Working Hours

Craig Blair recorded 14/06/2021 Craig Blair is a Senior Practitioner for Barca-Leeds. He works in the children, young people and family teams, building relationships with partners and supporting staff and clients. Barca-Leeds support people struggling with housing issues, finances, physical and mental health problems. Their services are also geared towards children, young people and adul...

Tina Leslie recorded 02/11/2021 Tina Leslie is a former call centre worker and community development worker. Currently she is a fitness instructor and public health worker. Tina is also the The Founder of Freedom for Girls. F...

Carrieanne Vivianette recorded 14/09/2021 Carrieanne is a school teacher, freelance theatre maker and fine artist who is currently focused on the management and development of her Leeds-based theatre company CVIVArts Theatre. The company is working on an Arts Council England funded project titled What Are You Hungry For? A research and development project with a final production to be performed in...

Phil Fraser recorded 04/08/2021 Do you want to be a better SME business owner? Do you want to take your business into that next level? Then you need yourself a Business Sounding Board . You need Phil Fraser! Phil Fraser successfully founded, ran and subsequently sold a multi-award winning online gaming affiliate business in a multi-million pound sale to a PLC. He’s been there, done that and got th...

Richard Firth recorded 05/07/2021 Richard Firth is Managing Director of DaisyTouch Limited. DaisyTouch started in 2020, to provide accessibility and consultancy services to businesses so that they’re better equipped to support the needs of their disabled staff and disabled customers. There are an estimated 14.1 million disabled people in the UK. Meanwhile around 100,000 people in the UK become dis...

Kathryn Irish recorded 09/07/2021 Kathryn is a Digital Marketing Specialist at NUGEN Audio. NUGEN Audio’s products offer market-leading fidelity and unrestricted creativity in every situation, providing a direct and intuitive way to work with sound. The company’s tools make it easier to deliver high-quality, compliant audio while saving time, reducing costs and preserving the creative process. Kat...

Chris Salt recorded 31/05/2021 Chris is currently a Partnerships Executive at Candlelighters Trust. Candlelighters support families facing children's cancer in Yorkshire. They are involved in all sorts of different projects to help ordinary families who are facing extraordinary circumstances. Chris helps Candlelighters build and maintain its donor relationships with businesses. You can find out mo...

Emma Bearman recorded 17/05/2021 Emma is the founder of Playful Anywhere. Playful Anywhere CIC is a Leeds-based social enterprise with a mission to catalyse creativity, inventiveness and wellbeing with clients, the public and through their own projects, Playbox, Playlab and Young Inventors Club. Playful Anywhere loves to blur the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds, encouraging part...

Simon Young recorded 30/03/2021 Simon is a Chartered Accountant and the managing partner of Leeds based Aysgarth Accountants. This conversation is another great example of why I love doing this. Your average media consumer might think there’s not much to discuss around a profession that often gets stereotyped in media and culture as ‘boring’ but Simon and I breezed through two hours of chat in thi...

Gloria Kimberley recorded 30/03/2021 My guest this episode is Gloria Kimberley. Gloria is the Project Leader of the Leeds Festival of Kindness, Compassion and Wellbeing which first took place in September 2020. The aim of the Festival is to spread kindness and compassion in the city of Leeds, thereby improving everyone's wellbeing. Gloria is also a Holistic Health and Wellness Coach who supports p...

Jason Allen recorded 16/12/2020 My guest this episode is Jason Allen a Digital Video Editor for Channel 4 in Leeds, editing and helping produce video content across all of Channel 4’s social platforms.  Jason also has his own YouTube channel where he reviews TV shows – link below. We discuss his history of interest in animation and how that led on to starting his YouTube channel and ultimatel...

Anonymous female recorded 07/12/2020 My guest this episode currently works in Television in Manchester as a freelance TV researcher. This is my youngest guest so far and we discuss the somewhat ordinary and also somewhat glamourous world of TV production; as well as being furloughed – my first furloughed worker on the podcast! We discuss a bunch of my guests’ previous roles too, including some fro...

Anonymous male recorded 02/02/2021 My guest this episode worked for 20 years for a firm of stock brokers. Through a personal project of trying to maximise what be could achieved within his lunch hour he has found himself working in the area of work based well-being. We discuss a number of topics from my guest’s time working at a stockbrokers and looking at some of the myriad things he was able to...

Steph Varley recorded 03/02/2021 Steph is a social entrepreneur building an inclusive experience service for children. We discuss setting up a Community Interest Company (CIC); working with various stakeholders, testing technology and working with vulnerable groups. We also touch upon fundraising and Steph’s other job where she now works part time while building up and developing out her CIC. You...

Anonymous male recorded 21/05/2020 In this episode I speak with an IT security consultant about – you guessed it –working from home! We talk about his career development as it has matured alongside the sector. We talk about the effects of the pandemic on business and businesses, the wasted energy of travelling for business and of the many benefits of remote working. This interview was recorded ove...

Anonymous female recorded 26/05/2020 In this episode I talk to a Loiner Lawyer in London. This is another Skype interview discussing working from home but also looking at working around the world. My guest is an in-house lawyer in a travel firm and discusses some of the opportunities her past roles have allowed her, law in the workplace and workplace law, and coping with Lockdown after 2 months of...

John Barlow recorded 09/11/2020 John is a Programme Manager within the PayTV industry and is passionate about projects that promote sustainability and positive environmental change. Most recently John is aiming to change the default behaviour that comes with the stuff we own, aiming to promote access over ownership through a unique P2P rental marketplace (WYN). You can follow WYN on Twitter @share...

Jem Henderson recorded 26/03/2020 So this is the 1 st Skype episode but it comes out here. This is another fantastic interview. Jem is the Entrepreneur Engagement Manager for Yorkshire at @TechNation. Jem is a fascinating woman with a very interesting work history. We discuss unemployment, poverty, mental health, diversity, Digital skills and opportunities and… err… wrestling.  I lose connect...

Anonymous male recorded 13/05/2020 So… bit of a gap in recording due to the world shutting down. In this episode (the 1 st Skype recorded episode that you’re hearing but not the 1 st recorded) we discuss Working From Home - the employment topic of 2020 for most non key workers. My guest manages IT infrastructure for a HE institution and he takes us through some of the changes he’s seen in IT over...

Anonymous female recorded 25/01/2020 I love this episode! Not that I don’t love the others but this to me feels like a sort of model episode. My guest is originally from Slovenia and she takes me on a break-neck tour through her work history. We discuss moving and working abroad and the importance of having support from your workplace. There’s also nearly an hour of additional material for this in...

Anonymous male recorded 08/01/2020 In this episode we talk precarity. My guest and I discuss working in bars, working abroad, working in bands and writing film reviews. My election bitterness is showing some (well a lot really). So you’ll have to excuse me for that. There’s some good stuff in here but I feel it could have been a lot better if I had shut my mouth more. Anyway, done now.

Anonymous female recorded 05/12/2019 In this episode I have a conversation on healthcare and IT. There’s a lot of coughing going on in this episode as pretty much everyone in Leeds seemed to have a terrible lingering cold with a very persistent cough at this time!!! This is another kitchen episode, as I had not learned that lesson yet. We do cover a fair bit of ground in this interview as my guest...

Anonymous male recorded 21/11/2019 In this second episode I talk to a poet and university lecturer about academia and creative working. We discuss how higher learning has changed in recent times and the shape of its ongoing uneasy fit with both art and commerce. We talk about the changing landscape of being creative, being educated and making money. We look at the experience of moving to London to...

Eleanor Snare recorded 04/12/2019 In this initial episode I show off my lack of professionalism by forgetting to turn my mic on and recording in a kitchen (a mistake I will repeat) and on squeaky chairs too (I’ll do that again as well). However, I think the conversation with Eleanor is great and comes through really well. Eleanor is an artist, writer and educator and we discuss everything from out...

Working Hours is a show about a place called Leeds, a time called now and an activity called work. I want to interview 1000 Loiners (people from Leeds) over the 2020s and ask them the second question we all ask everyone - what do you do? If you're a Loiner and would like to appear on the show then you can email workinghourspod@western-studios.com with your contact details and a short bio. Backgrou...