What’s Your Excuse for Not Succeeding as a Creative? with Deborah Henry-Pollard - a podcast by Mark McGuinness

This week's guest on The 21st Century Creative is Deborah Henry-Pollard, a creative coach based in London who describes her work as 'Using my skills to support creative people who make us see the world in another way'.



She is also the author of a great book called What’s Your Excuse for Not Succeeding as an Artist? where she lays out and then expertly demolishes a long list of the excuses we give ourselves for shying away from doing what it takes to achieve our creative ambitions.







Organisations Deborah has worked with include English National Opera, Cameron Mackintosh, Siobhan Davies Dance, The Society of West End Theatre, Chester Literature Festival and Studio Voltaire.



She is one of the creative business mentors recommended by The Design Trust in London. (You may recall that the Director of the Design Trust, Patricia van den Akker, was a guest in Season 2 of The 21st Century Creative.)



I’m pleased to count Deborah as a colleague and friend of mine, someone who is utterly sincere in her desire to help her fellow creatives succeed, and who also practises what she preaches in pushing herself past her own fears and excuses.







Listen to this conversation and you’ll hear that sincerity in Deborah’s voice, as well as her infectious enthusiasm for creativity and the difference we creatives can make in the world through our work.



Deborah and I also have some fun towards the end of the interview, where I pull out a series of excuses from the book, and she knocks them down as fast as I can set them up.



So whether you’re in the grip of a whole set of excuses, or you just have one or two lingering at the back of your mind, this conversation with Deborah Henry-Pollard will help you banish the excuses and get back to work.



You can learn more about What’s Your Excuse for Not Succeeding as an Artist? as well as Deborah’s coaching service, at her website Catching Fireworks. For bite-sized inspiration follow Deborah on Twitter.





This is not a film about tango from Deborah Henry-Pollard on Vimeo.



Deborah Henry-Pollard interview transcript



MARK: Deborah, how did you get started on the creative path?



DEBORAH: When I was very young, I wanted to be an artist. That was my dream. And then I went to art college when I was 19 and studied graphic design for a year and discovered that I wanted to be an artist, but I didn’t need to be an artist. It wasn’t that thing that was really pulling inside of me that I had to use art to express myself. And so what then happened was a very long term creative journey of trying photography... Writing has always been a constant but I’ve always been curious about different art forms and trying them out. And it wasn’t until about 15 years ago that I started dancing the Argentine tango and discovered my creative home.



MARK: Wow.



DEBORAH: Yeah. Which was wonderful, but the thing that has been so marvelous is that everything that I tried out and experimented with, I still use somehow and has still been incredibly useful for opening my eyes, making me look at things a different way, and making me appreciate how people work creatively. So, it’s been an utter joy, finding my own creative path through lots of different avenues, if you like.



MARK: Okay Deborah, please expand my knowledge of dance. What is the Argentine tango and is it different from the other kind of tango?



DEBORAH: It is. Yes, there’s ballroom tango and Argentine tango. And ballroom tango is the sanitized version, should we say. It was the version that was created to be danced in polite company, whereas the Argentine tango is much more earthy. It comes from all kinds of influences from Spain, from Havana, from... I mean, just amazing, absolutely amazing.

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