Extraordinary Creatives

There’s a romantic idea that if you just shut the door, block the world out, and push through, the work will save you. That you can white-knuckle your way through exhaustion, anxiety, financial stress, hangovers, through everything else falling apart. For a while, maybe you can - willpower is powerful, but it is not infinite. Ceri regularly see artists trying to dominate their minds instead of sup...

Sophie Coryndon learned early that craft is not decoration, but devotion, time, patience, skill, and care. Her work sits confidently outside conventional categories, moving between art and craft, history, and contemporary imagination.  This conversation is about enchantment in a disenchanted world, about beauty as a serious subject, about what it means to make work slowly with your hands, at a tim...

In this episode, Ceri explores the uncomfortable truth at the heart of a sustainable creative life - good mental health doesn’t come from avoiding hard things, but from learning how to move through them. It comes from learning how to deal with them, from building confidence, so that when life feels awkward, lonely, stressful, or uncertain, you won't fall apart or abandon yourself. Yet so many arti...

I don’t know about you but for me, a new year holds up a mirror. Not the soft one that flatters, but the honest one. The one that shows you the thing you want most and the exact shape of the fear wrapped around it. Today is for artists who are done pretending they don’t know what they want. This is the year you stop hiding from the thing you want most. Let’s make this practical, emotional, and rea...

I wanted to end this year with a simple thing. A thank you. A real one. The kind that comes from the ribs. Because you might not realise how often I think about you when I sit down to plan these episodes. I think about what you’re navigating, what might help, what could spark a shift, or soften a blow, or give you a way through a knotty day. And I’m grateful that you’re here, listening, building a...

If you’ve been listening to this festive-season mini-series, you’ll know that in Episode 1 Ceri laid the foundations. The why. The what. The who. The purpose of staging your own event. And in Episode 2 we stepped into the how. The planning. The invitations. The rehearsal. The feedback. The choreography of the night itself. Today, we’re entering the part artists often ignore. The after. Because wha...

Welcome to the second part in Ceri¨s three part miniseries on planning an artist led event. This one's called planning the how turning intention into a structured, soulful artist led event. If you listened to Episode 1, you will remember that everything begins with clarity. The why. The what. Who it is for. What you want to learn. What you want to feel. That foundation changes everything. Without...

For those of you who are new to the podcast, and for those of you who’ve been listening for a while, thank you for being here. As we reach the edge of the festive season, I wanted to offer you something special. A small gift to carry into the new year. A mini-series on hosting your own events as an artist. Not because the world is begging you to. Not because someone has given you the green light....

This is the time of year when the studio hopefully gets a little quieter, inboxes slow down, and we start to take stock. For many artists, that pause comes with a mix of reflection and panic. The question that hangs in the air is: what will next year look like? How will I make it work — not just creatively, but financially? If that thought makes your stomach tighten, you’re not alone. Most artists...

It's that time of year again when we start reflecting on what we've achieved in the year and start thinking and planning for the year ahead. So, I wanted to record something for you on how to set goals that actually work for you. Most artists I know aren’t short on ideas — they’re short on direction. It’s not about working harder; it’s about knowing where your effort will actually count. Every Jan...

Today, Ceri speaks the extraordinary Memo Akten — artist, researcher, computer scientist. For more than a decade, he has worked with emerging technologies, AI, Big Data, and our Collective Consciousness as scraped and shaped by the internet, to explore consciousness, perception, ecology and the politics of our techno-lifestyles. He won the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, became Google’s first...

Some artists wait for the perfect show to appear, as if the universe will tap them on the shoulder and whisper that it is finally time to finish the work. But the longer you wait, the further away it drifts. Because unfinished work is safe. It stays in potential, where nothing is at risk and everything is still possible. And waiting feels easier than deciding. But waiting is not how shows happen....

Today I’m speaking with artist Lakwena Maciver, whose glorious work has wrapped electrical substations, transformed the Bowery Wall, brought hope into a juvenile detention centre in Arkansas, transformed Tate Modern and handbags for Dior. All of this stemmed from a child drawing her own name to anchor a shifting sense of identity. Those early gestures became a life’s work centred on hope, connecti...

You can’t build a big, brave, creative life if you’re still waiting for permission. In this episode, Ceri talks about the quiet poison of approval seeking, which keeps you performing instead of creating, editing yourself to fit in and please people who might never have seen your work. Or if they do, are too entangled in their own insecurities to applaud it anyway. Ceri explains why so many artists...

What happens when two sculptors build not just a life together, but a living artwork? In this week’s episode of Extraordinary Creatives, I’m joined by Laura Ford and Andrew Sabin—partners in art and in life—whose decades-long dialogue between material, imagination, and place has produced some of the most distinctive sculpture in Britain today. Their story is one of instinct, invention, and fearles...

Today, Ceri answers a question from one of her members that is likely to benefit every artist that sends their work to or attends art fairs. The question is - how to make the most of participating in an art fair? Some of the tips Ceri shares may surprise you. KEY TAKEAWAYS Prepare your work – it needs to be robust, stable, easy to handle, pack and ship. Fragile works, sharp edges, or delicate surf...

What happens when two people with very different beginnings—one raised in an artist family, the other hairdressing and DJing before turning to curating—come together to build a gallery that’s now shaping the future of contemporary art in London? Today, I speak with Oswaldo Nicoletti and Camille Houzé, the duo behind NıCOLETTı. Founded as a curatorial project in 2018, the gallery has grown into a p...

Artists spend so much time worrying about being consistent. But what if that’s not the point? What if your inconsistency is proof that you’re alive in your practice? I know you look at other artists — the ones who seem to stay in one lane — and you think, maybe I’m doing it wrong. Maybe people won’t get it. Maybe the market only rewards repetition. And yet, deep down, you know that sameness suffoc...

What happens when you treat each artwork as a proposition of a world—when exhibitions become acts of empathy, and books become vessels for collective memory? This week, Ceri welcomes back the brilliant Ekow Eshun—writer, curator, and cultural polymath—who has just been appointed curator of the British Art Show 10, opening in September 2026. Ekow’s trajectory is extraordinary. The first Black edito...

How you share your work with others does a lot of heavy lifting for you. Despite the myriad ways you can show what you make—through social media, websites, private viewing links, or even WhatsApp screenshots—curators, collectors, commissioners, and gallerists still rely on one timeless format - the curated artist portfolio. So, in today’s episode, Ceri walks you through how to create an artist PDF...

What happens when anger becomes fuel, and one woman’s story grows into a movement that changes the law? Cei is joined by Joeli Brearley—activist, author, speaker, podcast host and founder of Pregnant Then Screwed. Before stepping into the spotlight as one of the UK’s most influential campaigners, Joeli worked in the arts, producing digital festivals and cultural projects that honed her gift for tu...

Have you ever sat in front of a blank screen, trying to describe your work, and felt like every word made it sound flatter? Or worse—like it belonged to someone else entirely? You’re not alone. Writing about your art can feel like trying to bottle smoke. You know what you mean when you make it—you can feel it in your hands, your gut, your bones—but the minute you try to put it into words, somethin...

How do two students experimenting with clocks in Gothenburg end up creating million-euro artworks collected by celebrities and installed in airports and institutions across the world? This week, Ceri is joined by Bastian Bischoff and Per Emanuelson, the co-founders of Humans Since 1982 a Stockholm based studio where art, design and technology collide. Together with engineer David Cox and a team of...

Today´s episode is about developing a sense of authority not just in the work you make, but also in all the other moving parts of being an artist. Including writing that dreaded artist statement, submitting for an exhibition you’re not sure you’re ready for, grant applications, open calls, sitting across from a curator and talking about your work. All vital tasks that fill many artists with dread....

What happens when you follow your instincts all the way from a boat-building town in New England to Alexander McQueen’s studio, through the forests of Oregon, to a sunlit gallery in LA? This week, Ceri is joined by the remarkable Ryan Noon—creative director, curator, gallerist, and founder of NOON Projects. His journey weaves together fashion, art, and everyday alchemy that turns felt experience i...