a sudden it's the delta that changed . That kind of drives happiness . And again that's . It sounds like we're belittling , or I'm belittling , the kind of the people who are permanently in deep poverty because they don't know any better .
Speaker 2Yeah , yeah , but you're right in a sense and you know , is that like what you're just saying , in the Ukraine situation there was like this huge drop from . It was like normal and then cliff edge , yeah , whereas in other places you know that that curve of poverty has been in decline for a long time , or a flat line for a long time , whereas Ukraine is instantaneous , like you have this and now you don't . Yeah , it is , it's a light switch on off and that's that was tragic . But I think in so did you ?
Speaker 1did you ? Did you overcome sorry to interrupt you , but did you overcome , though , the kind of personal challenges you have , of actually you're out here now you could have , yeah , I mean yeah , put your craft to work and get start filming , yeah .
Speaker 2I think that in the moment I was like film it . Now make a decision later . Right there's , there's in all of the work that I've done in humanitarian kind of documentary filmmaking or photography , I do have a bit of a take the photo now . Make a educated choice , away from the moment where you're not thinking , when you're not surrounded by everything , and give yourself some breathing room to make a choice . So in the Ukraine , particularly in that moment , I did what I could . I couldn't do very much because genuinely I could barely hold my camera ever since it was too cold .
Speaker 2Like my hands were in pain every time I took them out of my pocket for longer than a minute it was , it was the coldest I've ever been . So we made this film and to , even though it only did a little bit of good , it did , like spearhead , a fundraising campaign that raised , you know X tens of thousands , which is great Relatively to people fighting and losing their life . You know it's , it's tiny , but no , everyone's going to do that bit .
Speaker 1I don't know , and I think actually now you know , when we first met you had just come back from Ukraine or you were about , I think you'd just come back and we'd first got started chatting and I kind of remember . So basically for context , for people listening , we're filming this from Albania .
Speaker 2I just come back from Albania . When we first got it , okay , that was a different , different . That's a whole different war . We are a whole different war , yeah .
Speaker 1Crikey . But I think , you know , we , we sort of we're filming this in a co-working space and in autumnal Chelmsford called patch and I was , you know , I worked for myself as well and you know , tapping away my laptop , and this guy comes and sits , you know , doing this shared space , and I look at this guy and I'm like God , look , I wish I was that cool . Look at his haircut and he's , you know , he's got this big shirt and his hat and it's kind of like why ? Why am I so like , you know , with my , with my chinos and kind of polo shirt , whatever it ?
Speaker 2is I have .
Speaker 1That's all I was like look at this , but the reality is you , you had basically come out of
The Writing Journey and Mental Health
Speaker 1. It feels like you're coming out of this kind of or you're , you're , you're re-entering a new phase as we kind of got chatting and over the subsequent months you re-entering a new phase of discomfort and skill level .
Speaker 1And the , the , the , the dyslexic kid who was or student , who was negotiating with his university teachers to reduce his word count in any way possible , has now flipped 180 to someone who's actively choosing to write and would love to know what drove you to do that , what the subject matter is and kind of riff off that if you could .
Speaker 2So I mean in part I don't really know what or how or when I changed to be in someone that enjoyed writing right . But somewhere along the line I I just enjoyed writing and that was not really a chosen thing . I don't remember doing anything about it . Can I try and answer it for you ? Can I give a go ?
Speaker 1I think you writing on your own terms , in your own time , at your own cadence , on your own subject matter , and it didn't matter you weren't trying to pass an exam or get through a course , and that's you know . The term selfish writing is one that you know . You're writing for yourself and no one else . You're not trying to build an audience or anything . Does that kind of that's ? Whenever I get through a successful period of writing is when I'm literally just doing it for me .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think that probably , there probably is a truth to that , but I'm when did it ?
Speaker 2start . So basically , the the start of the writing journey goes back maybe four years ago , to the nucleus of the idea , which is connected to mental health . The book that I'm writing is about imagination , creativity and mental health . I don't have a title yet I'm still working on that but I remember I was away on a Christian retreat and a young man well , he was probably my age , we were both young men I asked if I could pray for him .
Speaker 2He had been struggling with his mental health and he was uttering the prayer to God God please take away my anxiety , which is a perfectly reasonable request because , being someone that struggles with anxiety on a deeper and profound level , sometimes anxiety sucks in all kinds of ways .
Speaker 2So calling out to God is a perfectly reasonable response to that kind of pain . And I remember sitting next to him , not really knowing what to pray or what to think , and I . But I was suddenly struck by this idea that if God were to remove the engine for anxiety , he would also have to remove the engine for beauty . And I was really the thought that I had . I was like I suddenly felt it was really weird moment I felt wrong praying for the removal of anxiety because in one way , I felt as though if someone's anxiety were to be removed , it would also hinder their ability to create things of beauty . And then I started a process of reconciling that for myself as someone that has anxiety and would love nothing more than to never have a day of feeling anxious about you know , a little mole on my arm being cancer , or , you know , kissing .
Speaker 1Anything , anything .
Speaker 2Yeah , you know all of the little triggering moments of anxiety . I'd give anything for that to go away , but I had to go on this journey of going
Beauty Through Anxiety and Imagination
Speaker 2. Well , where does anxiety come from ? Why do I have anxiety ? And why , when I'm producing and this was a genuine thing and it might not be the case for anyone else , but why , when I concentrate and give purpose to my imagination , does the anxiety seem to be a little less potent ? And when , on this discovery process of how do you manage your imagination , how do you become a friend of your imagination so that you can walk alongside it in the pursuit of beauty and still give it room to be reasonably anxious , because it has to be in order to protect you , so that you don't do anything stupid . You know , there's a level of anxiety that is absolutely necessary and designed to protect you .
Speaker 2It's that thing that says don't jump off of that or don't touch that or , you know , don't go sleep with that other woman .
Speaker 2Your imagination has to spark up in order for you to think about the consequences of your actions .
Speaker 2So that level of anxiety is obviously helpful .
Speaker 2But I certainly found that there was this , if I was intentionally paying attention to creating things of beauty and by beauty I don't just mean the narrow sense of beauty in terms of a beautiful painting . I mean beauty in the sense of paying someone a compliment , the beauty of making a cup of tea well in the morning , the beauty of putting the right amount of salt on your dinner , the beauty of editing a film , the beauty of a good conversation . You know , by beauty I mean the fullness of life kind of that you can bring into it . So , as I was going along this journey over the last four years and this kind of thought process is just really unraveling very slowly over periods of time , and I'm listening to other people talk about other kind of really key concepts , about , you know , order and chaos and how much that kind of sinks into our bodies and you know how the imagination is kind of this chaos machine and it just produces disparate parts , and then there's also other parts of us responsible for bringing order to the randomness .
Speaker 2Almost like your imagination , is like Lego blocks all over the floor . Sometimes you can step on a Lego block and it can kill you . It can , like be the most painful thing , and sometimes you can , you know , build it into something that adds value . And I'm bringing all of these pieces together , gathering them together in my head on my own , and then you get to a point where you're like , oh , I think , maybe , just maybe a tiny little bit , maybe someone else could learn something from some of the thought process that I've gone on , and initially I was like , well , I'm a filmmaker , so I should make a film or a documentary at least . But really I began to hit . So I started making this documentary about the subject , and what I began to hit was I really needed to find some new words and new sentences and new paragraphs in order to properly structure out the thoughts that I was having , because none of the conversations I was having were kind of scratching the itch of articulating this thing that I thought was prevalent to humanity .
Speaker 2So that's when I sat down with a couple of blank pieces of paper and just started to articulate what was it like ?
Speaker 1It's amazing because you know the amount of people that I look up to who say , for example , there's a entrepreneur turned investor , turned writer , philosopher , whatever you want to describe him as a guy called Paul Graham and he wrote an essay recently called Wire Rights , and you know him and other people kind of recognise that it's an autodidactic tool , it's not necessarily marketing . It's about putting what's floating around your head onto paper , and when you try and do that process you realise , oh , actually this isn't as well thought out as I thought it was , or you actually the actual action of writing .
Speaker 1It's not like you've got these thoughts and they just need to go , or this structured idea and it needs to go onto the page . The act of putting it on the page makes you realise where the holes are , makes you understand it better than you can put it back into your head and mix it around and you kind of figure that out without having to read Paul Graham or whoever .
Speaker 2I think in a sense , maybe this was . I am in ultimate levels of gratitude to the people that ran my degree because they were brilliant thinkers . Like I couldn't halt them from that and even though I didn't fully appreciate it . Then there was something about no , no , like . If you give right and real attention , you can articulate truths that are hidden from humanity . You know , in a way that perhaps no other form of art or creativity can . If you can produce the right words in the right order , you can change the discourse of history . You know you only need to look at Martin Luther King or any of you know , jesus , whatever you want to pick through history like , there's been words every now and then that have been uttered that change everything . I'm not for a moment professing that my book is going to have that level of effect .
Speaker 1However , it could have that level of effect for one person this is a common trap everyone falls into is that you know , whether it's someone wanting to start a company or , you know , paint a picture or and the kind of those that have been trapped by kind of the kind of that centre ground or that pull to average that we were talking about earlier , will often use the kind of well , you're not Steve Jobs , you're not Picasso , and you know , actually , speaking up , there's a great Picasso quote about creativity and artists , and you know he said that every child is a phenomenal artist . The challenge is keeping . I can't , I'm going to butcher the quote , but you know the challenge is keeping them that way as they grow up . So yeah , it's the point . You know you felt sheepish when you said that kind of bringing up . You know certain people in life who have used the written word or where the written word has enabled them to kind of scale their message . But the point is it's almost like we've all got a responsibility to do it , no matter who you are .
Speaker 2Yeah , and I think inherently my belief about humans in general and this is probably a big belief is that in our uniqueness as individuals , everyone has , you know , something to utter into life . So I had to speak into life . Yeah , whether that be on global national household kind of influence , it doesn't really matter . But in our uniqueness we all have words , ideas , imaginings that can fundamentally change the reality of the people around us for the better .
Speaker 1Yeah , and the worst and that's the point I guess we're trying to make is that this sort of anxiety to beauty spectrum that we oscillate between often is that you can't have one without the other because otherwise you have nothing and then you kind of lose your . You know what makes this different to the you know to , let's say , the animal , the rest , of the animal kingdom .
Speaker 1I should say is that you know we have something , whether it's whether you want to call it a soul or you want to call it sentience , that it's really easy to hate humanity , and I get this a lot . I talk to people particularly . You know certain types of people who are . They tend to be quite wealthy or they tend to be quite kind of comfortable and they kind of it's easy to kind of go , aren't people awful ? And you look at all these awful things that we do and you're right , but that you can't have one without the other .
Speaker 2Yeah .
Speaker 1And to the beauty of being sent in or having a soul , is that you can create beauty rather than just live in it For sure and recognize it At least that self actualizing thing , isn't it ?
Speaker 2It's like something that exists in here . You know , we have the ability to create , and obviously there's there's boundaries on that and there's imaginings that are in no way realistic , like you can imagine , about flying without a plane . If I wanted to pursue flying without a plane or any other aid , I would have a hard time .
Speaker 2However , I think that is what I've found to be
Imagination's Role in Mental Health
Speaker 2the case . Observing people is that there are imaginations that kind of doing one of three things , and I think this is perhaps responsible for some of the profound mental health challenges that we're experiencing in in our in certainly in England , but I would imagine , globally at the moment , but also for some of the amazing innovations that are kind of speeding up .
Speaker 2And speeding up rampantly . Rampantly is is because our imaginations are relating to us , are conscious thinking , if you like , in one of three ways . One way is the positive is it's our friend . People have learned to walk alongside their imagination , to trust their imagination , to let their imagination speak to them and you know , people give it air room to go . Oh , I'm not just going to ignore this fantasy idea of electric cars . I'm going to pursue the creation of electric cars . I'm not just going to ignore the idea that there's a different way of having energy . I'm not just going to get into Mars .
Speaker 1We're trying not to talk about the same person here , but there are variations , you know .
Speaker 2I'm not just going to ignore the fact that there's not a baker's in Chelmsford .
Speaker 2I'm going to put a baker's in Chelmsford . You know that's someone who's walking alongside their imagination as a friend and they let it have speaking rooms , them in the most positive of senses and also in the sense that I think people that are honing like really healthy relationships are also in some ways real curators of their imagination , because the thought of I'm now going to actively mop the floor is an activity based upon your imagining of the results of mopping the floor or not having the floor not having the floor mopped , you know .
Speaker 2so there's a relationship there of friendship . Then you've got enemy , which I think is the prevalence of anxiety certainly is imaginations just keep serving up like a sushi bar where all of the sushi goes around on one of their conveyor belts and just keep serving up like this scenario of horrific things and they just keep coming by , and that's for a number of reasons .
Speaker 2You know . That can be down to trauma , that can be down to an imbalance of biological chemicals and processes in your brain . However , there's certainly something said that to be true about the fact that once you're in that place of not having a friendly relationship wherever , your imagination is very hard to move back into that place of friendship . So that negative relationship which is for a whole bunch of reasons , which I'm exploring in my book but I haven't read that chapter yet the that leaves us in one place and then the other thing that we've got is it's just forgotten . And in that forgottenness is that the imagination is what I used to play with when I was a child and now I'm void of imagination and life is for staying in a straight line and you know , you could certainly say that of our pre pre assessing generations , certainly post war , there's this sense of staying in a good thing staying your lane do .
Speaker 2It is how it's meant to be done . Don't let your imagination . You know , I mean there's reasons for that , good reasons , but they're the kind of three things that I'm writing about .
Speaker 1And in , I think , to the enemy number two , enemy that you just touched on . I'm going to try not , that's dangerous territory that I'm kind of very unqualified to pine on but maybe in number one and number three , which is friend and forgotten like is that right ?
Speaker 1Yeah , His anxiety are kind of it's again . Is it almost a feature ? Is it telling you you know you're on the , you know there's something more to you . Don't , don't , don't just stick with this path , because you know there's something more to you that you can . You can , there's a , there's a potential there that is unfulfilled , and the anxieties is a very bad signal , that telling you that that you kind of yeah , I mean I think that probably we have such a broad understanding , or narrow understanding maybe , the term anxiety , that it has maybe become only negative .
Speaker 2And I would almost , because of the way that we use the word anxiety now , I'd stir away from using that like a tool , for is anxiety a tool for alerting you to positive change , becomes a hard sentence to maybe to discuss with someone who feels like they ? Have deep , deep anxious , however , is there ? There is something of us where it is a warning . Our imaginations are a warning system for going . There is more , yeah , and that's just humans .
Speaker 1Well , let me , let me flip it then , because I'll just to kind of contextualize it . You know I work in sales . Working , you know , sales , sales all my life and I got very nice . It doesn't happen too often , but I got a compliment recently about you know , you're , you're , you're such a natural salesman , you know you're very good at sales and it's you know , it's something I wish I could do is what the person that trust me people listening or watching there are plenty of people who are not paying me that compliment who I've tried to sell things to you .
Speaker 1So , yeah , I'm sure there's tons of room to improve , but my pushback to that person was actually you know , anyone can do it , it's , it's , it's I could , it can be taught , and it's like a muscle almost , and it's it's , it's taught through experimentation and failure . And , in the same way , is creativity actually similar to what Picasso was saying you know anyone can do it , but you just need to do it , you need to practice it . And there's so many people who get told or feel that they get told you know , you're , I'm not creative , I don't have the creative spark , I don't have the creative gene , and actually you've got the imagination and then your creativity is .
Speaker 1You're almost bridging the anxiety bridge to get into doing creative acts . Yeah and it doesn't like you know . You watch my two , my two year old daughter . You watch her draw paint . She just doesn't care .
Speaker 2Anyone's watching .
Speaker 1They know he doesn't care if it's like to be liked or and I've got on the flip side . I've got a friend and she's a phenomenally talented drawer , painter , and she doesn't do it .
Speaker 1Yeah , she doesn't do it because she exacts such standards or she gets worried about what people think . And actually you know what people like Picasso did . I was just reading about Michelangelo , the other you know just very recently he did . He just turned up every day and did it , and three quarters of time he didn't finish stuff , he just did it and then what people see is the output and the best bits , but he had to do all the craft and all the unfinished stuff , and so it's a very long-winded way of asking you can anyone be creative and do creative things , whether it's filmmaking or writing ?
Speaker 1it's just a muscle that they need to act on and commit to and turn up to , or do you think it is something that just is innate and in some people ? And for the rest it's ? You know , you're going to count beans and you're going to stay in your lane and I mean , I think it .
Speaker 2yes , I think everyone is creative . I stand firmly by that . Or I think everyone has the ability to create maybe a better way of saying it and that's by virtue of creating atmospheres in rooms . You know , we all know someone that says they're not creative and then they walk in a room , in the whole room , like the whole room , something everyone's like oh no , they're here .
Speaker 1You know they've created an atmosphere .
Speaker 2So , we're all creative . It's just a byproduct of who we are . Is everyone artistic ? No , because artistic people have honed skill and tangible like activity over a prolonged period of time . But does everyone have the ability to create or the ability to learn how to create better ? For sure . I think that where we get trapped is one we use create in a very niche sense of the word , which applies to the arts , and that's just . I think that's not very helpful .
Speaker 2I think what we also do is and maybe this is unique to our generation , but maybe it goes all the way back is that because we exact such high standards of ourselves from everyone else we've all just become so afraid of being judged for anything that is unique to us that suddenly it feels like whenever you do any form of creativity in the sense of something that's a novel idea or something that's unique in your sense , it's like raising your head above you know , the trenches and you might get shot by a sniper . So it's , and it doesn't matter what scale that is . It's like imagine someone like writing a little poem and then putting out on Instagram . You know , in one way people kind of go .
Speaker 1Who do you think you are ?
Speaker 2But then you feel the intense burden of the whole world is looking at your poem . Or , you know , adding a bit of salt into a cake which doesn't have salt on the recipe . That can feel terrifying to some people because what if the cake tastes bad ? What if people don't like the cake because of my little bit of salt I added . Every time we inject in originality or something that's unique to us , it's us putting ourselves out there , which makes the act of creativity just scary .
Importance of Courage and Safe Environments
Speaker 1Do you think also that , like I mean , I remember when I was having a conversation with a friend who found out , not directly , that I'd started a podcast or I was about to start a podcast , and he said he was very open . It was phenomenal conversation . He said look , it almost felt I had a something in my stomach churned of some and it was almost like a mirror was held up and put into my face where you know , like you're not doing , why aren't you doing this ? The people who criticise people who stick their head above the parapet is often it's because they are . I mean , he wasn't doing that .
Speaker 2He was being very open .
Speaker 1But , like you're pointing to the example of people who kind of criticise , it's because they're almost having a reflection of themselves shown at them by other people's bravery or create I'm not saying on brave- but like for people to do thing because it makes it's a reflection of their own lack of lack of adventure .
Speaker 2Yeah , and I just think it takes it wrongly . It takes so much courage to be creative and I think , real , the lack that we have is not a lack of creativity , it's a lack of courage , and that lack of courage is not always down to an internal system of just going . You're not courageous enough . I think , more often than not , it's a community responsibility where , if your community is unsafe , your family is broken into a zillion pieces because of arguments and brokenness and you've gone through a school in system which has pulled you in multiple directions . You have to get a job . In an economic crisis , it's not safe for you to be creative it's safer for you to play it safe and stay it simple .
Speaker 2So , suddenly this thing which is inherently human and absolutely necessary for the thriving of the human race , is this activity which takes a huge amount of courage , because you just have to slightly sidestep the normal and then , like I said , you can come under fire so quickly . And where the imagination , being an enemy not for anything , comes in , is suddenly , as well as everyone else having a sniper pointed at you , your own imagination has a sniper pointed at you as well .
Speaker 1Because I'm guessing you would have talked yourself out of doing the book as many times as you've talked yourself into oh yeah , more .
Speaker 2I think that that's , but in a way that that's spurring me on even more , and I think that if that's when we can make the transition is , instead of asking ourselves , are you going to be creative today ? It's . I think there's two really good questions to ask . Is one am I going to be courageous today ? And two , if that question is really hard to answer yes to , is go . Is there anything I can do to make it easier to be courageous today ? And suddenly then you've got a different , more practical kind of it's , a more you can do more things externally about that question , because it's a very abstract question . To go , am I courageous enough to create something today is a real like well , am I yes or no ? Like what does that even mean ?
Speaker 1Yeah .
Speaker 2And that means something very different for everyone . But if you ask yourself the question what can I do around me to help me take more risks , Like , what are the relationships I have in my life ? Does that person that I'm dating make me feel safe and empowered , or do they make me feel like I just need to keep earning money ? Or what food do I eat ? Because if I'm like feeling unhealthy every day , then it's making it harder for me to be courageous . So if we ask them questions and they're there . Every podcast in the world talks about these kind of basic things , maybe not with this language , but in order to be more creative . I think it's a question of creating the environment .
Speaker 1So that would be my first pull for anyone on a macro , I mean on the macro sort of all the high levels setting .
Speaker 1you touched on something really interesting which is like you know , there's a guy called Peter Thiel , who's co-founder of PayPal , and he was asked you know , why is it that entrepreneurs tend to be such assholes ? Basically , you've got Steve Jobs and Mark's People are . Why are they weird , kind of like these ? Do you have to be a douchebag and a weirdo to succeed ? And he flipped the question and said what is it about our society where only the oddballs are the ones who are able ?
Speaker 1to overcome everything . That's the one you know . So why is it only ? They're the ones who can kind of do the active courage and on the , you know the , the , the , the micro level , I think you know you're absolutely right , you need to create , you know the preconditions . My only challenge to that would be you know something that I heard recently , which is that you know something that our generation or your generation , I don't know how . You know how you want to skin it , but there's a . Well , okay , let me put it . I wanted to wrap up mental health , and I'll kind of tie this into my kind of let me just add something in , because I think I've forgotten an important third in in that that fruit them two questions .
Speaker 2So the first one was about am I courageous ?
Speaker 2The second is about creating the right conditions for me to be courageous enough to create . The third one answers perhaps where you were going , but maybe not , and it was negligent of me not to bring it up is we also have a responsibility to create environments for other people who don't have the ability to create their own safety in order to be courageous , and I think that that is the that's one of the greatest gifts that any human can give . Another is can you create somewhere else for someone's creativity to thrive , where they feel empowered to be courageous ? That has to be included in that , because I think that even in my active I hope that in my active writing my book , or in the active me making a film I'm responding to all three . You know , I'm responding to an internal compass which says am I going to be someone who's courageous ? Am I someone that builds good conditions for my own courageousness to occur and then my someone that builds good conditions for other people to do that ? Because you know , people are not just subject to their own choices .
Speaker 1Yeah , and aren't you , by definition , by doing an act of courage , helping with number three , because they've got an example that they can see that courage works .
Speaker 2Yeah , I think so , but again , maybe that doesn't quite get right down to the dirty of it where it's like if someone can't afford to eat , yeah , in your community I tend to . Even I'll work on big global humanitarian projects . I tend to still try and think in our local communities because I can do something about it tonight .
Speaker 2You know , I can't do anything about the Ukraine crisis tonight . I just I can't . I don't have the resources to beat Putin or to end the war . I do have the resources to feed someone If I know that they haven't got food . I do have the resources to make a phone call to someone who is lonely yeah , and that's something I can do right about it . And it's not some kind of like high level by my courageous nurse of writing a book they're going to feel inspired it's like right down in there going I am real , real yourself .
Speaker 2Yeah , and that has to be , that has to be a part of the focus , for me at least , is that , you know , beauty , creativity can't be selfish , like in a way , like I think that we have a responsibility as humans to serve our , the people around us as well .
Speaker 1Well , I think that's probably some . I mean , it's it is actually a religious thing as well , where you know people are kind of forced to get away from the big , macro , high minded stuff just to get in and around the community , because it's so easy to kind of be , all you know , generous and free spirited with the world when you're actually doing anything for people around you . I wanted to kind of pick your brains on on mental health , and the reason why is I'm 36 and you're 28 . Are you now ? I'm not that much older than you , but I confess , rightly or wrongly , for the first 25 years of my life maybe 28 years of my life I never heard the words mental health . It just didn't exist as a term . You know , right through my schooling edged university , there was one time I was in a school , there was . It just seemed overnight at some point that this became such an important thing .
Speaker 1And I heard something recently which kind of was very powerful and I'm still trying to grapple with with it in the context of this sort of mental health crisis that we , we are told we're in or we are in , which is that the younger generation has confused itself and that it it thinks that through , through good self esteem or good mental health . Let's say you can get strong achievement when in reality it's through achievement and that you get good self esteem . Does that make sense ? Like you need to do stuff to justify your confidence , not be conf ? There's a lot of people go . Well , I , once I got my confidence back , then I'll do this thing yeah .
Speaker 1I just want your . What is mental health to you ? Yeah , and what does it ? What does it mean to you in terms of the coming ? You've talked about anxiety , but I'd love to get your thoughts to someone who's obviously given a lot of bandwidth onto this subject . So I .
Speaker 2it's really
Science's Impact, Time's Empty Void
Speaker 2interesting . Firstly , I hesitate to pin it down on to one generation . Yeah , that's a lot of other men . I wonder whether they are . They are what they , what our generation I think I include myself in this a landed with is post , the end of post modernity , in a way , where we've kind of said , after World War two , get rid of religion , get rid of faith , get rid of community , almost like these kind of real , these value systems that have been around for thousands of years .
Speaker 2And now science is going to answer everything . That's an overly simplified articulation of it , but it was kind of like these other things don't give us the answers , these intangible kind of things like faith will never get us to where we're going . Yeah , science is going to do it , because we can figure everything out . We've been living through that for the better part of 100 years and we , I think , have arrived at a point where we're going . Science is amazing and done lots of stuff , but it doesn't answer isolation or loneliness or purpose or why or I don't feel good about myself today it doesn't , it doesn't have answers for that because we and I think we've pushed our value system so extreme in a way where we've neglected some other fundamentals of humanity , like connection and , you know , a sense of beyond ourselves and mystery and doubt , to me at least , seem obvious to what it's about .
Speaker 1There's one word which I never hear . So if you're a fan of like again like , I'll bring up 19th century fiction again . But like you know I love historical fiction as well as just general old-school fiction and all the hornblower flans out there who will notice that one of the words that hornblower uses a lot is the word duty .
Speaker 2I just never hear .
Speaker 1I can't remember the last time I ever had on the radio .
Speaker 2It's that calling to something bigger than yourself for other people's sake . So it's like the sense that we are not just ourselves , we belong to a pack .
Speaker 2You know , even in our language , the whole thing of my truth and my thinking . There's elements of good and helpfulness about that , but there's other things , which is it serves to just completely tear us away from each other , because you never have to come to compromised consensus , which is why marriage is such a beautiful picture and theory is because it's like to become in one . That's our communities are about . You know , when we're unified , despite our differences , people flourish , and that flourishing doesn't mean you know everyone's right , but , yeah , they still flourish Because there's a safety net of a whole , of a togetherness .
Speaker 1Which is positive sum . It's greater than the sum of its parts .
Speaker 2So in a sense , I think in our pursuit of science , which has done many a good thing , we've maybe just not fostered some other kind of rich values which say it's okay to not always be right , it's okay not to be the most popular person in the room , it's okay to not be the cleverest , but it's really important to be connected in spite of all of the things . Well , it's amazing .
Speaker 1Science is . I guess it's filled the vacuum but not realized it's the humility of its whole . Point of science is that it's about falsifying things and only approaching things which can be falsified . And if you read people like Richard Feynman who aren't aware of him he's a Nobel Prize winning physicist , one of the most well regarded people in the scientific community from 100 years ago . You read his work . He says the beauty of science is that it reminds me how little I know and how much I'll never know and how the point is you're dealing with stuff that is a very small subset of a whole reality and science has filled that void of religion and it has an inherent religiosity today which has just not got that fundamental backbone and substance to it . The religions that have been around for a while do have .
Speaker 2I think the other thing that is done . I mean , I don't in any way put them against each other . I think the fascinating thing that our science and innovation has done is it's created a better world in many ways you know , health care being a great example . People don't die as much . That's thankful to science . Computers like the labour intensive work of going down the mine doesn't exist in the same way anymore in our country , not around the world , sadly . But what we've ?
Speaker 2done is we've are you familiar with Maslow's theory ? Hierarchy of needs is that we've kind of raised the foundation for the minimum standard of living whereby you know we we're no longer all working on farms , where you wake up with the sun , you go do the farm thing all day . You come home , you eat , you go to bed , rinse and repeat every day . We've got a really healthy world in some ways where we've now just got this abundance of time to think about who am I .
Speaker 2And this is questions which maybe we've never had as a culture . We've never had as much time as we have now to address these kind of so the vacuum is ever more apparent .
Speaker 1It's like oh my gosh .
Speaker 2Like you know , even with things like AI and chat GBT being able to write essays , if you look at someone who's doing their A levels , you know you don't even need to really concern yourself in the future with writing essays because a computer can just write the essay for you .
Speaker 2So suddenly your demand on your time is even less because you don't even have to sit down and write the essay anymore and you've got even more time to ask you questions of why , what's important .
Speaker 2So there's just a more apparent void of time to be filled , and that must be really scary because for anyone that I think that has probably struggled with their mental health , one of the scariest things to do is sit in a room on your own in silence . If you kind of magnify that and say we've got a generation of people that are , you know , metaphorically sitting in a room on their own in silence , having to address questions that so many generations before us just simply haven't had time to address because they've just had to be at work and they , so it's a really weird kind of conundrum that we've kind of positioned ourselves in , where we've done a lot of good things but like with all the good things that have ever happened for history . We've just arrived at the next kind of problem of oh well , if we can live until we're 100 safely , what do we do until we're 100 ?
Speaker 2Yeah you know , if we're not working between 60 and 100 , because we're retired , there's 40 years of gardening . You know how do I address that inside of myself that have so much time to look for something deeper and I think that we've just they just don't have the right tools . I don't think any of us really have the right tools to really explore that . Yeah , I think this is brand new .
Speaker 1But the diminishment of things like you know duty and marriage and things like that . I can't help .
Speaker 2No .
Speaker 1So , look , as you know , I like to kind of wrap these things up with a thing that I call the long bet , which is , you know , I make it a 10 year time horizon . Why not nine , why not 11? , who knows ? But let's make it 10 because it's far out enough that it doesn't matter , but it's not so close that it's . You know , it's meaningless . What would you like to see happen with yourself or with the world over 10 years , or what do you think will happen ? And if it's , what would you like to see happen ? Obviously , answers like world peace or people being kinder or discouraged .
Speaker 2Yeah , I get it Um , I would like to see more investment into how we better curate our thinking and our minds . I think that needs to be given some real attention on mass scale , not something for those that not simply for divergent human beings that have the right conditions to flourish , but for all humans that there is . There are spaces and places where they can go to really explore their minds , but not necessarily under under the guise of healthcare , just under the guise of just this is just a good part of being a human .
Speaker 2I don't exactly know what that looks like in practice . But you know , if my , if the book that I'm writing as a side kind of contributes to helping people think about how they think , then that would be great .
Speaker 1Yeah , kind of reimagining of rewriting , yeah , yeah , so what ? When is the book ? When do we , when can we expect to have this book out ?
Speaker 2I mean I have just had a baby in the last four weeks .
Speaker 1So I haven't written anything for four weeks .
Speaker 2So slowed down a little bit , but the aim would be certainly in the first half of next year .
Speaker 1Great , and where ? Where can people find you in the meantime ?
Speaker 2Best place to find everything that I'm doing is on Instagram , Matt James Cooper . There's links to my website , my film work , my podcasts , the thoughts on my book they're all there .
Speaker 1Great Well , matt . This has been a lot of fun . Thank you so much . I look forward to doing it again soon .
Speaker 2Yes , it's been good Cheers boss .