Welcome to the creative Switch. The podcast inspiring the sensibly successful to switch on their unexpressed creativity for a more fulfilled life. In today's episode, we really are looking at creativity from all angles, especially in the conversation with my guest Hannah Ashe, who after a highly successful career as a music teacher, made a pivot to interior design before discovering an additional and entirely different form of creative expression. Her creativity knows no limits and I'm excited for you to hear how it fuels everything she does. 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. So if, like me, you spend a little bit too much time worrying about whether people will like your creative work, I'll share the perfect advice for you later from Kevin Chester's on standing out. 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. Today. Inspired by Hannah, I've been looking behind the headlines at two seemingly separate worlds, interior design and music education. If you're a fan of skills based TV competitions like the Great British Bake off or the Sewing Bee and you love interiors, you'll probably already know interior design masters. There's something magical about giving new life to a chair that's seen better days, each choice of fabric and colour weaving a fresh chapter into its story. This act of reinvention mirrors the journeys many take beyond their familiar roles. Whether that means leaving the classroom or reimagining a creative path, recognising when it's time for a new expression of who you are and embracing transformation, one bold decision at a time can be truly powerful. And this year, if you watched the programme, you'll already know it was that spirit of reinvention which played out on our screens for the winner too. John Cooper, a design technology teacher with nearly two decades in education, won the 2025 series with a scheme inspired by Mediterranean aesthetics. His final redesign of a holiday cottage reflected the architectural charm of Portmerion, a village famously created to evoke the Italian Riviera. Calm, colourful and layered with stories and a sense of homely relaxation, it was a space that invited restoration. When asked what the win meant to him, John said, "I actually now need to do something for my own creative output." That quiet declaration speaks volumes. After years of guiding others, he's choosing to honour his own creative voice. That voice now echoes through a new homeware collection in collaboration with John Lewis. The line features over 20 products, from graphic monochrome patterns softened with warm toffee stitching to a reimagined version of the iconic Blocky chair, John Lewis said in their press release, "Every product tells a story, with many nostalgically named after places from where he grew up in Yorkshire" John himself commented, "Together we have designed homeware rooted in bold design, raw texture and honest materials. It's a collection with soul made to bring warmth, character and a bit of edge into the home." What a way to kick off reclaiming his creative identity. And John's story isn't an isolated one. Across the UK there's a growing recognition of the need to nurture creativity from the ground up. In July 2025, MPs debated a proposal for a National Centre for Arts and Music education aiming to ensure every child has access to high quality creative learning, regardless of postcode. Bambos Charalambous MP put it plainly, "We need to ensure every child has access to high quality music education." I personally have fond memories of learning instruments and singing our hearts out in primary school assemblies and later performing in musicals and choirs throughout my education. These experiences shaped my creativity and my sense of self. Who wouldn't want that for future generations? Before delving into the latest design trends, it's worth reflecting on how the spirit of creative renewal is shaping our surroundings. The spaces we inhabit are increasingly becoming canvases for self-expression and individuality, mirroring the importance of, and the drive for more creative opportunity, seen in education and personal pursuits, post pandemic. According to Luxury London 2025, 'interiors are leaning into historical layering, art deco, revival and and emotionally rich palettes.' Houzz UK reports a rise in 'tactile materials, forest gardens and drink stations', spaces designed for restoration and well being. These trends reflect a deeper shift, a desire to feel truly at home, to surround ourselves with objects that carry meaning. Whether you're painting a side table in joyful colour, reupholstering a chair that's seen better days, or championing music hubs in your local school, you're helping creativity find its way back into everyday life. So how might you reclaim a bit of joy this week? Could you pick up your dusty guitar and strum a few chords? Style a shelf with objects that tell your story or simply make space for something that feels more like you. Do share your thoughts or any questions via my website contact page or on Instagram nikki_vallance. I'd love to hear from you and listen next to hear a story of how the pandemic allowed space and reflective time back into the busy life of a successful but not fully satisfied creative soul. And how her switch to interior design opened up a whole new creative passion too. Meet today's guest, Hannah Ashe. Hello Hannah, and welcome to The Creative Switch.

Thank you so much. Very excited to be here Nikki.

I would love it if we can start with you telling everybody a bit about who you are and what you do you now.

Yeah. So I'm Hannah and I live in London and these days I describe myself, I guess as a creative multi hyphen. I do lots of different things to earn a living, but the main things that make up that are work as an interior designer, which I've only been doing professionally for the last three years now. I do still do a little bit of part time teaching, which was my previous career, but I recently got into writing. I also make a podcast and largely just like to kind of follow my creative nose and see where I end up. So it's a whole range of different things, but I really love it.

This is called the Creative Switch and one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on here, you're the perfect example of someone who I call a switcher. So I want to try and see if we can dig into that little bit. Clearly you have this creative thread running through everything you do, but go back a little bit and follow that thread back to the source if you like. When do you remember, if at all, that feeling of being creative and what that meant to you and exploring that, was that as a child, was it at school? Was it a person who said to you, oh yeah, you can do that, you're really good at that?

Yeah, I think definitely as a child and actually so in my previous career I mentioned that I was a teacher. I still teach a little bit. I was a music teacher and I was interested in music from a very young age. We had a little old keyboard at home. I think my granddad had like a organ in the corner of his living room that I used to always be attracted to. And from the age of about five, I think I was five or six when I first started to have some piano lessons and I also played the recorder and I just loved music. So music was my kind of first creative outlet, I think. And I pursued music as a career. I did a degree in music, I studied composition at master's level. I played the saxophone, I played the piano. And then as I say later, I did a lot of work in composing. But even as a child, probably around the age of like 12, I could be found most of the time at home. We had a conservatory at the back of my house where my electric piano was banished to the conservatory because it didn't make too much noise, I think in there. And I would spend hours in there just playing stuff, learning stuff, practicing, but also writing stuff. I was always writing songs or just little pieces. So I always had this kind of desire to kind of create in that way. But I also did lots of other things. I loved kind of craft type pursuits. I love things like drawing, painting, just basically anything like that I really enjoyed. And actually I was looking back on this myself recently because when I was about 13 or 14, I remember doing a unit at school in design technology, which was about perspective. It was sort of linked with art I guess, but it was perspective drawing. And I got so into this, this idea of designing a space, particularly an interior space. And I've still got some in my parents loft that are these like drawings of, of my bedroom or what I imagined I wanted my bedroom to look like. So I think even then as a teenager I was already had a bit confused if you like, creatively in that I wanted to do a bit of everything. Not literally everything, but you know, any creative thing that came my way, I loved it. But music was probably the one that stood out for me the most and I went on to pursue and when it came to choosing A levels and a degree, that that was the route that I kind of went down. So I think it's been there from the start really.

Right. So with the music side of things, there's the creation of music, which was your specialism. You went down the composing route. And then there's also obviously the playing of music and the performance of music and they're all different parts of us creatively, but there's also quite a lot of structure to both music itself and the world of music. So did you feel that you were fully satisfied creatively when you went down that path or did you always know, well, what I'm doing is I'm parking another side of the way I like to do things, I'm gonna have to wait until I can do that later. Or were you even conscious that you'd made that decision?

I don't think I was, no. I think That's a really good question because I, I don't think I ever thought of it quite like that. I suppose when you're younger you don't necessarily think through the reasons why quite so much. It's only now as I kind of get older that I do look back onto this and I think of it in a different way and I unpick it in a different way and I think I just knew that I, I enjoyed it and there was something that I got from it. But actually looking back in my early 20s, so I'd finished a master's in composition and I had also trained as a music teacher because obviously music is like lots of creative professions, it's not the easiest one to earn a living from. And so I had this teaching qualification which meant I knew I could kind of earn a salary or a part time salary whilst trying to do other things and do the music. And I did do that for a while. I did for a few years try and work as a freelance composer. But if I'm honest, I look back on that, I really didn't give it enough of a chance and I gave up probably too soon. I was living in London, it was expensive and I was kind of being pulled in two directions. There was the working teaching part of me that spent a couple of days a week in an environment, more structured environment teaching the subject that I love. Teaching is creative in some ways, but it's also not. There is a rigid structure around it and you do have to get pupils to the point. I was teaching secondary, so I was teaching A level and GCSE as well as some younger teenage years as well. So it's pulled in these different directions and some mornings I'd probably wake up and I think I should just be a teacher. Everyone knows what a teacher is. And also I'd be able to earn a regular salary which would afford me things that I probably wanted at the time. But then other mornings I might wake up and I'd feel more inclined towards the freelance composer lifestyle of having more time and space to be creative and be creative for myself rather than for other people. But that was hard because you didn't know where your next job was coming from. And as a young someone in their early to mid-20s, you're having to really build that network around you. I was writing a lot of like orchestral music. I did write other, more songs and things like that. But my real interest lay in kind of orchestral music. Well, that's a really hard world to break into. I think I just gave up a little bit too soon. And eventually I did go down the teaching route. I found myself working in a really nice independent school part time to start with, in central London. And I had some great colleagues and I like so much of it that in the end I gradually crept up my hours to the point where I was full time and became quite ambitious in that side of things, and then kind of parked the freelance creative part of me. And then for the next probably 10, 12 years, I was teaching full time. I ended up moving to a different school, became director of music there, which was a great position in many ways. But what it became like many jobs do, was I was manager of a lot of people. I managed a team of well, it was probably about 20 people in the end because it was other classroom teachers in my department. But also we had a lot of visiting, music teachers that would be coming in kind of one or two days a week. And I managed that whole team as well. We put on events very, very regularly. The expectations were really, really quite high, and for several years I enjoyed it a lot. But then, I think, like for many people, the pandemic was a real catalyst. And I think I started to realize that I'd lost that creative thread, that part of myself. So even though it was teaching the subject, I actually didn't like music very much. It sounds awful and I've actually regained that joy for it a little bit recently, but I lost that passion that I once had. I didn't really enjoy listening to music or I didn't particularly want to go and see live music because I was talking, I was dealing with it all day. I don't know, I just.

Busman's holiday.

Yeah. Which was a shame. So over a period of a few years, it kind of came to a point where I just went, I don't want to just be stuck here forever.

I think that realization. I talk about the switch, obviously people often think, oh, what was it like? One day you were doing this and the next day you're doing that. And it's never that clean cut. It's always a progression of either a dissatisfaction or there's some kind of catalyst that, like you say, like the pandemic, that makes you have time to think. It was obviously such a horrible time for lots of people, but those of us who were lucky enough not to be particularly affected by it were given an opportunity to reevaluate everything, weren't we? So you got to a point where you realized you weren't in the right place, doing the right thing, that's one thing. How did you know what to pursue? What was the process of going through? Okay, well, I'm not doing the right thing. What am I going to do now?

Well, that's. Yeah, that's a very good question. I think during that, from about 2020, 2021, I'd started to exactly as you say. I was fortunate in the pandemic that it didn't affect me in a personally too detrimental way. And actually what it afforded me was time to work from home, which as a teacher, not it wasn't the greatest teaching online to a class of people that may or may not be there. It was not great. But the bits in between were so much nicer, just being able to have that slight freedom of being at home. And so during that time I think I started to think about what other things I enjoyed. And I should add that, well, in, in 2012, my husband and I bought our first flat which needed a little bit of work doing to it and both of us quite hands on and wanted to do a lot of it ourselves. And so we, we, I say renovated it. That one didn't need huge amounts of work, but we designed and put in a new kitchen or worked with a builder that put in a new kitchen. We redecorated everywhere, put into new floors and things like that, and then sold that flat and upgraded it to a small house which was a bigger project and needed more work doing to it and again use the expertise from the previous one to go a little bit further this time and take on something a little more ambitious and renovated that property. And then in 2017 we bought the house that we live in currently, which was a complete project, total do or upper. You see where the trajectory goes here.

Yeah.

And most of our family, when they saw pictures of it or came to it before it was renovated, just looked at and thought, what are you doing? But we, we could see real vision in it. It's a nice Edwardian semi detached house in southwest London and it was a complete wreck when we bought it. So anyway, we did up this house over the course of several years. We did quite a big building project to manage that and then have kind of gradually worked our way through pretty much the whole entire house and the garden. And it was a real labour of love. And fortunately we just pretty much finished all the major building work before the pandemic came along. So we were at a point where we still had some rooms to paint and things like that. But we ended up then having the time to do lots of that stuff. So I think this interior design interest came from that. But as I said to you earlier, I think always had this sort of interest in design and colour that stemmed from starting to learn about it as a teenager at school and I studied graphic design as a GCSE but then kind of parked it because I pursued music. So yeah, so I think there was this idea that interior design was one of my interests and passions and could that be something that I could make into a profession potentially. So I'd been researching different courses that I could do and eventually I think it was the beginning of 2023 I did actually sign up to a course and it was an on a very do it in your own time, at your own pace online course. But that kind of suited me because I was still in my full time job at that point and I needed that flexibility. And as is often the case with these kind of things, once you make that decision to sign up and pay for something like that, that becomes the kind of catalyst to really start to work out. Well, how could this work? And I became aware as well that to be an interior designer, it's not like you have to have X and Y qualifications to say I am an interior designer. So many career changers become interior designers. I've learned. I think I realized that I could do this course, but I also had all this experience from my own projects that I'd done. Obviously there's still lots of things to learn, but the things started to then happen quite quickly. I was like, well, I'm doing this course, I really like it. That's great, maybe I can set up my own business. So I then started to look around me, you know, look at what other people were doing, what kind of services were they offering. It didn't necessarily mean start with that I needed to offer this huge full scale renovation service to people. I could do small consultation based bits of work. And so I just started to gather information and research and work out, well, what would I need? I'd need a website. Could I build that myself? Could I learn who might be able to help me? Talking to people who've maybe made similar changes and that kind of thing. So quite quickly over at the beginning of 2023, I just started to do lots of these things and it kind of came to a head about, I think it was sort of March in that year when I was just so fed up of my full time job and it wasn't because of any one thing or person or anything like that. I think I just was kind of burnt out from it and I just needed to get away. And at the point where I come home and I'd just be moping around and moaning to my husband about it and sometimes just like crying for no reason, you know. And he was like, you just got to do something about it. You've either got to, if you're going to leave, you need to know what, what you're going to do. So we talked about it quite a lot. We looked at the finances and it was actually Jared, my husband's suggestion that he said, well, why don't you see if you can find just a part time teaching job because you've got this qualification as a teacher, you don't have to be in charge of a department but maybe there's a part time teaching job out there where you literally are just a classroom teacher for which I got 16 years of experience of. So that's what I did. I looked out for part time jobs. I did end up handing my notes in on my full time job before I'd got a part time job. But I just was like, I think something's going to come up because it was like a whole term's notice to give them which was a long time. And actually a lot of part time jobs come up in the summer term when schools are just kind of trying to work out how they can fill their timetables up. So I took this risk, bit scary but I was just going to do it. And sure enough jobs came up and I managed to find something that was three days a week but it was just actually a maternity cover to start with. But it did carry on a bit longer and what that meant was that I wasn't throwing one thing away completely and all the eggs in one basket of interior design. I was able to kind of bridge that gap. And actually I think that's probably the best thing you said earlier. These creative switches don't necessarily just happen instantly. It requires a bit of planning. Sometimes it takes a bit of risk taking as well, probably often always does. But it also can be a gradual process that is evolving over time and that's definitely what worked for me. So I did that. So from September of that year I started this part time teaching job. Obviously being a teacher you also get holidays which is quite good when you freelance in your other career because you do then I've got all this bit more extra time to do my other work. So then I launched my interior design business and gradually sort of evolving what I was offering and what I could do and working with clients and learning and reflecting and building that. And that's still going. But the thing I would say that I discovered that I didn't have any clue was going to happen was I discovered writing and I'd never considered myself to be interested in. Did GCSE English.

We all have to.

Exactly. And I quite enjoyed it. I was quite good at it, but I didn't pursue it any further. Obviously. I did a creative subject at university, so I did write essays and things like that, but I didn't really enjoy writing essays. And as a teacher, obviously as a reasonable amount of writing school reports and things like that, but that was the extent of my writing. And there was just something niggling in the back of my mind that was. It was always on my to do list for ages. Substack question mark, like, is there something you can something and write about? And it was just this kind of weird little thought that was there. And then I think it was August 2023 and I had a bit of time and I think I was just sort of sitting out in my garden. I was like, right, I'm just gonna make this. I don't really know what I'm doing. But I went on to substack and I was like, okay, I'm gonna make a logo and what am I going to call it? I did have an Instagram account that was linked. It was initially my home renovation Instagram account from when we started doing the renovations of this house. I mean, initially I started just to share with friends and family what we were doing, and then it kind of gained a bit of interest and it grew and I got quite into it. And so then I switched that over to being my interior design Instagram because it already had a following, if you see what I mean.

Yeah.

So I kind of took elements from that. But I knew that I didn't want my substack to be just about interior design. I wanted it to be more kind of personal than that and perhaps more about what I'd done in terms of my leaving my job and changing careers and trying to be more creative. So I just kind of went with the flow. It was kind of terrifying, actually, to start with, because I'd never really written anything. And I remember the first couple of times I posted anything on there. I enjoyed the process of writing, but, you know, I was just mortified. That feeling that, like, oh, what if anybody reads this? Which of course, is kind of both the aim and. But as you'll know, once you get over that barrier, it's actually fine, you know? And now, a couple of years later, I love it. There was something in me that just made me write something, start the substack. And I did, and I'm so glad I did, because the network and the, and the creativity that has kind of come from that is just endless, really. I mean, we're having this conversation today. I think, as a result.

Yeah, I'm not quite as far on the journey as you, because I literally. It's been on my to do list forever. But I set my podcast up separately, and then I had always planned to do seasons because I knew I wanted to do other things in between. But in the first 12 months, I did 24 episodes, which I might as well have done one every two weeks because that's basically what I did. But I did it in two rooms, really concentrated periods of 10 to 12. I just had to stop for a little bit and reflect and go, okay, where am I going now? I've learned loads of stuff. What am I doing next? And I'd always thought, okay, I do want to find an audience who wants more than just listening, that wants something else. And that's where the substack came in. I'm actually doing the opposite of what I normally do when I'm doing following a creative itch, which is I'm not going all in straight away without knowing what I'm doing. I'm actually thinking about it. Yeah. Because I've learned that when I did my initial podcast, I just went for it. And this time I want to do it with a bit more thought behind it so that it actually makes sense. So I'm exploring and giving myself a few months before I actually do launch something. But I do love the community, and I'm just starting to learn how to find things and, and some people who are listening probably don't even know anything about it. But what I would describe it as is this is a place where you can really share your experiences and your learnings and connect with people and find a community and find your people, which is a bit like the group element of Facebook used to be like. And again, I've run a Facebook group for quite a number of years, but I've just found I just became so disillusioned with the algorithms and it not being in my control. And I guess that's the beauty of Substack is it's not that. So it's kind of halfway between the blog element and the community element, but sort of the best bits of both put together, I think. Just really honest, I think, and genuine output as opposed to something that feels too curated and flashy. It's just. It's just really kind of genuine. So. Yeah. So if anyone hasn't discovered it yet, I would definitely recommend going and finding whatever your interests are, there'll be someone who's writing about something to do with it. So it's definitely worth investigating. You said about decisions we make earlier in life and I wanted to ask you about. You weren't conscious of it, but there were obviously some kind of clues or structures that you were following, maybe not consciously about having to earn money, the pressure of responsibility and doing something sensible. This podcast is for those people who've taken a sensible route. They've always known, even if they haven't allowed themselves to remember it, that they actually have a creative side to them. So do you think you ever became conscious that that is what you were doing? Because I definitely did. I took sensible choices knowing that it was going to be easier to earn a living and have a stable life without taking this objective path of being a creative person and just having a creative career from the beginning. Yeah,

I think, I think I probably did know, I guess why initially I took a part time teaching job because I had this, like you described it as a creative itch. I knew that I wanted to do that. So I did an undergraduate degree in music and then I immediately did a pgce. So a teacher training qualification, partly I would say, because at the time, it was about 2006, the government at the time were offering tax free bursary for training as a secondary school teacher in particular subjects. And music was one of those what they called a shortage subject at the time. It wasn't like loads of money, but it was enough to basically allow me to be able to afford to study in London, move to London and get that qualification at the same time without it costing me me lots of money to do it. Yeah, because I had no idea what you did with a music degree really, other than I knew that I quite liked composing, but at the, at that time, having finished my degree, I couldn't afford to go and do a postgraduate qualification. My parents weren't really in a position to financially support that and I always have had this financially independent streak. And I think that probably feeds into what the question that you've asked as well, that I hate the idea of relying on other people for money. Like I've always wanted to be financially independent, I think. So that was there in my mind. But I think I thought if I become a teacher or get a teaching qualification, even if I don't use it immediately, I'll have this thing that I can potentially use and it will allow me to earn money. It was a sensible option, I guess. And of course what then happens is when you do that you train as a teacher, people around you, especially older people and family members, you know, oh yes, like they're nodding because they're thinking this is good. My parents have always been very supportive of everything I do, but I think they have always just. I suppose they just worry from a kind of practical point of view about things, but they've never, they've never been people to kind of crush any creative ideas. But I think if I'd said I'm leaving university, I'm just going to be a composer, they would have asked lots of questions like, well, where are you going to? How are you going to afford to live in London? All these kinds of things. And so I think I just knew that I needed to answer those questions myself. So that wasn't reliant on anyone. So yeah, I think I, I kind of was conscious of it but I think there was always that creative itch which is why then once I was qualified as a teacher, I decided that I wasn't going to go into a full time teaching job, I was just going to go into part time teaching job. And then I applied for this master's course at a. It was at Trinity Laban Conservatoire which is in Greenwich to do a composition course which actually because it was part time, it lasted three years, it was quite long but I knew that that would be potentially a kind of gateway into a more creative side of things. So I think I kind of, I did a bit of both early on but then I think the temptation of earning a salary got me. Yeah, well, fair enough. I suppose it wasn't helped by, as I say, I lived in London which was great creatively, but also it's incredibly expensive and you're constantly surrounded by things that you're, you know, are being marketed to that, oh, you, you should want to do this or you should want to have this. And that kind of crept in a little bit. So I think I did consciously make the decision but I think there was always this little bit of me that was a bit. Not sure that that was the right thing. But then of course you get to a point after a while where you almost in too deep and the more money you earn and the more responsibility in your job, the harder it is to step away.

Definitely the thing I was going to say is you don't have to do just one thing. I think people often think, oh, well, I can't, I can't write a novel because I haven't got a writing studio and I haven't got the backing and support of someone who can fund me because it's not possible to make an income doing it or whatever. There were many stories in the press of really well known authors who also did something else. You know, they still kept their job, they still did what you did, they still had that bridge. And at some point, some really successful writers get to the point where they don't have to do that. Often people want to because it's a way of feeding your creativity. If you're just doing one thing a bit like with your music, where you sort of fell out of love with it because you're just doing that one thing. I wanted to ask that question about what creativity means to you. What does it mean to you and what are the, the ways that a creative life has revealed itself to you?

Increasingly, I feel that for me creativity is about affording myself some time and space. Creativity is very much linked to time and headspace. I would consider myself to be slightly introverted in that I prefer generally to spend time alone or with just small groups of people. And so I think my creativity is best fostered when I allow myself a bit of time and space. And my favorite time of the day is I'm a morning person generally. So I tend to get up around 6 o' clock most mornings, sometimes earlier if I've got other work that I want to get done. But I find those first couple of hours of the day I will go downstairs, make a cup of tea, come up to my desk and work for a couple of hours. And that's when I do a lot of my writing. That's when I do stuff for myself. So I wouldn't necessarily work on an interior design project at that time of day. Whereas I find that this is, that's my time of day where I will just sit and think and jot down things I want to achieve that day. Sometimes do a bit of journaling. I'm not a religious journaler, I don't do it every day, but sometimes I just feel, you know, if there's a lot going on in my brain, get it down, just write it down, scribble it down and never necessarily look at it again. And sometimes it's when I just think, right, I know what I want to write about. And so yeah, for me it's linked to time and space, but I don't mean that in the sense that I need to have just endless time and space because I think that wouldn't foster creativity actually but it's, about carving out specific pockets of time and space that enable those thoughts and ideas to come. And I think part of that though for me is that when I was in my full time, very busy, stressful job, I didn't feel like I had any headspace for those things. My brain was just always full of whatever it was that I was having to deal with or worry about or, you know, problems to solve at work and always chasing my tail. I never felt like I had that clarity of, of headspace to just be and be me in my own thought. I don't know if that fully answers the question, but I think for me those things are connected. It's about carving out those pockets of time and that's when I have, generally have my most creative moments. But the other time I would say, and this is still to do with time and space, but often if I'm out, I often go out for a walk or a run. And that also is the time when I often have lots of creative ideas. I often have to just stop and put a note on my phone of something or record a voice note. Must remember this thing, whatever it might be. And I would say that also I don't think I ever want creativity to be pigeonholed into like, oh, I'm being creative because I'm writing something now, or now I'm being creative because I want to go and play the piano for half an hour or I feel like they all just mush and merge into one. And the more that I embrace that, the more creative I can be, I think.

Yeah, definitely. We're so, we're so in tune on that. I did a really interesting course which you might be interested in. I'm not particularly spiritual pursuing a spiritual path, but I am open minded and curious. And it's actually on my website there's a link to a quiz that you can do to find out what your Chinese energies are. So there are five elemental energies. Anyway, so I did this quiz and it's a bit like a personality questionnaire. Do it really quickly. You don't think too much. And then out of it came the results. All of us have all of the energies, but there's normally one or two that are dominant. And so for me, the dominant ones were fire and wood. And wood is the creative part of me. Fire is actually my dominant one, which is the. The wanting to please everybody and being out there and chatty and the performer, if you like. But I read the profile and I thought, hold on a minute. Has somebody been, like, watching me for the last however many years? It was so accurate. It's the most accurate one I've ever done. So then I thought, well, I'm really curious about this. Where's this come from? As I said, it's on my website with a guy called Nicholas Haynes and he runs something called the Five Institute. And I then did a course with him last year. And it's all about the energies, because everything is made up of energies and atoms, so it kind of makes sense. But it's really the wisdom, you know, millennia of philosophy and learning how people are, humans are and how we interact with the world. And he does a really good job of bringing it into today and relating it to what's going on now. So I did the course and one of the things was that I was really struggling to pull everything I do together under one thing. That was my thing I was trying to work out. And then he said, well, who said it has to be one? And it was like, ping. And this is the thing that creatives and woods have, is that we love structure, but we also hate structure. We love to know what's going on and to be clear, but we also don't want to be told what to do. There's a kind of a yin yang thing going on. And I could feel myself being really resentful of having to give myself labels. And although I completely get the multi hyphenate thing, it's a way other people can relate to it. Actually, it's blurred, you know, and those labels are just really unhelpful for me. So I. I've started introducing myself and they say, what do you do? I actually tell them what I do, not a label that I am. So I wouldn't say, I'm a writer. I say I write because it feels more dynamic. It is a better description of how I spend my time because I write and I this and I that and I that. It's like a whole long list of things. But I also love what you were saying about following your intuition and letting it take you where it leads you. Because one of my other guests, brilliant illustrator, she actually writes stories as well, but self taught. Lorna Gibson. It's really beautiful the way she describes it. She says it's like something's pulling on her coattails and she doesn't necessarily immediately act on it, but if it's persistent, if it's like a little kid going, come on, come on, can we do this thing? She then goes, okay, well, it's clearly something I've got to do. I don't know why, but I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna follow them down that path because that's what it's telling me to do. And out of that, she says when she follows her instinct, that's when things happen. That's when the good things happen.

I would totally agree with that. And all of my most exciting kind of creative things that I've done in the past couple of years largely have come via those channels 100%. And it's just like following a thread that just feels like the right thing. And I also love the fact that with creative things, you never quite know where something might go. And I believe that if you do something for the right reasons, you know, if we write something just because we want to write it or we feel that we need to write it, not because we're thinking, how can I market this? Or who might I be writing it for? or you're kind of almost skipping ahead. But so many of us do that and it's so easy to do that, especially in this world, because we're always pressured a bit to think about how are you going to make a living from it, or what's that going to bring you financially. But actually I've found that the things that I've done just because I feel compelled to do it have always ended up being the things that people resonate with the most, I guess. So, you know, whether that's a substack post that I just suddenly wake up one morning and go, oh my God, I need to write about this thing, I just write it. That probably would then be the, the one that lots of people read and comment on. And like, whereas if I'd sat down and thought, right, what do my audience really want to read and design, you know, almost design something for that, it probably wouldn't land in the right way. I, like you, started a podcast and I did that. It was a few months after I'd started the substack, but that substack, at that point had just launched a podcast feature and I was like, oh, that sounds quite interesting. But I had this niggling or pulling on my coattails as you described, that I needed to, or wanted to make a podcast where I interviewed women who had made creative career change. So bit like what we're talking about here, really. But there was just something. And it was partly, I think, because having shared my own story through writing on my substack, lots of people had then subscribed or commented and I'd got into conversations with others who were doing similar or, but different, you know, sorts of things or were asking questions or were saying, oh yeah, I did something 10 years ago and this is how it worked out. And I suddenly realized there were all these stories out there that I wanted to share. Partly, I think, because I felt that if in the years leading up to me leaving my job, I'd consumed so much in the way of like reading books, listening to audiobooks and podcasts and almost like seeking to find the stories of people who were in situations like I felt I was in. And I maybe never quite found them. I'm sure they were out there actually, but it's just about finding the channel for it. So I guess there's a part of me that was like, I want to make something that might help. And I had no real knowledge of that stuff apart from, I suppose my musical background was. It turned out that that was quite useful because I knew how to like edit audio and things like that because I taught music technology at a level for quite a long time and I had a microphone and knew a bit of that stuff. But I had never really clicked that could be used in a non musical way, it could be used in a audio based way. A few things clicked together and I thought, well, I'm just going to try this and put it out there. And it really enjoyed doing it and it's never really made me any money, but. But that's not to say that it won't ever, because we never know, do we? but the purpose was never to do that, you know, that was never the aim. The aim was to share a story.

Another string to your bow. There we go. Another musical pun. You're going to have to come on another time because there's too much to discuss. I do want to bring you right up to date and talk a little bit about the current situation.

Good question. I mean, as always, I've got my finger in all the pies. I mean, so create what I would describe as my most creative work is all really on my substack, which is called Chez Hanny. Chezhanny.sobstack.com and that's where I host my podcast which is called Creative Career Change. It's where I write. I write at least once weekly, but sometimes twice depending on how full of ideas my brain is. And sometimes I do write about interior design related things. In fact, we connected because I put a note on substack a couple of months back now asking writers to share photos of their writing spaces. And Nikki, you very kindly saw this note. We didn't know each other at all at that point, did we? And you kindly shared your beautiful writing cabin with all the color coordination, which I absolutely love. And the idea of behind that note was that I wanted to write an article, a post about writing spaces and what they, what they look like for some people, you know, what they might want to include or not include and things like that. So I wrote this piece, I included your photo of your space and information about it and others as well. And then that kind of connected us further. And that's, I would say that's exactly my experience of substack. That's one of many of those sorts of things that have happened to me. I've talked to somebody via comments on a post, let's say, and then I've to realize that they'd probably be perfect for a podcast guest. So I've talked to them on my podcast. This happened last year where there was somebody I had interviewed early on for my podcast. She lives in California. And then she just emailed me out of the blue and said I'm actually going to be in London next week, do you want to meet up? And I was, yeah, great. So I've actually like ended up meeting lots of people in person via these kinds of connections that then sometimes lead to like other projects and things like that. I do have a website as well which is for my interior design work, which is hannahashw.co.uk and that's where you can kind of find out about the interior design services that I offer. I offer a range of in person and online services from a kind of 30 minute online, quick kind of to try and solve problems as quickly as possible kind of service to an in person consultation for people who are based in, in London or Surrey or surrounding area of me to kind of full complete room design including kind of plans and things like that. And I'm also, I've got the bones of a book about well it's on the topic of home and what home means to us and the differentiating between belonging and belongings and just stories of the meaning of home from a personal perspective, but also from others perspective. So that's something that I'm. Again, it's a niggle. It's something that, a creative itch that I started to scratch last year and it's very slow progress just happens in the background. But sometimes I have bursts of kind of, right, I must write this down. And then it kind of gets parked for a little while. So that's something I'm quite excited about. But I suspect that will be a much longer term project. But I'm fine with that. You know, I don't want to rush these things and I think if it's, if the book is in me, it will come out. But we'll see. That's

very exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. As I said, I'm sure we could talk for hours. Yeah, I'm excited to see where this connection will take us because I'm sure there's more coming. I would imagine so. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for inviting me on here. It's been really, really lovely to chat to you.

Thank you so much for coming and I'll speak to you soon. That was a great conversation. How brilliant of Hannah to turn her own home renovation project into a career and her journaling practice into a second creative career. I also love her honesty. She doesn't claim to have everything figured out and is allowing herself the opportunity to explore her creativity across many disciplines. You can follow her progress on her website or Instagram or substack at ChezHanny. Links are in the show notes. Now it's creative adventures time and I promised to share some advice from Kevin Chesters on being brave and standing out. Last time I talked about developing my ideas for sharing my exploration of creativity in a new publication on substack. At this stage, I was raring to go. I had a title, the Bold Types, a subtitle Exploring the Art and Science of Creative Living. But having mapped out who I would be writing for and where it would fit in with all my other writing, I hit a bit of a problem. Or rather it was that negative voice in my head saying, why would anyone want to read your opinion? You're not an expert. Plus, so many people are writing about their creative lives. The world doesn't need another one. And whilst I'm reasonably good at knowing which thoughts are useful and which ones to ignore, I did need to decide on one big question. What exactly did I want to write about? What form would it take? I wanted my writing to feel free, with the flexibility to develop as I explore. I certainly didn't want to become some kind of curator, gathering research and regurgitating other people's teachings, or hold myself out to be an expert. It came back to my curiosity about creativity. This is what drives the podcast, and this is what I want to explore in greater depth in my writing. So if the bold types are those people who are staying true to themselves and laying down their own creative path and successfully living a creative life, might they also be interested in understanding what that means in reality? The point was that even if nobody else was interested in investigating these questions through multiple lenses, I wanted tea exploring creativity in its broadest sense through lived experience, neuroscience, anthropology, culture, philosophy and artistic expression. I want to break free from the expected and be different. Be Bold, Be Me so what's the problem? You might ask. It sounds like you've got it all worked out. It's that age old concern of wanting to be liked. It's not just me. We're all wired to want to belong, to be part of a tribe. It used to be necessary for our survival in prehistoric times, but today, if we are true to ourselves and choose to take the path less travelled, especially if we are writers who write about something which we find fascinating, we're not likely to be pushed out of our homes and eaten by tigers. I realise some writers, journalists, authors in some parts of the world are not so lucky and are unable to write freely or without danger. But surely then, those of us who can should do so boldly and without fear of judgment. Which brings me to Kevin's advice. In our conversation on the subject of being different, he quoted Sigourney Weaver, who said, please God, don't let me be normal. Encouragingly, he added, different is good. By following his advice and deciding to stick to my guns and write about my investigations in my way, ignoring any preconceived ideas or societal expectations of what creativity means, or limiting myself to asking the obvious questions or the direction it should take, the bold types publication will be distinctly mine. It won't be for everyone. But that's okay, because it will be different. 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 easy to use tools. Have you found it hard to be bold in your creative expression? Or have you found a way to shut down your negative self talk and just do it? Anyway, do share your experiences with me 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.

Tyhanks 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 at nikkivallance. I do hope you join me next time when you'll be the first to hear about my plans for the Bold Types launch. And I'll be talking to the brilliant digital artist Lisa Maltby, whose designs may well have been in your hands. Until then, keep creating and remember. Why survive when you can thrive.