Extraordinary Creatives

You're Not Avoiding the Task, You're Avoiding the Feeling

There is a page in Emma's notebook that has been written out, in more or less the same words, most weeks for months. Five things on it. Email the curator she met last sp

What Does It Really Take To Create Extraordinary Work With Another Person With Ain Bailey and Elaine Mitchener MBE

What does it really take to create extraordinary work with another person? Not just the exciting bits of making, but everything that happens behind the scenes. Building

When Your Big Idea Becomes Your Big Job

I was looking at an artist’s proposal recently for a really significant exhibition, and it was one of those proposals where you can immediately see that the artist has re

What If Creativity Is Really an Act of Investigation? With PJ Raval

PJ Raval has spent his career asking a deceptively simple question: whose stories are we willing to see, and whose stories have we been taught to ignore? He's an award-w

How to ask for what you need without becoming 'The Difficult One'

'I don't want them to think I'm difficult.' I've heard that sentence more times than I can count, usually about four minutes after somebody has told me the best news of

Why Making Bad Work Is the Secret to Great Art with Simone Brewster

Welcome back to Extraordinary Creatives. Today's guest is the remarkable Simone Brewster. Simone is an artist whose work moves between sculpture, painting, jewellery, fur

What Chronic Illness Taught Me About Creativity

There's something I've been thinking about for quite a while now. It's something I've talked about with close friends, but hardly ever publicly. Not because it's a secre

Drawing with Light, Playing with Time with Reuben Wu

I first met Reuben Wu when I was Director of Exhibitions at FACT in Liverpool, and he was one of the coolest musicians in the city, co-founding the band Ladytron and shap

Why Avoidance Feels So Productive

Welcome to the Extraordinary Creatives Podcast. I'm Ceri Hand. A former gallerist, curator,  now coach to creatives all over the world. I help them to make a bigger impac

Your Creative Work Matters and You Have The Talent To Bring It To Life with Ela Thier

We're told that creative talent is something you either have or you don't. Ela Thier has spent nearly 40 years disproving this crippling myth. A New York–based writer, di

Inside the Art Surgery - Thirty Minutes, Real Questions, Honest Answers

Every week inside the membership, artists send in their questions. Career challenges, pricing dilemmas, difficult clients, creative blocks, gallery relationships, commiss

Fast Robots, Slow Clocks: How To Design Art That Lasts Beyond Your Lifetime with Zander Rose

Somewhere inside a mountain in the West Texas desert, a clock is being built to keep time for ten thousand years. All mechanical. Wound by whoever makes the day-long hike

Public Art: The Four Questions Every Artist Must Answer

I'm Ceri Hand, and this is Extraordinary Creatives. Thirty-five years in the contemporary art world as a gallerist, curator, commissioner of public art, institutional dir

Late Starts, Long Breaks: A Survival Guide to the Art World with Hettie Judah

The art world runs on storytelling. The story of the artwork. The story of the artist. And one of the most seductive stories of all, the one that says if you got your toe

Why Most Artists Lose Money On Their First Public Art Commission (Part 8 of 9)

Artists – most of you who take your first public art commission lose money on it. Not because the budget was bad, but because nobody told you a public commission is not a

We Move Through Scales of Blue: Making Art That Holds More Than One Truth with Phoebe Boswell

Ninety-six per cent of Black British adults don’t swim regularly. That's the statistic from the Black Swimming Association that my guest came across while she was deep in

The Six Roles Artists Get Hired For In Public Art (Most Don't Realise They Have A Choice) - Commissions Series, Part 7 of 9

Artists if you've ever been invited into a public art commission, here's the thing nobody tells you. Most of you assume you've been asked to make a single artwork. A sc

Building a Sustainable Truly Creative Practice Without Selling Out - with Luke Jerram

Imagine setting fire to half your art budget before lunchtime. Seven hot air balloons grounded in a field. Fourteen speakers. The Birmingham Symphony Orchestra waiting to

How To Stop Commissions Eating Your Profit (Part 6 of 9)

Artists — if you take commissions, here's the number that should frighten you. Scope drift, the polite, gradual expansion of a commission beyond what you agreed, eats twe

The Work That Lasts Speaks To What Is Stuck, Not What Is Comfortable with Lucia Pietroiusti

The art that stays with you isn't the art that pleases you. It's the art that names the thing stuck at the back of your throat — the one you couldn't quite say out loud —