Welcome to the Creative Switch, the podcast inspiring the sensibly successful to switch on their unexpressed creativity for a more fulfilled life. I'm often asked how I find my guests and in a way the answer is simple. I'm always noticing people's stories. I never quite know where my curiosity will take me, but I do recognise the need to find opportunities to meet new people and have conversations. It is a creative process in itself and you can't predict when those moments of human connection will happen. So you need to a) say yes to invitations, b) be fearlessly prepared to talk to new people and c) boldly be yourself. I met today's guest, actor, singer and voiceover artist Juliet Crosbie in one such encounter, which all began because I was inspired to wear my orange boots. And if you're looking to turn your creative inspiration into action, don't forget to listen right to the end of the episode and catch up with my creative adventures. This is where I share the challenges I encounter and how acting on the nuggets of wisdom I've learned from my guests and applying those learnings is helping me to move forward in my own creative projects. If you're an all rounder and could do most things for either your business or your creative project, it can be a challenge feeling like you need to do everything yourself. If this is an issue for you, I'll share perfect advice from award winning bespoke jewellery designer Harriet Kelsell later. Before we get to that, do remember to head to my website nikkivallance.com and sign up to stay in the loop with all my latest updates, blogs and guides to help you with your creative challenges. First though, it's time for some creative news in the Edge.

Ireland's film and TV scene is having a moment. Since August, a wave of high end productions has landed across the UK and Ireland, with fantasy and period drama leading the charge. A new Chronicles of Narnia instalment, a gothic Jane Austen adaptation and a Game of Thrones spin off are all in motion. According to Screen Daily, producers are focusing on emotionally rich narratives and casting directors are looking for performers who will bring vocal nuance, physical presence and layered expressiveness. I think this is a moment for actors and voice artists to really lean into what makes their work distinct. In music, a quiet act of defiance is making noise. Over a thousand musicians, including Annie Lennox, Kate Bush, Hans Zimmer, released a silent protest album titled Is this what We Want? It's made up of ambient recordings from empty studios and rehearsal spaces created in response to proposed UK copyright laws that would allow AI developers to train models on on copyrighted music without permission. The album's 12 tracks spell out a message the British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies. I think it's one of the most poetic ways artists have pushed back in recent years, using silence to make a point about voice, and this conversation around human creativity and artificial replication is intensifying. I talked about the impact on the creative design world last time. More broadly, Deloitte describes generative AI as a super tool for innovation and encourages creatives to lead with insight while integrating new technologies. I think that's useful framing, especially for creatives who are experimenting with AI while staying grounded in their own process. PwC's Global CEO Survey adds another layer. "Technology alone can't reinvent our business or change the way we work. Meeting that challenge also requires smart, creative people of integrity who dive in and embrace advancing technologies." The emphasis is on people and the role of creative leadership in shaping ethical adaptive systems. This is where the conversation needs to stay focused on the values and the choices of the humans using the tools. A report by global consulting firm Alex Partners, published by the legal intelligence platform Lexology, focuses in more detail on AI tools in production environments. Their analysis of AI in film and TV highlights how tools are streamlining post production. They also reference the 2023 Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes as a cultural turning point. The report urges studios to define the boundaries between human and machine made content, warning that without clear authorship frameworks, creative integrity risks becoming collateral damage. I think the real concern here is how we safeguard the emotional depth and authorship behind the work as these tools evolve. Are you using AI tools in your life or your creative expression? Or are you a performer who is leaning into the imperfection of your humanness? I started debating the question of human versus AI creativity with my guests in the first season, which isn't that long ago, but things have moved on at a pace since then. Pretty much anyone with an interest in creativity has an opinion on the topic and the changes are happening all around us. Do share your thoughts or any questions via my website contact page or on Instagram at Nikki Vallance. I'd love to hear from you. And listen next to my conversation where we touch on many aspects of the essence of human creativity and creative living with the super talented performer and gorgeous human being, Juliet Crosbie.

Hi Juliet and welcome to the Creative Switch.

Thank you very much Nikki. Thanks for having me.

It's brilliant. I think our meeting initially was serendipitous, so hopefully we're going to have a lot of fun whilst we're chatting. I'd like to start, if we can, by asking you to introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about what you do.

My name is Julia Crosbie. I'm an actor and a singer and a voiceover artist from a county called Louth in Ireland. And we met during the run of A Christmas Carol in the Old Vic last Christmas.

We can maybe even talk about that meeting a little bit because I think it speaks to some of how creativity works as well in this crazy world. But could we start off by you telling me a little bit about what creativity means to you so the word, the way it exists in your life, maybe include a summary of what you're up to creatively at this point in time?

Yeah, it's a great question. I feel like at the moment it represents everything about how you live, ironically, because it didn't always represent that for me at all. And in the last couple of years, I feel like my understanding of what being creative has really changed and redefined itself. So at the moment, it's anything and everything that you interact with because it's the. How you interact with it, I guess.

Yes.

When you're an artist full time, you can kind of get stuck in the gearbox of only viewing things through the medium of what you do or the medium of the art you make. And one of the most beneficial things I've done for myself in the last year or so is not viewing everything through that lens and starting to view your whole life as an opportunity to be creative. Things I would completely have taken for granted, like how you dress or, what you're cooking or how you're styling your home. I remember reading a book years ago. I have no idea what it was or what it was about, but there was a quote in it about, if you know how to style a room, you know how to style your life. I'm hopeless with home styling. Like, I couldn't furnish a room if I. Well, I don't think I could furnish a room if I tried. But it was the seeds of the instinct of, like, oh, if you figure out what you like and you figure out why you don't like that there and why you want that there, why that color doesn't seem to make you feel good. It's that simple. It's that basic. It's just kind of running off that intuitive sense of that feels right for me, that doesn't feel right for me, or that feels good for me and that doesn't feel good for me. Creativity at the moment seems to kind of blend into everything in my life. My friendships, my relationships, my choices about what I'm reading and why, what I'm up to, what I'm doing, what I'm wearing, everything, which like liberates everything. Suddenly, you know, everything becomes a bit more interesting because it's not just an arbitrary choice you make. It can be rooted in not defining yourself through everything you do. Or, you know, I wear this now, so I'm this kind of person. But it frees you up to see everything as an opportunity to discover something new about yourself or other people.

Yeah, yeah I mean, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I've come to that realisation quite a bit later in life than you have. And we talked about this when we met, that sometimes life gives you opportunities and there's something, not even a spoken instinct, to be safe, to follow the safe path, but it may not be what's truly in your heart. And I'm always fascinated when I meet people like you who chose a path that perhaps wasn't the safest and certainly not the easiest. When that switch to creativity first happened for them, some people aren't even aware of when it was. They just literally were born ready to create.

Yeah.

Can you identify that moment in time?

I think it's probably the external moment. When it kicked off was exactly when I was like 8, I think. My uncle wrote a play and my mom put me forward to be in it and my aunt played my mother and my mother played my aunt, which was very gas at the time.

At 8.

Yeah. I'm not sure if I understood anything that was really happening, but I just remember absolutely loving it. Like I loved it. I felt so at home on stage in a way that was like bug bitten moment. So before that, I don't know, I think that might have been the most, you know, recognizable moment when creativity started to enter my life in that way. But in fairness, I grew up in a very creative household. My mom was an actress and a singer at home and a dancer and had us all at an instrument of some kind from the age of four or so. So I was in piano from four and creativity was always in the house. We were always listening to music. She was always singing in the house and playing different kinds of genres of music. So it was probably more of a language in my world than I realize. And I probably take that for granted a fair bit. But it was a very creative home in that sense. And even though my siblings didn't pursue it in any way after a certain point. I was born quite late in the family. My mum was 40 when she had me, so I think she hadn't been performing for like 15 or 20 years. Well, that's a lie. Maybe 10 years or so because she had had my brother and my sister. So I think there was a new journey beginning and a new moment beginning for the whole household of, like, reinviting creativity back into the household because she was in a play the year that I was born. My parents talk about it still, that it was such a joyous period of time for her because she was going back to performing and stuff like that.

So I would say that it was probably in the, pardon the pun, in the amniotic fluid of the house, but creatively things really kicked off when I was 8 and I started that process and then kept doing piano and kept doing performing of some kind or another all the way through my teens, right up till I was 18, and then made the decision to confess my undying love for it and go, will you send me to college, please? And they did. They were like, of course we will support you no matter what. And if you love it, great. If you hate it after three years, you can stop. There's no obligation to keep going. They were extremely, and are still extremely supportive of that.

Fantastic. People don't always have a moment, but that's, I guess, a memory that really connects you to the path you then took. And you're absolutely right. Being in the right environment is definitely part of. It's kind of almost the permission to take that path, which a lot of people don't feel they can justify. I've always wondered, actually, in families that are overtly creative, how that makes it different for someone who is the offspring of someone who's already carved that footpath through the rocks or whatever. Do you think that's played a part in you being able to be confident to say, I'm going to give it a go when you first made that decision at 18?

Yeah, I probably take it for granted, like I said, because there was such a supportive, intrinsic conversation happening all the time at home about that kind of stuff. If I wasn't doing a play or something in school or outside school, I was in choir and there was always performances in choir and stuff, so my parents would come to that. And it was probably so much more in the lexicon than I even remember. And it's funny you should ask that question, because I have colleague friends here and in Ireland who come from much bigger, almost dynasty-esque families of performers. You know, maybe a daughter of a very, very famous performer who's both mother and father are maybe theater royalty, and that's the child of those two people. And I've often thought, what must it be like to have two parents who are in the industry. Not just in the craft, but in the industry of whatever it is you do and whether that is a disproportionate amount of pressure because you can never be an idiot at the dinner table, you can never be foolish, you can never make the same kind of mistakes that your peers can, because there's a real pressure on you. And I think it must be some of that. And then also other things too. Like you probably have a lot more in the body instinctively than some of your colleagues do because you've been raised in it. So I feel like having a family who were very creative and slightly, you know, semi professional on my mum's side probably did give me a permission slip to just go for it and do it and not be not too self conscious about it.

Yeah, brilliant. We were also talking, when we met, about the way people perceive your life or someone who is full time in that creative space. People on the outside, how they perceive that and how someone might think, oh my gosh, how amazing that you're doing this thing that they love, that they've never, perhaps because they've been a bit scared. And I loved your answer to that. So I don't even know if you remember what we were talking about, but.

Well, I don't want to.

No worries. I guess we were talking about how do you maintain the same quality of performance in a run, even when life. Because everybody who has a life outside of work, sometimes that life isn't going the way they want it to. And how do you maintain the same quality for each and every individual member of the audience to take away something magical when you're not necessarily feeling it? How do you do that?

Yeah, I remember now you asking that question and thinking, God, that's such a beautiful question. It's such a lovely question because you're right, sometimes we're on stage and our lives are literally falling apart at the seams outside the door. I think the first thing that comes to mind is how, with the show in particular, that you saw with Christmas Carol. But a lot of the time in a lot of projects, especially for theatre, when they're really good they're brilliant because they're built by a team of people who care so much about it. And in the case of Christmas Carol, even if, like, I remember suffering desperately from insomnia during the show because it was definitely one of the biggest houses I'd ever played for theater, and it was such a joyous, exuberant experience and such kind of a massive emotional rollercoaster of a part that I'd come home and I would sleep for about three hours and then wake up at 4 o' clock in the morning with my brain going, we need to get up and do the show. And I'm like, honey, we're not up for the show for another 12 hours. You need to relax. So I remember thinking, yeah, how do we keep an intrinsic joy and an intrinsic discipline to the show and what the show demands? And a lot of the time it's because you've been literally pulled through a rehearsal process by a team of people who really care, who a lot of the time know almost everything there is to know about the thing. Like, Christmas Carol was a returning project, so they already knew so much about what works and what doesn't work in the play, and they knew what they can take for granted and what they get for free for the audience enjoyment. It's different if maybe it's a brand new project and everybody's discovering it a little bit. You kind of find the shape of the thing as you're all making it. But for something like that, we were literally kind of walked through step by step, how to build this thing. And they instilled in us, the whole creative team at the Old Vic instilled in all of us, the new performers, especially for it, what the show was and what the show was meant to be and what the show was meant to kind of create for the audience experience. So you have a discipline in your muscles of, I can't let that ball drop. I can't let that come in the room too much because it would be letting everybody down, it would be letting myself down, it would be letting the team down, it would be letting everybody who's on always, consistently, every single night and every single matinee was bringing their A game to it. It's a lot about the people you're making it with and how that's communicated in the initial stages. And it's also just like you can let bits of it come into the play, you know you can. It's not that you have to arrive completely perfect every night and not let your personal life in. I think sometimes your personal life does come in and come onto the stage. And not that it's a bad thing or it's not relevant to the project. If you're a human being on stage, it's relevant to the project. If something is influencing you biologically, let it be there. I've often found the more you try to push it away, actually, the more it asserts itself. Yeah, you have to let it be there. And that's when really risky, cool stuff happens. Actually, not in a, Oh, I'm feeling very angry because there's something going on with somebody at home. And this is a stage combat scene and I'm going to let that out here. Not the right framework, not the right moment at all. But I think that's where your discernment as an artist comes in, where you get to just filter out. I remember we were performing on Christmas Eve at one point, and I have to sing See Amid the Winter Snow. The first couple of lines of it at the top of the Bayliss Circle with no music, and it's. You're looking right down on the whole theater. There's people on the Bayliss beside you here and here. And it was Christmas Eve. There's people there with their families, there's kids there. I literally can't even talk about it without crying. I missed my family so much because my parents couldn't come over for the play. And I remember starting the song and a flash of an image of my home, of the field that I live next to on Christmas morning, just flashed straight into my brain. And I knew that I wouldn't see it this year. And I could feel my whole system start to unravel. It's not a song you can sing particularly vulnerable. You do have to be slightly solid in yourself when you're singing it because you just have to blare it out like one of those people who calls in animals from the top of a field, I think was the note that Christopher Nightingale gave. And I remember thinking, if I push this away now, I'm actually gonna corpse by the end of the thing. I'll have lost control. So I let it in just ever so slightly. And it did influence the song and it did influence how I sang the song. And it influenced how I had been. Let that wave of emotion come and then really sink into being. Because it's not about you, it's about them. It's about what they're having as an experience. So move that through and move that ship along the water. And then dig in and go, what's the song doing? What am I doing here? What is this moment for? So I think to dismiss the opportunity to let your own humanity influence the part is not wise, not in my opinion. But it can't be self centered. It can't be something that only serves you and your experience. It has to be for the purpose of the thing.

Yeah. So you can't indulge. But also I'm hearing that if you were to block it, what would happen is that your performance wouldn't be authentic and people would be able to tell that it was... you were acting. You know, you never want to be. In, the same as when you write fiction you don't want people pulled out of the story by clumsy structure or whatever. You have to always be thinking, how can I keep people in this place and give them what they came here for? Rather than making them see that it's not real. It's that suspension of disbelief, isn't it?

Absolutely that. And respecting that. There will be days where. I have a kind of a coach. She taught us voice work in second year in college. Helena Walsh is her name, but she runs her own practice now for her own kind of discipline that incorporates Fitzmaurice, which is what she was teaching, and then a lot of her own actual disciplines as well. And Helena's brilliant because one of the things she will always say is as an actor, if you go, well, that's not what the characters feel. That's not relevant to the thing she'd be like, since when? Says who? Why are you putting that limitation on them in that moment? Because if everything becomes kind of a checking list of, oh, they wouldn't be feeling that though. And they wouldn't be thinking that. It's like, well, you're going to be thinking more about what's not happening instead of about what is happening. If the thoughts there, just let the thought be there. If your own feelings about dinner later are in your head, then fine, let them be there. Try not resist them. But you're right, it's. It's about not indulging in that and keeping your discipline and your respect for your craft as well and respect for your other scene partner that if they're really digging into the weeds and you're a bit like, God, I wonder what I'll have for dinner later. You owe it to them to come back to the thing. You really do. It's where it's inevitable you're going to have different experiences in what you do every night. But it's about discipline and respect for what you're trying to create together.

Following on from that, I'm curious to talk to you about both the participation in creating something and then the observing of it and what that does for us as human beings psychologically, well-being, even maybe spiritually, all those different aspects of how creativity can enhance our lives. What are your thoughts on that side of things?

I think it's probably one of the most important things we can be doing is creating for each other and for our own souls and our own selves. I've only ever wanted to do two things. I've either wanted to be a doctor or I've wanted to be an actor and an artist. Because, yeah, we're not saving lives on any level, but we are trying to help people make sense of what it is to be alive. And being alive isn't always very easy. Very often it's actually far more complex and more challenging than we know what to do with. So I think it's a hugely important thing to create, often. And in terms of when we go and see something, be it film or theater, what is that doing to us? Like, why does that. Why do we crave it so much? Why do we crave watching something live or something on screen so much? Why do we want to be reflected back to ourselves so badly? And how do we have such a good antenna for when something, as you say, isn't authentic or isn't real or you've seen an actor suppress an instinct there? Because they didn't want to go that far tonight, but they want to go that far tomorrow night, and you don't get to see it. And all of the minutiae that make up, you know, why we're human beings making art and not AI making art, you know, we're not that line of process or creative process, if you want to call what AI does a creative process at all. And I'm showing my opinion there.

That's fine. We share that.

Yeah, yeah.

So it. I think it's, vital to helping us figure out why we're here and what we're doing.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it takes us back to when you were talking about the environment you grew up in, because I think it absolutely is a fundamental part of being human. And part of the problem is that the word creativity has been very, very narrowly defined and associated with specifically arts or culture. And lots of people have been told by their parents or by school or whatever. Well, you're, you know, you're really good at the logical stuff. You're really good at the sciences. You're not creative. And they carry that round in their heads.

It's so damaging.

Absolutely. And it's definitely part of who we are. It's part of how we've got where we are. Because you have to be able to adapt and you have to think around problems and all of that is, is creative thinking. And I love what you were saying earlier on about living, you know, adopting it as a way of living and the way you approach everything, it just gives you a sense of freedom that if you're very narrowly looking at whether you can or can't paint something. Well, when you're painting, you're creating. Whether you end up sharing that with anybody is irrelevant.

Yeah, I thought you made a great point about the fact that we dismiss people's, you know, style of being by going, you're not a creative person, you're an intellectual person, or you're a logical person. Instead of realizing that everything we do and create, even problem solving, is a creative process.

How much research or reading do you do around nature? That creative nature that we have? Have you understood anything from the point of view of the way it actually works in our bodies or in our brains?

I think in terms of reading for creativity, it's so funny. I was talking to a colleague of mine. He plays woodwind for various different orchestras in Ireland. But he was at a gig that I did in Cork last week and he often plays with the RT Concert Orchestra, who I sing with a fair bit. You so rarely get a chance to actually talk to musicians that you do gigs with for orchestra because as a singer, you tend to kind of go off and, you know, preserve the voice or whatever, and they have a completely different routine and schedule to you. So I've worked with him about a dozen times and haven't had the chance to talk to him. And we were talking last week and he was like, oh, I'll buy a new book on craft every single time I do a new gig. And I was like, oh my God, I do the exact same thing. I didn't realize that you guys. So what does that look like for a woodwind player? And he was like, well, I now have a new warm up. Since I started this year, I have a completely new warmup for the rest of the year. You know, I'm approaching notes differently. He takes his craft not as seriously but he has as much love and reverence for it. And I'm trying to get better at using those words when I talk about my own job. Instead of needing to be more disciplined or needing to take something more seriously. How can you be more playful inside it and re injecting play? And that really is the really hard part, I think, about creativity because it's about playfulness, and I've read a fair bit about creativity. There's some beautiful books. There's a really gorgeous book called oh, Gosh, Is It Free? Is it Free Play or something, I think. And it's by a wonderful, very famous violinist who's an improvisational violinist. And it's a gorgeous book just about embracing what it is to be like. He barely reads dots at all. He doesn't really desire to read sheet music. He wants to improvisationally play. And he talks about just leaping into the void of what that is. And for him, that's completely normal. It's actually more normal for him to do that than it is to read what's on the sheet. And it's a gorgeous book. I'd recommend it to literally anybody. I think it's called Freeplay. I'll have to check, but it is a great book about reminding you that it's going to feel uncomfortable. What that does. I can't speak for the audience. I can only speak for things I've seen and watched, where you feel like you're watching somebody really play jazz with the moment and with what's happening now and not a prescribed version that's in their head. But I can speak for what it is as a performer to do that and to try and push yourself to do that as often as possible and not go for the safe route and go for the creatively different route. And invariably, if it feels uncomfortable, it's probably. You're probably doing it right. If it feels really raw and difficult and like you're going to burst into flames, you're probably on the right track. And it's very hard to harness that and hold that. But I think as an artist, if you try and grow the muscle for that, often you get better at it. Obviously, your level of discomfort threshold goes up. So, yeah, I think reading books on craft, whatever your craft is, read books on craft. And if books aren't your thing, you know, there's lots of audiobook options now. There's loads of resources on YouTube and masterclass and stuff where whatever your craft is, you can get into the nitty gritty of the mechanics of it. And then the play of it, actually.

Funnily enough, I associate the play aspect of doing anything where you don't know the outcome and you're not focusing on the outcome and you're just seeing where it takes you. It's actually very similar to a very scientific, rigorous experiment, because scientists are not looking for an outcome. They're looking to answer a question if they can. And there's no such thing as failure because they don't know what the answer is yet. So they just.

That's so eloquently put. There's no failure because they don't know what the answer is yet.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So lots of people find it very hard to play as adults particularly. They forget what that means. Most people don't like discomfort either. So I'm interested. How do you deal with that discomfort? It's almost like you're seeking it a little bit because you know that when it's happening, it's good stuff is going to happen. But how do you cope with the discomfort in the moment?

Yeah. Two things come to mind. It's a bit like working out in that you never feel good right before you're about to do it for a little while while you're doing it, and then the reward is how good it can feel while you're in it. And then in the aftermath, and you simply just have to go, I care about this thing. I care about what this does for my mind, my body and my soul, and in our world at least. And if you're lucky enough to be doing it for a living, I care about what it does for my career and my job. So I'm going to do it. I'm going to get into the cold plunge regardless. But something else that Helena Walsh does talk about a lot in her practice for artists and actors. She works with actors specifically, but she also works with lots of artists, is if you're in a very uncomfortable moment, focus on the one good thing that feels good. Like pull your body and your breath back into an experience, sensory experience of what can feel good. Let your eyes land on something around you that for whatever ephemeral, unconscious reason, feels really good to you. Like that red heart on my duvet is really comforting to my system for some reason. And where do you feel that comfort land and let that actually land? And creating an infrastructure in your nervous system to hold. There's nine really uncomfortable things happening. There's a lot of people looking at me. I have a big monologue coming up. Or this is a really high Stakes moment on the canvas. If I get the colour wrong, I could ruin the whole thing. I don't know. And then focus. Just broaden the eyes out a little bit to. Okay, what feels good, what feels centering, what feels grounding, what makes my breath actually release and relax, and letting your body know that both can be held at the same time. You know, I think that's probably the most basic thing you can try and do. Yeah, I'm trying to think of, like, there's been a couple of particularly uncomfortable moments in scenes I've done recently for film where they've been very big emotions, and your body does not want to go there, really. Like, it doesn't want to willingly just start to envision that particular circumstance and go there. So you do have to coax it sometimes into. And this is specific to actors and maybe not to other demographics, but you do have to kind of tease it into that place a little bit, you know, and whatever method that is relevant for you, it's very particular to each actor, you know?

Yeah, yeah. But obviously, you're not. You don't just act. You have lots of different mediums through which your work, creative work, is put out into the world. So do you have one or two that you'd like to do more of? Or new things you're exploring that you would like to explore further?

It's interesting. Last week I got to do a gig for the Cork Proms here back home in Ireland. And I'm used to doing concert work a lot where you kind of. It's a really hilarious phrase I heard during the week was park and bark, which is, you just get to the mic and you do it, and I love it so much. So I park and bark fairly regularly. But last week was, like, full musical numbers. We were dancing, we were moving. We were doing the scenes in between the music numbers and stuff like that. So it was very enriching and fulfilling. And it was probably my first experience of getting to do, like, slightly more of a musical aspect of something. Like, I've done lots of theater and I've done lots of concerts, but neither of them are musical as in musicals. And it was nice to get to do that because it felt so vulnerable. It felt so awful at times, physiologically, because everything my mind was saying was like, you're pointless at this. You're hopeless at this. This is terrible. This is terrible. This terrible.

And having to let that charge run through your body and not let it shut you down and make you smaller and not let it make you walk out the door from the job and go, I'm never doing this again. That was a really challenging gig and it was so fun because it was with such gorgeous people and beautiful music and a wonderful creative team. Then that role was. Balances that discomfort out for you. But I would love to do. I would love to do more of that. The only thing about musical work, especially in the uk, is they're very long contracts generally if you're lucky to be getting into one. And ones that aren't long, that are maybe two or three months are wonderful for that very reason. But ones that are really long contracts, like a year or something can be. They're all of that experience, but they're very long haul, intense gigs and often come with a lot of fear about vocal stamina and health and stuff like that. But other than that, I am getting back to my writing. I've been writing a one woman musical for about two years. It feels like it's been much longer, in fairness, because I just have to keep starting and stopping and starting and stopping. I want to get back into that more and get back into what that particular difficulty is, what that particular unknown is a bit more in the next couple of months because I don't have anything else in the book. So I'm really looking forward to just getting back into that and writing that again. But I'd love to get into photography. I haven't an eye in my head. I couldn't frame a picture. Pardon the pun, but I would love to get into photography. I have a camera, I want to start using it. I find photographers fascinating. I find the fact that they look at the world and can see the whole thing and then actually just spot and just narrow in on something very particular in that. It's just so cool and it's so. It's such a different way. Their mind must work. I'm gonna fail massively on that front.

Well, you're allowed to fail because it's just something to explore and you never know quite what will happen. I've got something. It's been on my list for a very long time. I do lots of things and I deliberately don't limit myself. But one of the things I've been meaning to do and have yet to sign up to is somebody who lives locally to me who used to be, I think, a lifestyle or wedding photographer. One of those. She now just exclusively teaches people how to use the cameras in their phones.

Gorgeous.

So that you can learn how to frame. Yeah, learn the Settings, the basic settings. Most of them have even got more sophisticated settings that you would. That are more like a normal camera. But just to then be able to look at the world with a photographer's eye.

That's such a good idea. Oh, my God.

Because then, you know, when you are taking those photos, they're worth keeping rather than reams and reams of things.

You don't think, why did I take that? And why do I still have it? Yeah, that is a great idea, actually. I must look up something like that near me.

I'm sure. I'm sure there'll be other people doing it, but I just. That really appealed to me because it's been one of those things on my list. Oh, I want to learn how to take proper photos. And it's just. There's a whole barrier to that if you're thinking about a proper camera and the investment and the training and. But actually what I realized was it's the view of the world that I'm looking for. It's not the skill. The outcome of that skill is that I'll have captured something worth capturing.

Yeah, and interesting that you should say because that's almost slightly more results oriented than a lot of the other things we're talking about. Because it is a visual thing you can actually see. It is something that has a representation at the end of it. It's not just a canvas, maybe is never finished or a theater performance is never. It's into the ether and then that's it, you do it again tomorrow night. Or a song is never completely finished. A photo is a photo, it's there, you know, it's on celluloid and there being a sense of finality to that that maybe makes it better and worse. You know, there's that story about the students in the college. They were in a photography course and they were told to go out and take like 150 photos of literally anything that they wanted. And they would be graded on like the top 20. And then there was a bunch of students told to only go out and take 20 of the best photos they could take. And I think it was the former group, the 150 photo group, who ended up taking better photos, a better 20 photos than the other 20, trying to get the subject right. It was, you know, going out and just completely playing and letting loose with 150 odd photos and finding greatness within the 150, you know.

Ah, so maybe I don't need a course at all. I should just go through my camera reel, find the best ones.

You've got greatness inherent, Nikki. You only need to look.

Throw the brightness off and change the contrast and it's fine, it's grand.

You said you've become more aware of living creatively. Is there anything else that you're enjoying that you're finding through doing that?

Currently, I am mad into psychology. I've been into psychology for like six or seven years and love reading books on psychology or on pop psychology, like the, you know, slightly sugared version of the more specific deep stuff. But I love reading about Jung specifically and I just think he's really great. I prefer him over Freud easily. But he's also got lots of enemies as well. And I've in the last couple of years put down a lot of books that are like self help pop psycho books and now I'm reading a lot more fiction and it's just, just so good. It's such a good training system for your own empathy. It's a far better way to read, I feel, than the trillion dollar wellness industry that is pop psychology. And, and the. You're not whole yet. Fix yourself now with this. It's just remarkable. You learn so much more about yourself by reading a fictional book than you do by reading a. 'Make a list of the 10 things you're grateful for today and 10 things that really triggered you yesterday.' And. And there's a whole place for that too. But really enjoying reading and what that can do for your mind.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not gonna say no to that because I write fiction.

Yes, you do. How do you find that comes out creatively for you?

I've published one book. I'm writing my second. My second is causing me issue, interestingly. I'm going away. Absolute privilege. Can't believe how lucky I am. I'm going to a creative retreat in Tuscany.

Gorgeous. Oh my God.

It's not creative writing retreat, it's a creative retreat. Most of the people are going are writers. But I was with some friends in London. We do this thing called wisdom walking where one person has invited several people she knows and there were four of us on Thursday, who she just knows are gonna get on, have really interesting conversations and we just walk and talk and we sat down for a coffee and a cake at the end and we were in Regent's Park. It was a lovely day. We were outside, it was fantastic. I said, oh yeah, I'm doing this really interesting thing. I'm going on this retreat and they said, so, what are you going to be doing there? And I said, I'm taking my relationship with my second novel with me.

Gorge.

Because I don't know whether I'm going to get unstuck or not, but I've kind of got a bit stuck with it. So. Yeah. How do I find it? I think I get in my own way. I think this is quite common with writers. You get in your own way, you're thinking of the outcome, you're trying to make it perfect. It's a bit like saying there's 20 perfect photos. You forget that when you did it the first time, you didn't know what you were doing and so you had no preconceived ideas about how it should be and you just did it. And the second time you're thinking, oh, well, what are people gonna think? And is it going to be as good as the first one? And da, da, da, da, da, da. That stuttering of interrupting the creative process and worrying about what the quality of it is is really dangerous. And I know what I need to do, and I'm hoping that I'm going to unlock the issue. But I think it's about saying, you have to remember that nothing we see in the public eye is ever just that thing. It's all the things that went on before to create that the external world sees. And so every book that's ever been published started as a scrappy idea or, you know, a set of notebooks that have got scribblings and cuts and pastes and whatever. And that first rough draft is not for anybody else but you. So I think I've got to remember that and just get on and finish it, and then I'll be fine. Because then you go into a different space in your head where you're then looking at it in a slightly more removed way and going, well, what needs to be here? And how should I order it? And so on. But going back to books, one of my podcast guests in the first season, actually, she was a bibliotherapist, and it's such a thing. I've now seen two or three more people. I hadn't heard of it before I met her. And basically what they do is they're trained as a psychotherapist, but they used books, both fiction and nonfiction. Once they've met their client, perhaps know some of the issues they want to work on, they then recommend books that will help them to reflect and to explore the ideas.

Yeah

It's brilliant, isn't it. And I definitely find that fiction works. I'm interested when I'm learning about something to read nonfiction. So how to do something, maybe. But in terms of understanding myself, I definitely find that a novel and the characters and how they interplay and the questions it raises in my head. Those kind of books which leave you thinking, are my favorite novels. I don't really like things all predictable and neatly tied up, you know, with a bow at the end. I like a book has to have an ending that feels satisfying, but it doesn't have to finish the story, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. You can leave some of the story ready for someone to fill in the gaps in their head. And that's the kind of book that really, I think, helped shape me as a writer, but also just as a person.

Such a good point about things being unfinished to a slight degree. And maybe unfinished is the wrong word. But you forget that sometimes as a maker, that spoon feeding is not something an audience enjoys. And in an attempt maybe to be safe again, coming back to safety and an attempt to be understood, which is a very primal human urge inside. An activity that. I often think there's a reason why your nervous system is freaking out when you're making art. Because if you were the only person in a very quiet room of a thousand people to get up and start speaking words that aren't your own in any other circumstance, that would probably be dangerous. You know, if you were around the campfire and everybody suddenly went quiet and you had to lie for a living to save your skin or to make sure you made it through the night, that would be pretty spooky. And there's a reason why that doesn't always feel safe. So it's. It is again, we're always walking that line of can you be okay with feeling unsafe? It's almost like it goes completely in the face of everything we're always trying to do, which is to feel secure and guarded and kind of comforted. But, yeah, you also made a great point about you can't be in analysis and creation at the same time. And I'm always trying to remind myself of that, that you have to give yourself the chance to let the creative bit take control and not nitpick all the way through it. Because if you're complaining that you're not in the scene or you're not getting a thing or you can't write the song, you can't finish the song. Have you been thinking of all of the mechanics instead of just letting, letting the process happen for you, you know. Yeah, we're desperate for it. Desperate for getting the way.

Yeah. Some of my other guests, I've come to this conclusion and I'm learning through everybody I speak to and, and I'm able to apply that to the way I'm doing things. So it's fantastic for me. But quite a few of them have said they feel the joy and the flow when they're focusing on the process and not the outcome. And it's just so, it's just so easy to forget that. But it's such a powerful thing to try and connect to when we're creating.

Yeah.

I think that sometimes being conscious of what we're doing is really helpful. Like you say the analysis part and sometimes trying not to be is when the creativity can really come into its own. Because that's where your frontal lobe is trying to say this isn't going to work or the mechanics of it aren't in place. Or remember that thing that I was taught, that was a technique that I now need to apply and I'm not doing it. And actually, in books, the thing you were talking about there is the spoon feeding aspect. There's this phrase that lots of writing tutors use which is show, not tell. And it's about describing how somebody is moving and how they're interacting with the space they're in. Rather than saying, oh, they're feeling really down and actually putting the words to the emotion or whatever it is, you show it through the way they're interacting with the space they're in, rather than telling the reader, oh, by the way they're depressed or whatever it is. It's a very, very difficult thing to do because when we're telling stories to our friends and we're just saying about something that happened, an incident that happened to us down the road, they just want the details, they don't want to know the context.

Yeah.

So it's not natural to do it. But if you can nail it, that's when people can relate to what you're saying without feeling like you're condescending to them and not allowing them to think for themselves.

Yeah. I think it's probably the core of why art can feel really frightening and scary to make, I think, is if you view it through the lens of there's so much you can get wrong that's kind of destructive, but it's also equally kind of scary. I think one of my core fears as an artist is that I'm not human enough. And when I get up on stage or I go to do something, I'm a fraudulent human, I'm not accurately portraying a human well enough, and I'm lacking some fundamental parts that make me look or be or behave human. And I was thinking about that the other day and I thought, that's so stupid. Because first of all, regardless of you take you out of the picture entirely, would you ever say that another person isn't like a human? Probably not. You probably would immediately go to the sensible answer, which is, well, they're a bit different to everybody else I know, maybe, but that's just what they are. As a human, there's no this, that or the other. Everybody is as unique as grains of sand. And to take the pressure off yourself for it to be. Because when it feels like you have done wrong to your fellow human, when you make art, like in a moment where you get a note from somebody or something and it's like you need to undercook that or you're not, don't be so prescriptive, don't spoon feed so much and you suddenly feel like, oh, God, I'm wretched. I'm a wretched human being because I unconsciously presumed somewhere that I wasn't clear enough in what I was doing. So I wanted to make it clearer to you so that you didn't misunderstand. And we always only have good intention at heart, perhaps in that we just, we don't want to be misunderstood, but we also don't want to leave anything out for the other person's experience, you know, and, and we're in a world now where, and I think it is really destructive that if you don't include everybody's opinion online in a condensed format, if it doesn't resonate with people, they will immediately complain about it. They will immediately go, well, that's not my experience. Or I, this doesn't. I don't feel that. Or this doesn't pertain to me. And it's like for millennia, in fact, for thousands of years of art making, not everything has been relevant to you. Not everything is resonant with you. That's okay. Just because we have an instantaneous access to it now. We get so much insulted by the idea that it doesn't contain my POV or my opinion. So you need to protect yourself from needing to cover all the bases and make everybody feel seen or heard. It's wonderful if everybody in a room feels seen and heard. But sometimes the thing you do that you didn't realize is making somebody feel seen in the corner in a way they haven't before and you would have no idea why.

Absolutely. I love what you said there about trying to make yourself be understood and clear. Because of course, no matter how articulate you are, everything you say, being received by an individual is going to be received differently because they're a different person.

Yeah.

So it doesn't matter how good you try and do it, it's not going to necessarily be right for that person.

Communication.

Yeah.

Which is scary. You know, it is scary in a world where you feel like it's important to be understood and it's important to be clear with people. It is scary to feel like every time you communicate outwards, the mirror just distorts that. And there's who are your mirrors and how do they work when everybody has as unique a psyche as you can get.

And even more dangerous, I think, is that if you're aspiring to be, and I'm going to use the word very loosely, successful at what you do. Because that word is a bit dangerous, I think, because, you know, if you're talking about monetary success or you know, accolades or whatever, is that really what success should be measured by? But anyway, if you're aspiring to do that, then at some point some people become successful. And that's because there's a common liking by many people to what they do and who they are.

Yeah

But the issue I have with that is that that doesn't necessarily make that performance or that book better than the one that only 10 people have read because it's to do with who has access to it and how capable the person is of sharing that with the world. If they, if they're not particularly good at marketing or whatever. And your performance, you know, you might write the one woman musical and unless it goes somewhere, unless you put it on somewhere, it's going to be the best kept secret. It could be the best thing in the world and no one ever sees it. It's not, it's not doing its job. I have a slight issue with some of the way, for example, books are publicised. I completely get it. It's a commercial world we live in. It's hard to make money from lots of things in the creative space. And if a publisher has a well known name and they know lots of people like that author, that book is going to be given more of a chance to be aired, have more publicity budget put behind it because they want to get a return on their investment. I completely get that. What I don't support is that how everybody else then gets on that train and goes, oh, yes, it's brilliant. When it might not be. There's this kind of, like, Emperor's New Clothes thing to everything, to art and to, you know, performance and writing. And you just think, I really wish people could just look at it with a completely open, fresh pair of eyes and and then offer their own opinion or experience it for themselves and not necessarily feel they have to get caught up in the adulation that comes with success.

Yeah. And I think the musculature we used to have for having your own opinion about something is waning a lot.

Yeah.

Because we're now so, like, if you need only observe yourself when you're on something like Instagram, if you're on it, how quickly you might turn to the comments to see what other people think.

Yeah.

And it even just being a funny video of something that you're looking at and going, God, I find that very funny. What do other people think of it? And it is this kind of artificial sense of connection, I think, that we want. We're so starved of it in real ways and getting more and more starved of it that we seek to find a connection with a person in a commonality or whatever. And we might often reproduce that artificially and make it look like we also feel and think the same way. When actually have we really felt into our body, which we're chronically disconnected from in the modern world and actually gone, how do I actually feel about that? Or what do I actually think about that if I don't need to follow the mob and follow what everyone else thinks.

Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, we could talk for hours, but we can't talk for hours, unfortunately.

We just have to do a second episode.

Yeah. At some point, definitely. I want you to tell everybody what you're up to and what's coming next.

For any Irish individuals who are listening, I'm in a concert in the Bord Gais

For a wonderful broadcaster, Aideen Gormley. She runs an extraordinarily beautiful radio show called Movies and Musicals on RT Lyric fm, which you can listen to all over the world, and I highly recommend it. It's on on Saturdays. She is putting her radio show basically on stage with myself and three other wonderful singers, Paul Wilkins, Katie Burtle, I think is her surname. She's extraordinary. And Tom Solomon, who are three of the best musical theatre performers in Europe. I think we might be sold out, but it could be broadcast later. On in the year on radio. And then other than that, there's at least there's one film possibly coming out this year, which I can't. I don't know that I can actually say the name of it. So it's a thing that you can see at some point, but I can't tell you any more than that. But I'm due to go in to do ADR on it on Wednesday, which is where you go into the booth and you re record the lines that they missed or whatever and. Or that you didn't say well enough on the day. And I'm due to do that on Wednesday. And it will just be really exciting. We shot it this time last year, and it'll be very exciting to see it a year on to go.

Yeah. Okay.

That, like, even just looking at. You do draft one of something, you put it to bed for three months, and you come back and do draft two, and you're like, who wrote this? What is this? And why is that so good? And why is that something really bad maybe? And it being. You're always looking at your work and going, oh, I did that last year. And actually I. I would have done it differently now if I was doing it today. So you're constantly in transition and movement. But yeah, those can be seen.

Brilliant. And if they want to follow you. You said you mentioned Instagram. You're on Instagram, obviously. Is that your preferred if of all of evil social media?

All of the evil social media platforms? I think Instagram's probably my favorite, just because of all of the cat memes and cat videos, which I live for. But yeah, you can get me on Instagram. It's just my name, Juliet Crosbie. And I'm also on threads, which I'm enjoying a little bit more in place of X. I gave up X a couple of months ago and I'm delighted to have done so. And threads seems to be kind of a vibrant new form of X. But sure, they all have some kind of insidious backstory going on that you don't hear about for years, you know, but yeah, that's me.

Okay. Brilliant. Excellent. Well, I'm sure we will speak again, as you said.

I do hope so.

But thank you so much for your time today. It's been lovely chatting to you.

It's been a total pleasure. Thank you for having me, Nikki, and every good wish with the creative switch.

Thank you.

Sometimes in your creative life, you meet someone for the first time and instantly know it won't be the last I don't usually pick favourite episodes because each guest teaches me something new and they all have something truly valuable to share with you, the listeners. I will say though, that my conversation with Juliet is one of the most memorable. I wonder if it will stay with you in the same way too. I suspect it will. If you want to follow her career or connect with her. The links, as ever, are in the show notes.

Now it's creative Adventures time and I promised to share some advice from Harriet Kelsall on trying to do everything in your creative practice yourself. Over the last few episodes I have been sharing my progress on one particular creative adventure. This is the next installment in the behind the scenes story of my soon to be out there publication the Bold Types. There is often a very long to do list in the preparation phase of any project and one of the biggest items yet to be tackled at this point was the visual identity of the publication. Of course, most of the content and the most important part of the content is words. That's the whole point. I wanted somewhere to share my writing, my articles, my findings as I explore the art and science of creative living. But I also had a strong sense that I wanted the Bold Types to have its own recognisable visual identity. As the ideas for what it might look like started to swirl around in my head, a clear picture began to form. I'm good with colour and have an eye for composition and a half decent ability to observe and sketch in pencil. I wondered could I maybe have a go at creating the images I needed myself? That was an option. I'm sure it would have been an enjoyable creative project in its own right, but it would have taken a chunk of time I just didn't have and I knew I was lacking in some essential skills in digital illustration. I'd have to be going off into a whole other creative discipline not playing to my strengths, and would end up with something which was probably a compromise and not the quality I had imagined. This kind of thing is a common dilemma for entrepreneurs and creatives. You can do everything, but is that the best way to move forward? Thinking back to my season two conversation with Harriet Kelsall, I remembered her talking about this same tipping point when she was taking her bespoke jewellery business from her kitchen table to multiple studios across different locations. She realized over the years that instead of trying to do everything herself, her success was a team effort. She said the right team makes the difference. We can do this together because we can be better than the sum of our parts. So I made the decision to invest in a digital illustrator who could turn my vision into a set of illustrations with the right look and feel. After a few goes, I came up with a clear design brief, set my budget and searched for the newest member of my team. We're working on the project together as I speak, and fingers crossed we'll be ready in the next few weeks for you to see the final results. And if you'd like to watch the Bold types come to life in real time, you can find the link to the publication in the show notes. And a quick reminder if a podcast is a creative adventure you'd like to begin, check out the links for Alitu, my podcast recording and editing software, and captivate my podcast hosting software. I really couldn't do it without these great, easy to use tools. Have you found it hard to stop yourself trying to do everything? Or maybe you've embraced the trade off between time and money which comes when you invest in the expertise of a specialist. Please share your stories through my website or on Instagram. The links are in the show notes. I'd love to hear all about the ups and downs of your creative adventures. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Creative Switch. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review over on podchaser.com and if you've got any questions, please let me know on Instagram Nikki_Vallance and join me next time for the latest Bold Types updates and my conversation with one of my favourite authors, Emma Stonex. Until then, keep creating and remember. Why survive when you can thrive.