David Micklem: We're All Creative

In this episode of Who’s Elvis Around Here?, Chris sits down with theatre producer, writer, and creative change-maker David Micklem to explore what it really takes to unlock human potential in organisations—and why creativity might be our greatest untapped superpower.

David shares his unique journey from running iconic institutions like Battersea Arts Centre to becoming a “fixer” for arts organisations navigating change. Together, they dive into powerful ideas around leadership, storytelling, and how the role of people in society has evolved—from subjects to consumers to citizens. 

💡 In this conversation, you’ll discover:

• Why modern organisations must move from hierarchy to participation
• How creativity isn’t a job title—it’s a human trait we’ve forgotten
• The importance of building daily creative habits (your “mental health gym”)
• What great leadership really looks like: “be yourself with skill”
• Why many leaders struggle to know who they truly are
• The impact of technology on our mindset—and how to reconnect with what matters
• Where hope actually lives in today’s chaotic world

From cultural democracy to the power of nature, this episode is packed with insight for leaders, creatives, and anyone looking to bring more energy, authenticity, and imagination into their work and life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

So, welcome to the Who's Elvis Round Here podcast. This is where I get to hang out with some of the coolest leaders on the planet and find out what makes them tick and what brings them some energy and creates the conditions for our people to be amazing. And I'm delighted to be joined with an old friend of mine, David Micklin. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Chris. Great to see you. It's a pleasure. A lot of people are saying, look, how do you get your guests? Well, you know, what I tend to do is I ask all my old mates on, uh, because I like to hang out with them. Uh, unfortunately, a lot of my mates have got some wonderful things to share. And David has loads. So, hey David, introduce yourself to the listeners. Who are you? What did you get up to? And give us a bit of a flavour for what makes you tick.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I'm a theatre producer who doesn't really like theatre. By which I mean I don't really like sitting in the dark for two and a half hours and not getting fiddled with. I like theatre that's a lot more about it's different because I'm in the room with it. So I'm into sort of more immersive, experiential kinds of performance practice.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Excellent. And you've you've got loads of experience with this. Give us a bit of a sense for uh where it is you've played that's got you to where you are.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yeah, so I've run a couple of theatres. I've run one in South London called Ballise Arts Centre for six years, which is the kind of engine room of what's coming next in British Theatre and an amazing space. And for the last dozen years, I've been the go-to guy if you want to get your theatre back on track again. So I go into theatre organizations, arts organizations that are going through some kind of change and help them find their way into a much more sustainable future.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Wonderful. So it's a bit of a fixer in some ways, helping leadership teams get clear on where they're going, you know, getting some energy behind it, changing their plans, stepping things up, which it's quite a skill. So you get to work with lots of different people in diverse settings. Um, I've always found that we when we have talked to people on this podcast who have an arts background, we learn things that we wouldn't ordinarily learn when we talk to people with a traditional business background. So that's why I'm so chuffed to have you here. Um, you're also a writer, David.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

I'm a writer too. I'm a fiction writer. A humble writer, because you are brand new about that. Exactly. Published fiction writer. And actually, those two things, although they might sound quite different, arts consultant and writer, I think are really the same thing. Because what I'm helping theatres and arts organizations do is tell a different story about where they want to be in the future. And I'm a sort of job.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Can you just pan that that little segue for me into my first question?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Just like we did it in rehearsal.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Because my first question is so, what is the story you love to tell that people love to hear?

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Okay, so um, you're gonna have to bear with me on this one a bit. It's a very um arts and culture story, but I think it does have a relationship to business more widely. So get in my time machine with me, Chris, and we're gonna go back 150 years to the Victorian era, and uh, we might have thought of ourselves then as subjects, subjects of the Queen. And our principal media was print, it was newspapers, and we might have chosen our daily newspaper, and it told us what to think, and it told us the truth, and we were, we felt that we were subjects, and many of us worked in factories where the boss had all the ideas and we ran around as workers doing their work for them. So that was 150 years ago. Let's get back in the time machine, and we're gonna zoom over to the 1960s, and we no longer think of ourselves as subjects, we think of ourselves as consumers, and our principal media is the television, and uh it tells us things and it sells us things, and we've got a bit of choice. We increasingly have more channels, you know, we go from one to two to three to four channels of TV, and we are still quite passive recipients of that stuff that we watch, that media that we watch. Um and now here we are in 2026. Can you believe it? And our principal media is the internet, it's social and it's multidimensional and it's global, and we're not subjects or consumers. So we're citizens now in 2026, and we want to be involved in everything. We create content, you make music, I write things, we put it out into the world, and within minutes people are commenting and saying, that's amazing, or I don't like that bit, but um, we're much more used to multidimensional global interaction. And and the point that I make, the reason for this story is that too many of our arts and culture organizations are still run like we're subjects. So they have somebody at the top, often a man, who's got all the ideas and everybody else is running around trying to make that happen. And I guess the journey, the reason for the story and the journey I want to take arts organizations on is to get it to be to be more democratic. So everybody who is in who's got a stake in that organization feels like they've got something that they can say and contribute to it, whether they're staff or customers. So let's get our arts and cultural organizations and perhaps other businesses to work a bit more like the internet. Fast moving, multidimensional, everyone's got a say. You might be the assistant box office assistant who just works Tuesday afternoons, but you've probably got a brilliant idea for how this theatre might work better and differently in the future.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

So I, you know, and I I think there's a direct parallel with business, obviously, because a lot of businesses have been run by uh a singular man who has the ideas and gets everybody to run around them. So I think that's still continuing. Um, and and actually the best organizations know how to engage their people on improving things every day and actually you know owning the future rather than being passive. So I totally see that. And actually, I think that similar thing's true for society, isn't it? I mean, a lot of people feel incredibly passive in society right now. We we see our news feeds and we go, I can't do anything about this craziness, I can't get stuck in. And actually, there seems to be you know quite a wave of positive passion and saying, No, I want to have an influence here, I want to do something better. How can I somehow show up every day and improve this world in my own way?

unknown 6:24

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

So I think the parallels work really well. Good, good. In in the world that I work in, the world of arts and culture, we would call that cultural democracy. The idea that cultural organizations are more democratic, they listen to more people, take more soundings about what they're gonna do and how, rather than dictatorships, which often some organizations can look a bit like benign dictations.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I understand that. And look, and and you know, you need leadership, you need people to ultimately make decisions because we can't all, you know, when you say democratic, I've tried having everyone make decisions, and it's a bit of a disaster. However, the democracy comes from hearing and having a dialogue and a conversation before those decisions are ultimately made. And actually, if you can go with consensus, sometimes it's great, sometimes you have to cut through. But at least everyone's involved in that and they're party to them. Definitely a hundred percent like. I don't agree with that. So look, when it comes to bringing the genius out of our people, what is the number one thing that you think is essential to do that?

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Create the conditions that enable your teams to be creative. And it's interesting. I work in the arts and cultural sector, which you think would be full of people who are turning up to work and saying, hey, I'm a creative person, and actually we're really bad at doing that. We look to the artists as being the only people that make art. And I think what we often do in our theatres, in our art centres, in our concert halls, is we employ lots of people who are terrified of admitting that they have a kind of creative practice. And one of the things that I often do when I'm running workshops, right at the beginning, when I'm getting people to introduce themselves, is to tell me and the rest of the room what do you do in your free time that's creative? And you hear people who are, you know, experimental gardeners and loot players and you know, passionate poetry writers, and etc. etc. And often that will come as a complete shock to colleagues who've been working with them for five years because we don't come to work to be creative. The creative team is over there, it's only the people that have got creative in their title that aren't creative. So that would be my thing to unlock the genius, is unlock the creativity that exists in all of us. And I think that that's what makes us different from any other species in the solar system is we are creative, we have imaginations, we can do extraordinary things with this that dogs and cats love them as I do, can't do. So, yeah, unlock the creativity, give permission to play, let people have fun with this stuff, make mistakes, and yeah, unlock the true human that we've all got within us. The inner eight-year-old that probably didn't say, Oh, I can't sing, or I can't write, I haven't been given permission to do that. Go back to the inner eight-year-old that says, Yeah, I can dance or I can sing or I can write stories.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

And it's a part of our innate human makeup. I mean, you know, we we wouldn't have um evolved as a species without creativity, it's part of who we are and how we develop. Um it is it's interesting because obviously the same thing happens in business, you know. Um, I mean, it's it's probably even more pronounced in the arts because we could be quite reverential to the ones who are obviously shining lights of creativity because that's kind of what the business model is based upon. If you don't have it, nothing else works, right? But in business, I see it all the time with um innovation departments or there's a creative agency that we've got, or actually that's what marketing do. And it's so easy for people to just go, well, if they do it, I don't. That's not my job, that's not how I had value, that's not part of my identity. And I think it's um it's a very sad situation because not only does obviously the business lose all that value, but it but actually people lose their energy because if they just show up doing the same stuff all the time, they don't think they can improve things in their own way, you lose all that motivation and all that mojo that's that's potentially tapped. And it and I like your memory thing, because you know, I think saying, where else are you creative, everyone's got these experiences. So that so people tap into that then. Have you got any other tips on how to bring out creativity in an everyday fashion?

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Uh, one of the things that I was I was co-founder of uh an organization called 64 million artists, and the central conceit of that organization is that there are 64 million artists in the UK right now, but many of us have lost our connection with that inner artist, the inner kind of playful eight-year-old who built dens or made up stories or um sung songs, did all that sort of stuff. And so one of the one of the things that we have advocated through that uh organization is that the more often you do some sort of creative practice 20 or 30 minutes a day, the more it becomes a bit like going to the gym. You stop feeling like the ache of, oh, that was a bit embarrassing, or I felt a bit kind of uh vulnerable doing that thing. Do it every day, whether it's writing for 30 minutes or it's practicing the guitar or it's you know inventing a fantasy for your kids or whatever it might be, the more often you do it, the more regular it becomes, and the more I think you can then integrate that into your professional life and you can bring that person to work, the person that's used to problem solving, because you've got two eight and ten-year-olds who are fighting over something, and you've somehow got to create a uh a game for them to play that's gonna kind of break them out of that. So I think it's yeah, the the analogy I use is it's like a kind of mental health gym rather than a physical gym, is do something creative every day. And anybody who says, but David, I haven't got I haven't got 30 minutes, you've got no idea what my life's like. You have got 30 minutes. You probably spend 30 minutes on Instagram or on looking at emails that are easily looked at another time, or watching the news for the third time that day. Everybody's got 30 minutes, or get up 30 minutes earlier, or go to bed 30 minutes later, or take a half hour extra in your lunch break and do something creative.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

It's just about prioritization. You know, if it's important to you, you'll find it. As they say, if this room was on fire, we'd find time to get out. So uh, you know, it's where's your focus? And I look, I think creativity is definitely a muscle, and I've looked I've lived this myself. So, you know, I started, you know, uh I I did marketing in my twenties, so I've been I've been in the kind of creative realms for many years, and um you know people always say to me, Well, how come you you know you just go and write books and then you you write music and put it on Spotify, and you know, they go, I don't understand it. And I and for me it's like, well, once you plug into the idea that every day's a chance to express and try and experiment, you just naturally, there's not, it's not a fearful process, it just becomes who you are. Yeah, and actually, it is one of those, it's one of the few beliefs that I think you can kind of generalize around. If you get good at it at home, doing it with you know a pad and uh and and some some crayons, playing around in that experiment actually, I think does improve your confidence in experimenting in a meeting. Yeah, it does tend to work that way because a lot of things you don't you don't generalize, you don't you don't learn it in one field and then it means that you can translate it to another. But with creativity, I think it does because all all you're really doing is saying, I believe what's in here is interesting, and I'm gonna get out there and see what happens.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yep. It's our superpower, Chris. It is our superpower. I really believe that. More than any other sort of skill that we might bring to the table. I think it's the thing that if we give ourselves permission to unlock it, it's infinite.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I I agree. And look, and honestly, you're you're quite disciplined on this, aren't you? Because you know, writing books is not easy. And look, I do business books, a little bit easier. You do novels, you you do proper writing. But you know, that that doesn't cut it doesn't just happen, does it?

SPEAKER_00 14:08

It doesn't just happen, but if you prioritize your time and you're very uh enthralled to your diary, you can make it happen. So if I have a day and it says writing day, I'm not answering emails, I'm not looking at my phone, I'm writing. I'm I've got all the distractions out of the way. And then back to my mental health gym analogy. If I'm writing for a week, I'm a much better writer by Friday than I was on the Monday.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Because I've been doing it all week. In the same way as if you were doing sit-ups all week, you'd have a you'd have a washboard stomach by Friday, maybe not by Friday. But you know what I mean? It's kind of the more often you do it, the less the voice in your head which says, What are you doing? You're wasting your time, you're no good at this, the more that voice recedes into the distance, and you can focus on the voice which is saying, This is the story you need to write. These are the words you need to put on the page. So, yeah, I would say the more that you can prioritize doing that, even if it's just in a JK Rowling way, you know, half an hour grabbed with a cup of coffee in a Edinburgh cafe once a day while your kids are at the childminder, it still makes a difference. Regular and off. She did all right, didn't she? She's done pretty well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

She's done okay with a bob or two. So look, so I uh um so obviously we we we have a very similar passion around creativity. One of the reasons we're mates, and um, and god, it makes the world technically interesting, and you know, if every day you can do something that moves things forward in a way that you're excited by. So, you know, there's there's so much to be said for it. But um but obviously business often is not set up for it because you know we tend to be quite risk-avoidant, we tend to be about, you know, it's about efficiency and productivity and all those things. And you know, there's lots of things I look at in business that really get my goat. Um, you know, and now I know you don't necessarily always work in judicial business, but they're still organizations and they still have HR and they've got salaries and they have reviews, all those sort of things go on. So, what's the thing that you notice that's just nuts that gets your goat in how organizations are led and managed?

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Um it's a bit of a generalization, yeah, but I think I know that I see lots of business leaders, arts leaders, who are trying to fit into their idea of what they should be like and how they should work. They think as a kind of model, I need to be like this, I need to be more um dictatorial, or I need to be more confident in my views, or I need to fit into a certain box. And 20 years ago, I did a business course at Henley Business School, and I got a half an hour meeting with the principal of Henley Business School, and I said, Talk to me about leadership. And he said, I can talk to you about leadership. I've read hundreds of books on leadership, and I've written about three or four as well. And he said to me, leadership really boils down to four words. Be yourself with skill. And I think that that is right. I think those organizations that I work with that are thriving, their business leaders are being themselves with skill. They're not trying to be somebody else's version of a leader, they're not trying to do the kind of, I think this is how you do it, or I think my team would expect me to do it in this way. They're showing up as themselves and they're doing it to the best of their ability all the time. Um, and so yeah, that's what I try and apply in my work and try and give other leaders confidence to do. You know, if you're a bit of a kind of playful creative character, bring that person to work. Be yourself with skill. Don't kind of try and suppress the creative or the playful because you think that actually you need to be very serious if you're running an arts art gallery, or you need to be very kind of focused on the numbers and confident about the things that actually aren't in your kind of wheelhouse. So um, be yourself with skill would be my um borrowed, stolen uh quote.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Right, nicely stolen um headline. I like it. Now I'm gonna go slightly for a second, and I stroke my little beard. I wonder how many leaders know who they are. So so I think we should be ourselves, but I find so many people confused as to what that means. We've taken on so many different identities, different roles over time, actually knowing who the real David Micklam is, the one who's got super good energy because you're in flow, because you're just being yourself, and you're not trying to force anything. Um, I see people take quite a long time to discover that, uh, you know, I think. I don't think it happens that naturally in business. You know, people tend to rely on some very odd structured ways to see how they're developing, you know, with annual reviews and all that rubbish, which doesn't help. You know, as far as I mean, I guess my experience with the arts is it's always been quite exposing. So people tend to learn quite quickly who they are because it tends to get called out a little bit more. Is that your experience? Is that how you think people should find out? Have you got any tips on it?

SPEAKER_00 19:20

I struggle with this question, Chris. I mean, I think there are the I I sometimes find some of the best leaders in the arts and cultural sector aren't the bosses. They're not they're not the people who've got leader in their title or leader in their job section. They're they're they're managing up, they're actually doing extraordinary work in a departmental context or with a particular kind of focus, and those are the real kind of um engine rooms of organization. Uh, I'm gonna be very gendered here and say that often those people are women and they perhaps struggle more than men to see themselves in leadership positions, but I see them leading brilliantly from other places in the organization, and invariably I will try and encourage those people to think of themselves as leaders and to go for those more senior jobs in arts and culture institutions. Um, so yeah, I think that I mean, I'm sure as there is in any business area, arts and culture has for too long been dominated by too many men. Often you've got a bullying way of working in the, you know, it's my way or the highway, not very expansive, not enabling other people's kind of creativity and voices to come through. That is changing, has been changing and is changing. Um, but there's still some bad practice out there. Um, I'm not sure that's answered your question, but it's my no.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Well, I said I get I went deep. I didn't expect you to just offer me the answer on it, David. That would be unfair. But look, it's it's it's interesting, also, you know, often in business we see some quite bad behaviours, we see people being stuck in ruts and rolls, very traditional stuff. And it happens everywhere. It happens in the arts, it happens, you know, in all the places, you know, in the music industry, it happens, it happens in film, it happens all over the place just because of actually a lot of innate human design. Um, but just because we've got the design doesn't mean we shouldn't work through it. And I think things are getting better that way. Um, and and I think I'm seeing people being more confident in being themselves now than I have in in my you know historical uh you know work in lots of different organizations. But people seem to be a lot more comfortable going, well, you know, this is this is what feels right to me. I'm I'm happier to go with it. And I know that might not be accepted by everyone, but I'm really cool with that because the ones that like it really like it, and therefore I'll have better flow and I'll connect with them.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

So I think it's you would like to see the same is true in arts and culture. I don't think it is. There was a moment during the pandemic where, because everything had to shut, the the whole of the industry had a kind of long hard look at itself and said and and kind of collectively agreed when we come out of this thing, when we reopen our theatres and our concert halls and our art galleries, let's Be different. Let's have a different kind of leadership. Let's have different people in positions of leadership. Let's continue to do all this really good work around diversity and inclusion and access that we've been doing. And let's let's create some more space for different kinds of people, people who don't look like me, to get into those roles. And we came out of the pandemic into a cost of living crisis, decreasing public funding for arts and culture, a bit of a shit show, a bit of a clusterfuck. And unfortunately, I think some of that really good work that was happening during the pandemic has gone backwards. And so, yeah, one of the things that I'm fighting for is to try and get back into that place we were a few years ago where people were saying all the right things about trying to really change who got to lead these organizations and who gets to play with them, who gets to kind of engage with them. But yeah, sadly, I think there's been a bit of a about turn and we've gone back a few steps rather than going forward.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Well, I don't think um I again I don't think that's just arts. I think I think when when the pressure hits, people go back to safety. They start to do what they know, and therefore changing behavior just seems too risky, you know. So I think a lot of companies have done that, uh, especially with the unpredictability of everything that's happening in the geopolitical sphere. I I get it, I get it. But you know, I had I had James Sills on recently, who's a fantastic guy. I mentioned him, he's a choir starter. He had this big thing, which is I think I do I believe in equal and opposite, I really do. With all this craziness and all this negativity going on, I do believe there is an opposite force of more love, more compassion, more authenticity of people, more embracing the fact that we could do things in a different way. So I I kind of like the way he was kind of looking at that, and which brings me on to, you know, my my final question would be what gives you hope, David?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Ooh, that's a nice question for uh Monday afternoon. Um, I mean, there's lots of reasons to be devoid of hope at the moment, you know. You've only got to look at your phone and think we are doomed, uh, to quote Dad's army. Um, you know, whether it's Epstein or Trump or global insecurities or Greenland, all of that sort of stuff gives us, I think, real uh genuine cause to feel anxious. But I do feel hopeful. Um I have to say, I feel hopeful when I put my phone down or I put my phone away. I do think that those little bits of expensive technology that are often in our pockets and buzzing, they have their uses. Um but I think a lot of that sense of hopelessness that many of us sometimes feel is driven by the algorithms and isn't driven by what we experience in the real world. So when I get off my phone and I go and work with people in a city in the UK who are running an arts organization, I feel incredibly hopeful because I see new generations of people who've got great ideas, great energy, want to make a difference, and it's not the stuff I'm being fed through algorithms on my very binary. Are you pro this or are you anti-that? So I think there's much more compassion and love and energy and creativity in the real world than there is, than you might think if you only looked at life through the online world.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Hell yes, David. I agree more. I mean, I've I've just been on the road for the last two weeks, uh, working with lots of different groups, and I've been buzzing. Because I the same thing, you know, you we we are designed to be with people, we're you know, we're social beasts to actually connect with them and deep and meaningful stuff that is about life and how we improve things is so exciting. And there's so much talent out there, so much energy, you know. But as you say, if we look through the world through our devices, they're designed to create fear responses because that's what makes it sticky. So it's always going to be ah when we look at them. And no wonder so many people are stressed because if you believe everything in your phone, we are doomed, it's all over. I mean, I think I was I I took my phone on last night for about five minutes just to see anything interesting out there. Apparently, the banks are all about to collapse. We have to take our cash out and we have to bury it in the garden. I don't know what it is, you know. But just you know, and I've heard this stuff before, but it's like it's constant. I mean, if you lived by it, you would be under threat 24-7.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Uh, when you're in a room, oh definitely, and particularly I would say with younger people, you know, if when you've got a plastic brain, if that is your principal form of kind of communication with people, it's no wonder that there is a generation of younger people who are suffering with anxiety and mental health issues. I meet some of those same people in the room, we put all of our phones away, we put them on silent, we put them in our bags, and you see people coming to life, and you see a lot of that anxiety and fear uh and hopelessness exit very quickly through the window. So um, yeah, they've got their uses, but um I think we need to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

We don't want to turn turn back time, and the tech is useful to move us forward, but it's it's our relationship with it that's the issue. Um, and if we get on that, you know, I'm totally with you. There's a there's a frightening graph time, mental health, anxiety, depression, and it's going on like that. 2011, you know, especially for teenagers. 2011 when smartphones came out.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

It's you know, it's it's obviously why so many people are finding them in schools. Yeah, so I'm with you. So people over tech is what gives you hope.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Yeah, people, people remembering that we are amazing animals, and um we're not we're not AI bots, we're not robots. Uh it's funny, which maybe it's not funny, it's just noticeable that if I'm feeling like you know, the stories, the noise from all that external stuff is getting too much. I think my advice to anybody, to myself particularly, but to anybody, is go out in nature. You know, I live I live in London, I've got a big park at the end of the road, even go for a lap round the park. Don't take your phone, look at the squirrels, look at the parakeets. Can you believe it in London in in a park? Um reconnect with nature. And it's amazing how just that very simple reboot of being a body in motion, in fresh air, in nature, I think can just put things in perspective in ways in which it's very difficult to do on hour three sitting on your sofa, doom scrolling, looking at kind of uh what's happening in the world. So, yeah, I think get out in nature, run up a hill and sit at the top of the hill for an hour without looking at your phone and see what comes, you know, see what ideas come, see the world through different eyes. So, yeah, let's use our phones for the things that they're really good at, but let's not make them an integral part of our life because we are nature and we need to be in nature to feel alive.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

We certainly are nature, and that gives me hope too. So, what a lovely, lovely place to end. So, look, um, I I you've got uh no doubt exciting things coming up, including having a bowl of ramen with me quite soon when I come to London. Oh, uh, but but beyond that, what what else is coming up in your life that gives you a bit of a buzz?

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Uh, I'm spending a lot of time in Edinburgh, uh, Britain's most beautiful city, uh, working with uh some theatres up there. And again, I think in that spirit of you might think that all the news is pretty grim, or all the news about arts and culture is grim, or even the news about theatre is grim. Lots of theatres are closing. I'm working with three theatres in Edinburgh that feel like they are absolutely thriving and have got some great ideas and some innovative new ways of imagining how they might reconnect with audiences in the future. So, yeah, I still feel as excited by that now at the tender age of as I did 30 years ago when I first started working in theatre.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Wonderful. Well, look, there's always some bright spots out there, and it's great you're working with them. Look, and and and every time you're in the room, there's a bit more brightness for me, David. It's lovely to have you all. Thank you so much for joining us. And is that a bit of universal works you're wearing? Uh uh, yes, I am the brand ambassador for universal works. We're looking for sponsors, David. That's the only reason we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Very good, very good, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

It's gonna be phone Dallas for Raman, one of the two.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

I'm not gonna get sponsored by iPhone, though.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Unlikely, not for this channel. No. Well, look, thank you so much for sharing your insight. It's it's been an absolute joy as ever. Um it's been a pleasure, Chris.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Um and if anyone is interested, uh you know, check out David's writing. It is fantastic. Where do they find it, David? All on the website, davidmicklam.com. Perfect. So well look, go well, and hopefully I will see you soon. Can't wait. See you soon. Bye bye.