In this episode of Out of the Clouds, host Anne Mühlethaler interviews André Anderson, an author, educator, and the founder of Freedom and Balance art college. Anne first encountered Andre during his impactful TEDx talk at Hackney Empire in London and was immediately drawn to his innovative approach to storytelling.
André tells Anne about his journey from a creative child who loved making imagery, writing stories and dreaming of his own media empire to becoming a self-published author and community storyteller. He explains how his first book "Ultra" — written in just 12 days on his Blackberry — opened unexpected doors and taught him the principle that "the more you create, the freer you become."
Their conversation also explores André's groundbreaking project "Authors of the Estate," for which he transformed his Northwest London council estate into a publishing house. Andre explains how this initiative challenged negative narratives about his community by empowering residents to author their own stories. He likens this work to the tradition of oral historians in West Africa (called griot), highlighting how storytelling serves as both cultural preservation and a political act. André also mentions "Chalk Hill," the second book that followed "Authors of the Estate" in his publishing journey.
Anne and André discuss the etymology of words like "author" and "education," as André explains how understanding their roots has shaped his approach to creativity and teaching. André also explains how his art college, Freedom and Balance, creates environments for people to discover their unique creative language through play. He shares his realization that facilitation is about asking powerful questions rather than providing all the answers, describing his role memorably: "I am Gandalf, and all of my tools, or all of my magic, is tools of play."
Anne and André delve into the importance of aspirational play for adults in an increasingly AI-driven world, with André suggesting that play might be the most distinctly human activity that cannot be replaced by technology. They examine how imperfection, vulnerability and the willingness to make mistakes can become powerful educational tools and discuss André's project "Love Letters for My Peoples," which uses love as a framework for creativity and connection.
Throughout the conversation, André shares his philosophy of "heart work" — creative work that incorporates strands of one's authentic self — and reflects on the importance of process over product. André even makes a compelling comparison between his "Authors of the Estate" project and Nas's seminal album "Illmatic," referring to it as his defining work that fans always want to hear again. The episode concludes with André's thoughtful responses to Anne's closing lightning round questions, revealing his deep connection to creativity, his appreciation for his mother's early support of his creative pursuits and his belief that happiness comes from knowing the world has heard you.
A profound conversation about reclaiming narratives, finding freedom through creativity and the transformative power of play. Happy listening!
About André Anderson
Freedom & Balance is an Art College for the artist in everyone. They create programs that help organizations shape their future through play and help communities playfully grow into the type of leaders their world looks for. Andre and his team have worked with notable organizations including BBC, Google, Samsung, Estee Lauder, and The Guardian.
Selected links from episode
00:04
Hi, hello, bonjour and namaste. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, and I'm your host, Anne Muhlethaler. Today I'm speaking with André Anderson, artist, author, educator and founder of Freedom & Balance Art College. Let's be clear I'm very inspired by this conversation. André's journey from a creative kid in Northwest London to becoming an influential voice as an artist and storyteller and facilitator is truly inspiring. In storyteller and facilitator is truly inspiring.
00:49
I first encountered his work when I heard him speak on the TEDx stage in London at the Hackney Empire in January. I felt immediately drawn to his innovative approach to what he calls aspirational play as well as storytelling, and through his projects like Authors of the Estate, where he, along with friends, transformed his council estate into a publishing house, empowering residents to tell their own stories rather than having narratives imposed upon them. Now, as I was editing this interview, I kept pausing and reflecting on how powerful André's message is Now, as someone who's deeply involved in the writing process and getting to know about publishing in general, because I have, you know, at least four books kicking inside of my head rattling around inside of my head rattling around. This process of re-listening offered a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the themes of authorship, authority, education, facilitation Words that are very meaningful, not just to myself, but I think that stands to be better understood by others, hopefully through this interview.
02:09
Throughout this conversation, André shares profound insights about storytelling, creative play and what he calls the political act of self-publishing. Reminds us that true creativity is not about perfect outcomes, but about discovery, about staying in the process, about offering a piece of oneself and allowing ourselves to learn through play. As he beautifully puts it, he says I am Gandalf and all of my magic is tools of play. Now, I can't say I ever have a favorite interview, because I've loved every conversation I've had, with every single guest. I'm a very wise chooser of guests, I'll say, but this one is very special and I hope that you'll find yourself, like me, ready to enroll with André's Art College. Freedom & Balance. Now, this is a conversation about reclaiming narratives, finding freedom through creativity and the transformative power of you guessed it play. Happy listening, André. Welcome to Out of the Clouds.
03:19
Pleasure to be here.
03:21
It's so nice to see you again For context for our listeners. I had the pleasure to see you again For context for our listeners. I had the pleasure to see you on stage after a group of wonderful, talented musicians had graced us with their music, and that was at TEDx in London, at the Hackney Empire, and that was in the dreariest, wettest of January. I remember that very well, but I really enjoyed your talk and it was serendipitous that I ended up bumping into you in the bookstore afterwards where I purchased the two books that were on sale, but we'll get to that in a minute.
03:57
As you may have understood, one of the ways I like to open a conversation with my guests is to ask them to tell their story and the reason why I ended up landing on this. Technically, I'm a story nerd, so there's also that, but I noticed that it's so easy for us to default to what we do and to define ourselves by our work, and I think that we are much more than that, and by approaching this by asking someone to tell me their story, it opens the door to anything that you may want to share. I'd love to hear what people were like when they were kids and what did you think you wanted to be when you were as a grown up and anything else that makes sense. If that's okay, would you tell us your story?
04:39
Yeah, I am very close to who I wanted to be when I was a kid. So when I was a, when I was a child, I really loved I actually really loved being indoors, for someone talks about play a lot. I actually really enjoyed being indoors. I enjoyed it because that is where the TV was, that is where pens and paper was, that's where comic books were. I really loved making imagery and writing short stories and pretending I'm either a movie star or I'm directing my own movie or video game, and those things just worked best indoors. So that was mostly me. So I played a lot, but I played a lot indoors.
05:20
I was someone who always loved the idea of one day having my own media empire. I don't think I called it media empire at the time. I knew that I wanted to make loads of movies. I wanted to make loads of video games, because these are the things that I enjoyed doing. So I would love to make my own versions of this and that kind of is my story in a microcosm in every phase of my life.
05:49
When I was in school, I would spend some time outside, so I'll hang out. I was the kind of kid who would walk. There will be clusters of so many different friendship groups and so many different types of kids in different parts of the playground. I was the one who would just walk around and just talk with everyone or play with everyone, and then I would then go inside the school and I might go to the library or into the art class and do either some reading or some drawing, and the same thing happens even up until this day. I'm outside, but actually I spent a lot of my days indoors.
06:23
My internal world is very rich up until this point, and the thing that I've always desired and I think I probably desired it from a child, and it's informed what I do is that I wanted to share this internal world with people, because I think when you get older and you learn where it is to be an artist and you start to develop bodies of work and all that kind of stuff, it's rewarding, definitely, but when you do it a lot, you're in solitary most of the time, and the thing that I've wanted from a child was to be able to have just a handful of people that knows what it feels like to develop your inner um and experience the richness of your inner world. So then, as I grew up, I started to self-publish my own books, but then I started to get into the idea of understanding what my desire was. If you was to translate it in adult terms, it would be to be a facilitator or educator. A facilitator someone who's able to share a process with other people to join in.
07:24
For me, it was I was able to share a process with other people to join in. For me, it was I was able to share a creative process for people to join in. So that is then when I began to develop my own art college called Freedom & Balance. And yeah, I've just gone upward spiral, essentially.
07:41
I like that upward spiral. I did want to ask you why Freedom & Balance.
07:48
Why the name?
07:49
Yeah, it speaks to me and having listened to you on other podcasts, I understand that freedom is important. Yes, but what's the relationship between Freedom & balance here?
08:19
So there are many. There's many reasons why that name is that name. I can only tell you, the first time I the first time, these words meant something to me. But I couldn't afford to make a movie because this was before good cameras was on mobile phones. So you needed to have maybe a grand or two grand to get a camera, which I couldn't afford at the time. So then I said you know what, instead of me aspiring to be this big time movie director, if I just write on a piece of paper we're in space. That's way cheaper than getting a camera and convincing viewers that we are in space realistically. So there's so much, there's so much. You could go so much further for cheaper if you write it instead of want to visualize it.
08:59
So I got into writing books, and one of the books that I, the first book I wrote, was called Ultra, which had to do with a superhero that lives in Northwest London and it was written as an autobiography and I read it in a handful of days. I read it in 12 days because I didn't know that you wasn't supposed to write a book in 12 days. I was just writing what I thought was cool, and then I at that time I was a graphic designer so I knew how to design it and then print it. And that book, that was the first time I had an idea and it was physical in my hands that I could give to my college friends. And it spread. And then it actually it got into the hands of a woman called Ruby Sudo who, very long story short, she introduced me to a advertising agency called Sidley that's based in Montreal, and they saw it and then said we would love to have you as a intern for a month in Canada. I'm a kid from Northwest London has very little access to this kind of stuff, very little access to this stuff. And going from that to being in an internship with my own apartment for a month, it was cool. It was very cool for me.
10:10
And then I met this man called Charles Hall and he was like the head of I think it was Adidas account, and then he was meaning to see me for a very long time because he's heard about this kid. He's written a book on his BlackBerry over a couple of days and then, once he finally met me, he held the book and he looked at the book and he was like, oh, this is beautiful, this is beautiful. And he kept saying this is beautiful. I was waiting for him to say more, but he just kept saying this is beautiful. Then afterwards he looked at me and he says you don't understand this.
10:35
But you don't understand the doors that you've opened just because you've chosen to sit down and write something. So the fact that you were on the bus and you wrote a chapter or two a day on your BlackBerry and that has now turned into this story, that has allowed you to come to Montreal, canada, and you've gone from being on a bus to being on a plane, just because you decided to write something. And that is when I began to understand the principle of the more you create, the freer you become. So you're born with some constraints and constraints aren't necessarily bad, but you're born with some constraints and then, the more that you like find language for the world around you and find language for your inner world also, then those constraints begin to broaden and you've got more things to play with. So that was the inception of the idea of what Freedom & balance is.
11:28
And then, as I'm getting older, I think Freedom & balance is essentially that my freedom is in how I create, but then also as well, I understand that when you exercise such a power, it's not just 100% good thing. You have the opportunity to affirm others or abuse others with it, so you have to always check in with yourself and always make sure that what you're doing is coming from a genuine place, it's coming from a sincere place. And if it's coming from a sincere place, then you don't have to worry about if it's ever original or if it's ever good, because if it's coming from a sincere place, it can never be replicated. And that is actually my ultimate freedom thank you so much.
12:11
It's interesting because, as you're talking, I've already made three notes of things that I want to share with you later okay I'm thinking about people that I think you're going to like, and I will add in the show notes I did not really understand what constraints could mean in terms of creativity, but that also speaks to my privilege. I grew up a white, blonde chick in rural Switzerland.
12:39
I have my constraints as well though, including being in the middle of nowhere pre-internet, which was a serious constraint, but at the same time, being in the middle of nowhere pre-internet, which was a serious constraint yeah but at the same time I had the privilege of working a little bit with seth godin who had given us a book to read called a beautiful constraint oh cool, I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's very good okay just don't get the audio version because the voiceover is terrible the book itself is brilliant.
13:05
It just goes to show that sometimes we need constraints to unleash creativity.
13:10
Yes.
13:13
And it sounds to me like the environment in which you grew up just enabled you or fostered something in you that helped you unleash and nurture that creativity. How young were you when you got to understand what that was in you? You probably didn't call it that.
13:31
I've always. I didn't know that the name for it was creativity until I got much older, but I was always interested in telling stories and drawing and all that kind of stuff. If you're being very honest, a lot of the language that I used is to make sense as an adult. So because when I'm playing as a kid I'm not calling it play in the way that I am now, because how I'm saying it now is in a more academic way, because you have to explain why it's important or why it's profitable or why a grown adult should be doing this. But actually when you're a child, there's just a social acceptance that you're going to be doing this. So I understood its necessity when the rest of my world was saying it's no longer necessary that part where you need to now quote unquote, grow up and put aside the pictures and put aside the stories.
14:21
And I'm quite a stubborn person. So it was my stubborn nature that makes me go, wait, hold on. This is important. I don't know why it is yet, but it's definitely important. And then, obviously, my stubbornness has now allowed me to understand on a more psychological level why stories are important, why art is important, why play is important, but I think my creativity. It's not even necessarily me necessarily discovering my creativity. It's more. The bigger accomplishment is me sustaining it. But it's come from me just being very stubborn and not believing that to grow up is to let go of the desire to learn or the desire to discover or play.
15:02
I was wondering how old were you and how did you start writing, because so you talk about the book Ultra. You're 18. But when did you start writing?
15:14
The first time. Apparently this is all stuff that I wouldn't remember, but when I was younger, my mom did say that I was very poetic. If I was heartbroken, I would say I'm heartbroken and my heart's torn in pieces, and I'll be three years old saying that. I process through language and I remember the first thing I've written was a love poem. I had a childminder who would look after me when my mom's gone to work and there was a woman who came through the door called Jojo, and I remember being so fascinated with her.
15:45
The only thing I can do at that moment was run upstairs and write this poem. I didn't know it was a poem at the time. I just was putting together words as best I could about how I love her and I would love to marry her one day, and all that stuff. And then later on, when I got a bit older when I say older, I was probably six at the time and she probably showed it to me again when I was nine she was like oh, I remember that poem that you wrote for me when you was younger. That's the first memory I have of writing, of me seeing something, feeling something. Oh, I need to find the words that can name this feeling.
16:18
That's awesome.
16:20
It's cool, definitely.
16:23
So, from that early poem to your journey of publishing, how many books have you written so far?
16:29
I honestly don't know. So when I was younger I had a pseudonym called André Zoom Anderson and I published five books under that name and then afterwards I took the name Zoom off and then I just became André Anderson. And when I was André Anderson, that's the first book that came out of. That was Authors of the Estate, and then that would have been my sixth book. And there was the Chalk Hill book came after that. That's the seventh one. I've released other books but then, after the seventh book, I just stopped counting. But I think it's because after a certain number, making a book was no longer the thing that was important for me. The metric of having a book was no longer important. So I was like I'm only using the book as a utility for something socially to happen. So that's not how I measure things anymore. So I would say it could be around 10, 11, 12, but I stopped counting around seven.
17:22
I find it interesting that your understanding what the book is as a vehicle has changed over the course of your publishing journey. But for our listeners who've not heard of the authors of the Estate, could you please tell us the story of this book that I'm holding in my hands?
17:43
Yeah for sure. So I am based in a state called St Raffles Estate in Northwest London. A council estate is in America, they'll call it the Projects a place with low-income housing for families from low-income backgrounds, and that place is prone to well, it's prone to poverty, it's prone to crime and it's also prone to negative press surrounding it. So the best examples I could find is how they speak about Marseille in Paris, or the way they speak about Southwestern Township in Johannesburg, or the way they speak about Compton in Los Angeles. There's these reputations that these areas have, regardless of whether you've been there or not, and St Raffles Estate, for those who know that place, has that reputation.
18:30
And one of the things that shifted in me, I was very frustrated. Going to college and someone saying, oh, you're from St Raffles Estate, you probably insert crazy thing here and and oftentimes yes, sometimes crime does happen in this area, but it's literally the activity of maybe eight people in a 1000 home estate. So I realized that if that small, small amount of people can paint a negative picture, then a small amount of people can also paint a positive picture. So one of the things that I was very adamant on is that I am the author of my own story and I'm the authority of my own story. So I decided to bring together people within my area that's around about the same age range as me to ask ourselves if we were to turn our council house into a publishing house. What would it be If we was to not have the stories told for us but we tell our own stories continually? What would that be If we was to not have the stories told for us but we tell our own stories continually?
19:27
So we created this book called Authors of the Estate, and the idea was to tell our stories in the way that we wanted to, in a way that's for us, not in a way that's going to prove ourselves to the outside world in any sort of way. And then we would then print this book and then give it to all 1,000 homes in St Raffles estate. And then that then became like the starting point for what I have now, which is there's a handful of people from my estate but also as well council estates that's nearby me who are their own publishers, their own authors. We write our own books, we make our own documentaries, and it's for us. We're not trying to prove our ourselves or our worth or try to give you a glossary as to what our slang means. We are genuinely just making the type of media that we would love to see for ourselves.
20:15
So, authors of the estate is essentially that project in the introduction actually you mentioned it you link the words author and authority, which, I have to say, I write and I'm around a lot of people who are writers, many who call themselves authors, and no one had ever placed these two words in context for me. And you write that the Latin translation which I should know because I did Latin but I can't remember is actorem, which means to create, to enlarge and to be master over. Yes, and you later write the world belongs to those who think and publish.
20:56
Yes after the talk and after reading the book, because I guess, if we don't necessarily think so much or I don't about how the world belongs to the people who tell stories, there's all the stories untold, and so you're basically turning the publishing world around and so doing, and I loved when you said we wanted to see what happens when we flip people's expectations and, instead of cause chaos, cause creativity.
21:29
Yeah.
21:29
Yeah, what was the reaction of the 1000 inhabitants when they received the first book in there? Because you joke that you used to ring the doorbell and run away when you were kids and this time you ran the doorbell and handed the book and ran away.
21:47
So I want to touch on the point that you mentioned before about language, that is, that the main discovery that we made was the actual etymology of the word author, and it is connected to law.
22:00
It's connected to people who write the laws of the land, and that is what we're governed by. We're governed by someone's code, whether it's laws or even digitally. We're having this conversation digitally. There needs to be someone to write the code for this conversation to be even possible. So there's writing, as far as you write an article or you write a tweet, but there's also coding, which is you're putting together the codes that allow things to be possible or not possible, and we're governed by that. We're governed by that in a political sense. We're governed by that in a cultural sense. The reason why there's such thing as a taboo is because there are codes that you're like you don't overstep certain marks. So the thing that I found that was important is that my life because stories have been told about me and stories have been told about where I'm from, but I'm also a writer and I understand the power of writing Then I'm like, oh wait, then surely I could just write a code as well, because it is just words. But the difference is that these people they code the words, they code it and then they publish it, they release it. But we're now in an era where I'm also a publisher. Everyone who has a social media account is also a publisher. They self-publish all the time. So, yeah, I think understanding the true use of it and then using it is just super powerful.
23:25
But going back to what you're saying about the initial response was actually very silent. I didn't get any response at all. Even the people who opened the door before we walked away, I would tell them what it is and they received it as if they were receiving a leaflet. It wasn't like a, it didn't feel particularly deep, which I wasn't looking necessarily for a reaction, I just needed it to be in the house. But luckily enough, we filmed it. So we filmed the process of my friend, nath Nathaniel Telemach putting the book through every single door and that film was put on YouTube back when YouTube was like the main platform, put on YouTube and all that kind of stuff, and was put on YouTube back when YouTube was like the main platform, put on YouTube and all that kind of stuff. And then the neighbors started to respond a certain way because now they have a video and they got external context as to what just happened.
24:14
Yeah.
24:14
So, yeah, the initial response was quite empty for most of you, but then I realized that actually you only need one or two people to understand what you've done for it to have the true impact.
24:27
So what we found is that, with the estates that we've done it we've done it in my estate, sanford's estate, and Chalk Hill estate, which is up the road from me you have responses from people throughout the years, and it was only last year we're making a documentary for authors of the estate and there were some kids who saw the cameras and the camera crew. They were like, oh, what are you doing here? It was like, oh, we're doing a documentary about authors of the estate and one kid said, oh, that's about the publishing house that you started in Chalk Hill. But this kid is six years old and she would have been one when we started authors of the estate. So someone's talking, it's like something's happening, and so I realized that, like, the initial response doesn't matter as much when you know that if it's honest enough and it's pure enough, then it actually serves people throughout the years.
25:16
Yeah, that's really beautiful.
25:23
So let me just see my next question, because I've meandered one of the things that one of the stories I really enjoyed reading actually was pred's story, and I really like the introduction that you offered to it as well and you talk about the 14th century griots in mali. I don't know how to say it in English, because in French it's griot and how? For those of us listening who don't know. They were oral historians and advisors and storytellers who preserved and recounted the history, the traditions and the values of the Mali empire through epic narratives. This offered such a wonderful way to consider community storytelling. And then, of course, we then we read Fred's story, who's talking, embodying this sort of modern griot right and writing for a younger kid, and I was wondering how did you come to not just know about this, but what was it like to realize that what you were embodying in this project were perhaps quite like modern griot yourself?
26:31
yeah, I think one of the unspoken I'll call it pains, one of the unspoken pains of the black experience in the UK is that there is a sense of amnesia that you're aware of. There's a history that you're not connected to. You can't remember with clarity what's there and what you then find is that you'll have elders in our community that will do some research and share back. I came across that information from an elder understanding what a griot is and understanding that in Africa there were these walking talking libraries that if you gave them your name or your father's name, they'll be able to tell you your family history for many generations, but also as well, for hours and through song. So the whole thing wasn't just they was giving you a lecture for hours and through song. So the whole thing wasn't just they was giving you a lecture for hours that the they actually had a song that was about your family history and things that's happened within your family and adventures and tragedies that's happened within your family.
27:36
This information I think I got during the same time I was making Authors of the Estate. I was making authors of the estate I. The thing that was important for me is that I needed to find the framing for anyone who's outside of the community to understand what they're looking at when they're seeing someone talk about their history. Cause it's very easy Almost like the lazy way of thinking is to see it as, oh, working class communities are talking about their life and how they immigrated from their country to this country, and it's not. That's not what's happening, that's not what you're looking at. So we needed to find. That's why the book is called Authors of the Estate, or, and that's why that chapter is called the griot, because it allows a story that often would have been ignored, or you hear it and you walk away. Actually given the, actually given this proper framing as to what is going on.
28:33
I've. I found it almost a gift because I'd forgotten about it and I can't remember how I came across the term, but I used to be a big reader when I was a teenager and I read anything that passed near my hands. The thing that I found beautiful and where it affirms how much language can give us in terms of widening the lens, of finding new perspective, as you put a word to something that I find is missing in my community, not extatriates. Something that I find is missing in my community, not expatriates. I find that in many places around the world, and certainly where I am sat now today in Geneva, switzerland.
29:11
we are often missing a sense of community and I think that, through the vehicle of the stories and the art pieces that you put forward, you helped me put a name to something that I think, more globally, we are missing people connecting the pieces of our stories, helping us make sense yeah giving us this yeah, because I think it's meaning making right. This is what you are. It's giving us a sense of the through line that this is not a single moment in time and we are not alone. We come from somewhere.
29:46
Yeah.
29:47
I find, at least from my very different vantage point. I have found myself very disconnected from ancestry and because the world is so different today than what my ancestors knew.
30:01
Yeah, and it's very hard because the um, I think, being in an era of the internet, there's very little sign of legacy or there's very little sign of time even.
30:16
It's very hard to even value your past when the era that we're in there is no time, there is no past, there's not really a future, there's just content being put in front of you right now that we need to take in.
30:29
I think that our sense of story and knowing where we're from and narrative which would have been passed down from a grandparent or someone or an elder, I do believe in many places is deteriorating, and one of the reasons why it's important for me to take my experiences and make them books is because these are things that I do intend to pass on to my children, if I ever have them. Because we're self-publishing all the time but we're not making the moments we're in important. So I might update my stories on Instagram all the time, but I'm not framing it in a way to say this moment on this date in 2025 is super important and this will need to be remembered for X, y, z reason, and I think that it's a deliberate practice. It's something that needs to be deliberately practiced, but we first need to be aware that it's even an issue in the first place.
31:24
Yeah, yeah. I think that, while a lot of people may be, like me and you, interested in storytelling, I think that some of us sometimes miss the element or the importance that this can have for a specific community. And I think, if anything, your work really it felt to me that it really highlighted that you did this for your community and I'm seeing this as something that I hope many other people realize is necessary for their community yeah, yeah, when we okay.
31:55
The issue that we face is that we are brought up in an era where Hollywood has been our main touch point for what stories are, and the issue is that stories that entertain you is a very new concept. Is that something that is that's only like within the last hundred, maybe 150 years that we've had that as a concept of these? Stories are here to entertain you. The reason why we even have the term moral of the story is that stories are supposed to pass on moral information. There's a reason why we have the story of the boy you cried war, for anything that has to do with you shouldn't lie. But for you to remember that moral, we will pass it on through a story that's easy to remember, where it tells you, it shows you this is the person, this is the behavior that they've done and this is the consequence that happened right, and that consequence even brought successful tragedy. And it is a deeply human thing, even down down to religion, that we tell stories, that we must pass on vital information to humanity. Some things can only be passed down through genetics and some things can only be passed down through the stories that you tell, and we are currently in an era where we think story means a five act structure and who's being casted as the actor and what camera you shooting it on, and is it in camera or is it VFX through the computer. All these things that got nothing to do with story, as Rory's form is, is getting in the way of the actual human utility of what a story is supposed to do.
33:31
And my work and what we've been doing is storytelling in a very concrete way, almost in a very political way. There's been a story that has surrounded my area for a very long time and still does, and we have done the books, we have done the interviews, we've done documentaries to ensure that around the world, when have done the interviews, we've done documentaries to ensure that around the world, when you hear the name St Raffles Estate, you are not hearing those stories, you're hearing the one that we wrote and that's a very, that's a political move that we've made. We didn't call it that, but that is also why it's called Authors of the Estate. The term author is a political term, so it's called authors of the estate. The term author is a political term, so it's a. Yeah, I definitely think that, in order for us to understand the true meaning of things like storytelling or the true meaning of being an author. We have to look at the root of what these words mean and then say, if with this root meaning, what is the?
34:26
implications in our present day. Yeah, I appreciate the reframe. Yeah, I appreciate the reframe. It's interesting because I hear so many people talk about themselves as writers, as in the act of writing or creating. In french, we say auteur much more often than we say écrivain. Yes, but I? That's what it feels like, but in english not so much, and I'm gonna have to also let myself reflect on the words because I feel like what you're saying. It hits a note that I find is quite interesting. It links I guess that's going to take us to aspirational play it links creativity and writing to possibility. That's what I hear when I hear your reframe. That that's what I hear when I hear your reframe. Yeah, and perhaps now is the right time to ask you to tell me about your art college, about freedom, Freedom & balance yeah can you tell me about it and what it's like and what you do with it?
35:20
so I would even yes, I would even go back to another etymology. So we spoke about being a writer and being an author, storyteller. One of the things that really shifted in me is when I understood the etymology of the word education and educator. And the etymology of it meant essentially to rise up, so it was an agricultural term that you provide the conditions for this seed to germinate. So I realized that, for me, being a teacher is to have information and input it into another human being, and to be an educator, it, for me, is to provide the right conditions in order for the answer to come out. From the person, so that means that I may not have to say anything. The person, so that means that I may not have to say anything. I might just have to point to something, show something, incite something, or I can ask a question, and these are the things that bring about the actual gold that is humanity.
36:26
I definitely believe that every person has a way of processing humanity in a way that, if they had the time and space to do so and share it, we are all, in totality, richer for it. So I personally believe that, when it comes down to communities, particularly from working class backgrounds. We have the opportunities for everyone, but I think the people who struggle to have the time and space to develop that is often kids or adults from working class backgrounds. So what Freedom & Balance does is that it creates the curriculum, the conditions, the environment for people to grow, whatever unique language that they have within them. The way that we do it is often through play. So we do it through play and arts and the creative arts, because I believe that is the most accessible way in order for this to happen.
37:22
You can have a traditional course, where here's module one and module two, but I think that actually creating an environment that is playful and closer to a playground than a classroom allows people to find different entry points as to where they want to come in, but then also, as well, it allows people to actually go further than you may have planned and actually it opens up room to for you to be surprised as an educator, which is very important for me, because I see myself as active.
37:51
I don't believe that I have knowledge that I'm now going to be teaching people. I believe that I have questions that I want to explore with people. That's how I frame myself as an educator. Freedom & Balance is essentially it's an art college. That is what it is on paper, but Freedom & Balance is my portable learning environment that I bring people on and the questions that I'm asking about to do with my future and the world that I want to see. I open source it for people to come in and join and explore with me and see what answers they discover for themselves.
38:22
I love that description your portable learning system.
38:25
Yeah, yeah.
38:28
How did you fall in love with questions?
38:29
Yeah, yeah, how did you fall in love with questions? The boring answer was I worked at a. I worked at a management consultancy and this was the first job like this I've ever had so before, and all of my jobs were me getting paid to be a graphic designer or a writer or a poet in some way I'm getting paid for that. So this was the first time I was being paid'm getting paid for that. So this was the first time I was being paid to help solve business problems, and I was approaching all of these projects as an artist in a sense, where I was giving them the answers this is what we need to be doing, these are the visions, this is what we need to do.
39:04
And then I realized that actually most companies were not paying us for the answers.
39:11
They were paying us for the questions we were asking and the frameworks on how we can explore those questions. And that was just like a shift in thinking for me, because I was someone who put a lot of pressure on myself to always say the right thing and do the right thing. But actually there's so much of the artistic process that we hide, which is the question asking the piecing together separate information that may not make sense, yet the sitting with difficult information for a long period of time. This is actually part of the artistic process that we don't necessarily expose, and I found that the question is infinite. If I have a really good answer, I could only really say it once, if you hear it once. But I can ask you the same question every day and I might get a different answer every day. So it's just economically it just makes more sense long-term to put my energy into framing really good questions than trying to find the answer. And once you've said it, you've said it and there's actually no more discovery to be made after you've said it.
40:16
In saying what you said, you also explained why I love to ask the same questions at the end of each podcast interview, because each person offers their own unique answer from that moment. If I was to ask you the same question the day after or in 10 years, you may answer differently, and I find a lot of joy in hearing the answers to the same question there's something quite magical about it. I find it fascinating that you got there. How old were you when you got that job as a management consultant?
40:47
I think I was.
40:50
Gosh, you're so lucky, it's awesome. I'm saying that because I've been consulting for a few years very different kind of consulting, so not management consultant style.
41:01
Yeah.
41:01
But midway through my advisory services, let's say, I realized that my clients often paid me for my counsel.
41:12
Yes.
41:13
And then they did not follow it, even though they paid me dearly for it. And I got frustrated because I saw that by not following it, they were shooting themselves in the foot and not reaching the outcomes that they were seeking, and that's when I decided to flip things around, and I'm using a coaching model which is using a lot of questions to help my clients find their own answers. I just got there a lot later than you, no, I understand.
41:41
I was very privileged to come towards that realization super quick, because if I didn't work there I would have been on it for a very long time.
41:49
Yeah, and the thing that's. I'm not saying that it's not satisfying at times to have the answers, but there is something very interesting about the emergence that happens when you plant a good question and you see someone roll their eyes up and start thinking, and I find that there's a lot of satisfaction when someone says, oh, that's a good question. And you can see that they project somewhere else.
42:14
Yeah, and it's definitely. It's just a human thing. If you tell someone if you're about to watch a movie and you tell someone what the ending is, you could see that they don't even enjoy the film the same way, they're watching everything, thinking they know how it's going to end, but then that means that they're missing all the details that they would have paid attention to if they didn't know. I'm in an interesting space because I'm someone who loves to explain things. I love to explain things.
42:42
I love to tell people how things work and what didn't work and what you need to do in order to make it work. But what I found is that when I do it, people's eyes just glaze over, and even though they asked me how did I do it, when I tell them with a certain detail, their eyes glaze over. Then I realized that when I don't tell you and I embody it in a way that has no description to it, so it's almost unnameable then people then begin to ask themselves like what is he doing then? How do I like it invites them to join, when actually me, giving the straight answer, did not invite them to join at all yeah, embodiment, that's a great word yeah.
43:30
It's a really great word. I find that great artists often it's part of that there's an energy transmission. I was talking about that not long ago, a few hours ago, with a lady who contacted me for a speaking event and we ended up talking about how she had attended a lecture that was delivered by an AI, by an avatar, and it was an exploration. The teacher, it was an AI program and they were exploring how that was going to be received.
44:02
Yeah.
44:03
And she said even that the content was that of the teacher she had downloaded herself into this. It was very hard to follow yeah it was hard to follow and I don't know why, but in my head this made me go to the great indian yogis and gurus and how it is believed that they can transmit energy. They can transmit and awakening, essentially, which they call shaktipat, and I was like you can never get Shaktipat from an AI because it's missing that human element. They don't have our energy.
44:35
Yeah, there's so many times when there's also many times when you listen to someone sing a song and they sing it perfectly, but you don't feel nothing.
44:45
Yeah.
44:46
Or on the opposite end, you hear someone sing a song and their voice is croaky, but you feel it deep in your soul. Yeah, and that is the part of us that is unique to us or special for us, and oftentimes a mistake that I make is that I do not incorporate that enough. I don't offer myself enough. I don't offer myself enough. I almost like I offer my information, but there's a part of me that this meant, this information I'm sharing meant something for me and it changed my life in a way, and I'm a different person because of it. And it's that part of me that is important to infuse into that information, to the point where I believe that if you do that strongly enough, you actually don't need to say as much.
45:34
I think one of the things that I'm discovering for myself is one of the best forms of education is good form that if you do something, if you demonstrate something well enough that people will figure out how to do it. The way to educate people is not to tell people. It's to show people and and and and. Show it for yourself. You're not even showing it for the person. You're showing it Cause you're what you want to do. It You're trying to figure out you're learning Like. My greatest gift is to show people me learning and that will insight curiosity, rather than me talking about curiosity that doesn't. It doesn't insight much curiosity.
46:16
That's awesome and I can feel the dichotomy because I know and I can tell, because I've heard you speak, that you're very good at telling stories and very good at explaining things and why they are, but I am sure that you are way better at the embodiment than you think you are yeah, thank you.
46:36
I was going to ask you leading to this, then tell us about the experience of creating this TEDx talk and delivering it in London in January the TEDx talk was such a gift to me because the authors of the estate project is something that I initiated 10 years ago and, if I'm being very honest with you, I was tired of telling this story. I was very tired of telling this story often because I've done many projects after it, but that is the thing that. That's the thing that's connected. That's the thing that connects with people. I don't. Are you a hip hop fan?
47:13
I am.
47:14
So I feel like I released Illmatic. It was like like the Wolfers of the Estate, feels like my Illmatic, where like that's the first thing that people I've released things before but that's the top hit.
47:24
You can't escape it, that's it, you're going to have to play it until the end of your days, that's it, that's it, and at first that's very annoying as an artist because you're always learning and growing, but at the same time, it is the biggest gift, because most artists don't have that. Most artists don't have a thing that everyone wants you to talk about, everyone wants you to sing, or the catchphrase that people want you to say all the time. It doesn't require much from you, but, interestingly enough, it doesn't require much from you from the perspective of you're making anything new, but it does require something of you for you to say how is this information relevant to where I am right now? For example, the reason why this TED talk was such a gift for me is that I was framing the authors of the estate story in a way for the past 10 years that I have found tiring, because it's not where I am right now. So how I framed it before is that the narrative arc was more political. Our story has been taken away and we need to take our power back because we're authors of the estate and it made sense in 2015 when I first started this, but now it doesn't feel the same anymore. That's not where I'm at Culturally. Everything's changed from a more actually, from a more political framing to a more meme-based culture. Young people are very ironic and everything's funny and everything's like mockable, for better or for worse. There's just a way more. There's a cynicism, but also as well there's a playfulness in the air, and that is also where I'm at and that's where I'm heading. So speaking about this story didn't feel right like that anymore.
49:07
So when I said the TED Talk, I began speaking about my play life and how I played as a kid and where that playfulness got disrupted, and then how I brought my playfulness back. Not necessarily bring my power back or my autonomy back. Bring back my playfulness and why that's important to carry it out throughout into my future through aspirational play. That was a way of framing my story in a way that not only felt right for now, but it made me want to explore it further in the future as well. And so the TED Talk, the process of doing the TED Talk, was something that allowed me to understand that if you don't need new ideas all the time, sometimes you just need a new approach to how you've been doing things.
49:52
Oh, as a matter of fact, there's one comic book artist called Jonathan Hickman and there was one I think he was. It was his responsibility to reinvent the Fantastic Four I believe either that or X-Men or both of them and people in the industry was getting super excited because the way he was going to reframe the story was going to change, how the whole Marvel universe was going to be articulated in the comic books. And one of the things that he said was my goal is to package new ideas in old ideas. So my goal is to take something that you recognize and characters and storylines you recognize, and I'm just going to infuse it very slightly with these very strong new ideas that, if you latch onto it, we're going in a completely different direction, and it's that approach that I find very attractive.
50:45
Thinking of new stuff all the time, as a creative, actually has a physical cost on your body. I would love it to just be this thing that you can just do all the time, as a creative actually has a physical cost on your body. I would love it to just be this thing that you can just do all the time, but it's not like it actually affects. It affects your relationships, it affects where you go, what you don't do, it affects what you do, it affects your health. It actually has a physical cost and actually there's something beautiful about you looking at things that you've already done and then seeing okay, if I was to approach this a different angle, how would I approach it? So you take on more of the role of an editor than you do someone who's just reinventing all the time.
51:18
That's wonderful. I remember the talk really well and I've watched it a bunch of times this week because jogging my memory and it's true that what I remember most is play Sure, I bought the book, so I anchored part of my questions today because I wanted to understand where you came from.
51:38
Yeah.
51:40
But it's true that aspirational play is perhaps the most interesting, relevant element for right now that everyone can benefit from if they don't feel like exploring self-publishing for themselves right now, beyond their and most people don't.
51:59
And most people don't. But though I think that there are interesting seeds in what you say there and I hope that some of our listeners will that somehow it will germinate and shape something new in the future. So there's a part, I think, towards the end of the talk let me just pull it up that you ask the audience to consider. You say what kind of world can we play ourselves into, and I was wondering before. I was wondering when I listen to it again. I hope this doesn't feel too well, I'll just speak it. Sometimes I look at what happens on the world stage and it feels like a bunch of kids that have been given the power codes.
52:49
Yes.
52:50
And a lot of egos and, I don't know, tantrums, yeah. And when I read that question and listened to it on YouTube the other day, it felt like maybe some of us have not actually been asking ourselves enough about play, because if we had, it would be a different kind of leadership at the helm, perhaps yeah, and also that's what emerged for me yeah, yeah, and also as well.
53:19
It's interesting because I it's very easy to make place synonymous with good. Like good, play is not always good. You can play day you like, you could play very harshly, and also there's all this p. There's a reason why we have the term cheat. Someone's a cheater because they play, but they're playing in a way that's actually ruining the game. It's ruining how we the rest of us play, so there is a. It can go either way, but I think the thing that I believe happens as we get older is that we don't know what we're doing. When we're a child, we know we don't know what we're doing, and it's socially acceptable to not know what you're doing.
54:00
You're supposed to learn, and that's why play is often synonymous with being a child, and we put many systems in place for children to learn through play. If not, we wouldn't sing the alphabet to children. We know that singing it is the best way for them to learn the alphabet. What then happens, though, is that there is an error after the play error that is like the supposed error. So you're supposed to know certain things, or you're supposed to be at a certain place at a certain time, or oh, I'm in my, I'm 16 years old, so I'm supposed to do this now. Well, I'm in my 30s, I'm supposed to do this, and what then happens is that you go from being having an exploratory headspace, which you had to have from when you was born up until you was a child, and replacing it with finding the template for life, which is the safest template to have, which is, which would have been okay if you didn't give up the exploratory part of you completely.
54:56
Because, safety is important, especially when you get older and you need to start bringing people along the ride with you, whether it's a significant other, or whether it is children, or whether it's your family or friends. So providing a level of trust and safety is important, but what ends up happening is that is completely replaced with, or that completely replaces your need to be uncertain for a period of time, or for you to search something out and not know if it's going to benefit you or be much rewarding. But you just need to explore it for a little bit. Everything now needs an objective. Everything now needs an instant reward, and what that then means is that we actually are probably as, not further along in humanity as we think we are, because the people who actually take the time out to figure things out are few and far between, and some of them which we're being dependent upon. Some of them do not have great intentions, some of them have horrible intentions, but they know how to make these electric cars faster, so we have to trust you. Or they know how to build certain technologies or build certain buildings, or they know how to reframe the world, because they've taken the space and the time to know how to just play with the raw materials that they have around them. Space and the time to know how to just play with the raw materials that they have around them.
56:15
So, yes, I believe that play is good. I think it's a nice to have and also, as well, I think it's actually a very important political power. The same way how I was framing self-publishing to be a very important political power you knowing how to look at the raw material around you and ask what are the possibilities of this raw material that can serve me, my community, the world it's a super important skill to have, particularly in this era of AI. Actually, this is interesting. This is completely freestyling.
56:44
I think that beforehand publishing for me was important, but I don't know how important it is anymore in an era where an AI chatbot can write entire books for you, because the thing that I was promoting is that the process of self-publishing does something for you. However, the thing that AI cannot do for you is play. It cannot play for you. It cannot. It cannot search something out, because play is a very intrinsic thing. As a matter of fact, watching someone play is not that fun sometimes is a lot of the things happening internally unless you're very in love with the team unless you, absolutely unless you understand what, how they're playing and what they're doing if you understand the pre, the rules, then it's fine.
57:37
But seeing someone figure it out is not the most entertaining thing. But I think that is the thing even now, more so than self-publishing or coining a new idea. I think the pursuit or being in the process of process and trying something out to get an unexpected result is the thing that will help exercise our humanity in this era.
58:02
That's really interesting. I've been thinking a lot about the importance of stories and how we receive them and the word play. So I used to be a singer and a musician a long time ago.
58:19
The word play is not far for me from the metaphor that I like to engage with when I think about how we receive stories. I was thinking about the concept of resonance. So technically, our voice is made up not just of our vocal cords but how the sound reverberates and resonates within the cavity in our faces and the shapes and the muscles that are in it. But we receive sound and we receive words, and and some of them can land flat. I don't know why it always comes to me with that my hand has to show this. It lands flat and it doesn't go in.
58:58
Right.
59:00
I think most of the time when I read anything that AI has given me, however good, the prompt is that I gave it. It's going to titillate my intelligence, yes, but it lands flat.
59:12
Yeah, you can feel it.
59:13
It's going to titillate my intelligence, but it lands flat. Yeah, you can feel it. It doesn't resonate and I like to think that when we release the story, that is something that is personal, that is felt. To your point earlier about some songs that we feel and songs that we don't Performances, rather, perhaps rather than song and how sound or, in this case, ideas or story. It bounces off places inside of us and we don't always understand how and why it makes us move.
59:43
Yeah.
59:44
But it touches parts of our psyche that I don't believe can create this kind of response in us.
59:53
Yes, I agree, I agree At least not at this stage, and I think that there's an element of what you're talking about play, because part of what we do as human is imperfect, right, and it's sometimes, as you were saying, in this imperfection or this approximation yeah it's in the places where it's not quite where we want it to be, but that we touch at something that then is felt by someone else yeah, yeah, and I think even then I don't know if you've ever sang something and you sang something wrong, but then you made a discovery, like, oh, I like that, though. Let's go there, let's keep going down that path. I think because of the, the machine age that we've been in for the past hundred or so years, we've had a very unhealthy relationship to ourselves and we have been referring ourselves to machinery. If someone's very productive, or the fact that we even call them productive, or we will say that person's a machine, or or, in London, if you're doing something, you're banging it out, but like that, these are all mechanical terms, yeah, these are all terms that are connected to that, and just not human at all. There's something about getting things wrong that even that is great.
01:01:09
Educational entry points. I was watching I mean, don't ask why, but you could ask why I was watching mr rogers. Oh yeah, mr rogers, friendly neighborhood, his show and I was watching an episode where he was playing someone was doing a hula hoop and he was saying, oh, can I use the hula hoop? And he used the hula hoop, but he has no waistline, no rhythm, so like the hula hoop would just fall flat on the floor. But you could see him, he's not doing it in a performative way. You could see he's genuinely trying, but it's just not working and there's something about it not working for him.
01:01:40
That was very educational for me, even as a grown man. I was like, oh, he was willing number one. He was willing to fail that often, but also he was willing to keep that on tape. Yeah, there was something about it that that educated me as an educator and I think that there is something to be said about. I have had a very unhealthy aspiration towards perfection, and and now I'm asking myself, actually what if I aspired to be? Actually what if I aspired to be more tender, or if I aspired to try more, willing to make more mistakes, because beforehand my aspirations was to do with not getting things wrong.
01:02:24
Yeah.
01:02:25
And finding the message and finding the perfect words, but actually my humanity is in the search and it's in the trying and it's in the not quite there yet. As a matter of fact, I get more fulfillment in the pursuit of an idea than this completion. I get way more from the pursuit of writing a book than actually finishing the book. The moment the book's done, I get into a very deep existential crisis. So it's those in between things that I think is important to lead in, because there's so much, there's so much to learn, and especially for me, because I am a very I'm about democratizing certain processes. I'm saying this to myself it is important to show where things just didn't, or show things not going right, yeah, and be okay with that, because that is the entry point for people to say, oh, if it didn't go well for you, then I could try it, let me try it it's very inspiring.
01:03:23
I recognize also the ways in which yeah, perfection. I know how to push the button that says send, when it just needs to be published. But I did have to find a bunch of systems to help me not go crazy in pursuit of perfection beforehand, otherwise nothing would ever go out into the world yeah, it never goes out into the world.
01:03:51
Yeah, yeah, it never goes out in the world. And also as well, when I say I'm beginning to understand this, like within the last week, I'm beginning to understand that it's more secure to show my insecurities than to hide it.
01:04:09
Yeah.
01:04:10
So I would. I was always visualizing myself. I visualize myself as a secure person. But to be more secure is to have less of these insecurities. But I'm now realizing that a more secure version of myself is to show and be willing for those insecurities to be out there and you could see it and me show myself a grace for those being there. It's a.
01:04:36
I think it's an important thing for humans to accept, for me to accept. But humans, because we are going to be competing against machines who are perfect, who will write a book way better than you or will design a game or build, put together a blueprint way better than you, with very small margin for error. So then we have to ask ourselves what is the human experience? And the human experience is the discomfort of learning. The other day I was thinking about myself as a child and understanding that I romanticize what it was like to be a child. But then, if I look at my past self very empathetically, I couldn't wait to be an adult. I couldn't wait to grow up because I thought that once you get there, you don't have to learn as much. You would have known it all. That's when you see your parents and they do something stupid. You're like, oh, but you should know it all, you know it all.
01:05:31
But the truth of the matter is that, as a kid, learning is difficult and trying is difficult, and the reason why I believe we are, by nature, playful is because that is the approach we take to handle the difficulty of being uncertain all the time.
01:05:49
It's a way to allow us to learn for a long period of time. So I think that we have to be more gentle with what it means to learn and what it means to discover and the process required to discover things, because it's just not. It's just not fun and actually it's quite painful. Some, a lot of times, it's embarrassing, and actually it gets more embarrassing the older that you get, because the older that you get you have a track record. For if you're known to be a great speaker and you try something on stage once, that just goes horribly wrong. It's more embarrassing than if this is your first time speaking. So almost the cost of learning gets more and more expensive. Yeah, but I think to fight to keep that right to learn and to fight to keep the right to play is such an important thing to carry throughout life.
01:06:44
I was wondering how you discovered facilitation, and I like how you talk about it. You say bringing people along with you. How did you discover this? And it sounds like you were born to be a facilitator.
01:06:59
I. So I really enjoyed creating things. I really enjoyed putting together creative projects poems, books, graphic design, posters but I found that I was always by myself when I was doing it, and I was always in a room with just one person, which is me, trying to piece together these ideas. So I really wanted to bring I wanted to bring people into the journey with me, but I didn't know how, and I didn't want the people that I brought on with me to be these professionals who are in the same industry as me. I wanted them to be my friends, who are not necessarily interested in creating the way I am. So I had to ask myself if I were to show them how to do it. I either can force them to go to art school or I can give them a framing that allows them to enjoy it to a certain level.
01:08:01
And I cannot remember how I came across the term facilitation While I was asking myself how do I bring people into this creative process, and it's not me all the time. I then came across that term, and so then I then understood oh, facilitation is what I've been looking for this whole time, which is, you're bringing people on a creative process. So I didn't approach it the way in which many facilitators approach it. I approached it as a creative tool. I understood that it was as a creative tool, the same way how a pen and paper is, and it allows you to create in a certain way. So then I started to ask myself, all right, like I bought this book Game Storming, which is like the bible when it comes to facilitating and running workshops. I read through every single exercise that book gave Game Storming. There was another one called the Doodle Revolution that was written by the same author, and my thing was like how do you use these or what's the underlying principles that make these exercise work?
01:09:04
And once I understood what those underlying principles were, then I didn't have to be too wedded to be in a facilitator. I didn't have to use that language, I just needed it for me to understand what it was sure. And then afterwards I would. Then I just understood that actually the basis for most facilitation is asking a really good question and giving people a frame to explore that question with it. And that's basically it. So whenever I'm working with anyone, my question is like where are we trying to go? Number one what are the questions that can help excite you to get there, and then also, what are the frames that you would need along the way to get there safely? And yeah, that's been what I've been doing ever since and I've built essentially my whole business around that premise.
01:09:52
And you've worked with a bunch of really amazing companies. This approach, these processes, this is something that's game changing for some of the biggest names who need someone like you to come in and help reframe right yeah open perspectives through questions. Yes, how can people? What kind of clients do you service?
01:10:13
uh, the types of organizations I'm interested in working with people who either are very focused on what the future could be like for their organization or the people they're serving, or very much interested in the source material that they've been building their organization or movement or business from and want to know how that could be revisited. And I'm very I might. The core of my business is always figuring out how people and organizations can speak clearer in their truest voice. That's me. But the direction that I'm interested in people going in is either charting new territories that have never been before or almost like reinventing themselves and seeing where they could go afterwards. And so if there's an organization that's out there that's interested in those two things, then my question is always how can I get all of my knowledge that I understand about playfulness to serve you on your journey?
01:11:17
So yeah, I don't have. I work with everyone. I've worked with philanthropists, I work with sports companies, game companies, I've worked with tech companies. I've worked with everyone, because everyone has the same basic, same basic desire, which is we want to either survive or we want to thrive. We want to survive as a company or we want to go into uncharted territories in a thriving way and who I am on that journey is I am Gandalf, but I'm Gandalf, and all of my tools, all my magic, is tools of play, essentially.
01:11:49
That's a great analogy to land on, I must say. I'm hoping everyone gets that. I remember seeing something about love letters to loved ones. Tell me about what that project is.
01:12:04
It's love letters for my peoples and the idea of the project was five years ago, when pandemic hit. I would write these journals Every single day. I'll sit down with a journal and once the journal's finished, I would write on the side of the journal what the overall theme of the journal was. And then one time I had a blank journal and I just wrote on the side of it a love letter. And I decided to write a handful of love letters to people in my life, whether they were friends or foes, all kinds of people in my life family members, friends, ex-lovers, employees, strangers on the street and every day I would write a love letter to them. And then what I found? Once I finished that journal and I read it back, I was reading my autobiography. I was reading my autobiography through the lens of all these relationships that I've had.
01:12:55
That sounds amazing.
01:12:57
Yeah, yeah, no, it is amazing. I definitely recommend it. So again, this is a private thing that I wanted to now make public. I then said, all right, what if I was to make this a open sourced journal? So I made a journal called Love Letters for my Peoples and it was a six chapter journal with different types of love letters to write. Some of them are really lighthearted and some are a little bit heavier, but it's just different types of people to write love letters to, and actually the questions in that journal is way more sophisticated than what I was giving myself when I done my first love letters.
01:13:33
But then I asked myself, what if I was to make a playground centered around these love letters? So not only did we release the book, but then we also had a space in east london, um, that was open for the period of six weeks for people to come in and they were given these love letter prompts and then they would then either write it or collage it or draw it, and and then we will just then share it with each other. And it was the most. It is one of the most touching environments I've been in as far as understanding people from the perspective of the relationships that they've had and how they've connected with other human beings, which I found that even the people who are writing the love letters themselves often don't speak about. Love you? That very few people. As much as we love the idea of love, we don't actually speak about it in a detailed enough way. So we had that for the period of six weeks, and even every single week I'll put out a play prompt, and these play prompts is just a way for me to get the online community whether you're on instagram or website to go out into the world and do something playful. And these ones were to do with love and reaching out to certain people, whether it's someone old friend that you haven't spoken to in a while, or buying a gift for a stranger, or. There were so many different aspects that we went in with the play prompts, but for those six weeks, the was to see can you put out a wave of good love energy out into the world and what does that look like? And I think that was probably the first thing that Freedom & Balance has put out.
01:15:12
That encapsulates all of the things I'm talking about, whether it has to do with self-publishing, creativity, playfulness, education, and not mention any of those words, because love itself has enough education within it. If love is the focus, you will be doing all the things anyway. There is playfulness, there is education, there is creativity if you're in love. And yeah, so we call that heartwork. The actual definition of that type of creativity is heartwork. A rule in our college is if it's not heartwork, it's not artwork, which means that if you're not using the source material from your heart, the raw material of your heart, and using that as a way of articulating it, I really don't care how great you've written it or how great it looks. It doesn't mean anything unless it involves those strands of you in there. So, yeah, that's what I love letters from my people as well.
01:16:05
Thanks, oh, what's the second rule?
01:16:09
Oh. The second rule is that, again, these are things that I only understand as I get up this upward spiral. The second rule is the process is the prize? Oh yeah, what that means is that oftentimes, when someone comes into my environment my playing by environments they often are looking for the objective and figuring out how do you do a good job and how do you complete whatever's being asked of you. And when you're playing, you have to redefine what quality is. When you're playing, quality is not how good something looks or how great something sounds. Quality is based on the quality of discovery that you've made and what you've discovered and how much you've discovered. So if someone's with me for two hours, how I frame it is you have two hours to discover things that you may not have space or time or room to discover, things that you may not have space or time or room to discover anywhere else. So just play and share as much as you can in these two hours, because it will expand how much we could discover. And that is where I'm at in life right now.
01:17:13
As much as I speak about process, I still worry about the end goal. I still worry about where's everything leading up to, but I understand that the things that I've created has bought me my freedom. I have more time than ever. I have more resources than ever to explore and stay in the process. Stay in the process to figure out what my personal play language looks like.
01:17:39
To stay in the process to figure out what happens when you invite friends and family and community to continually be in creative process, but then also as well to figure out what happens to see how play actually serves humanity within my lifetime. So every time I going back to the more you create, the freer you become. Every time I create, I'm opening up or I'm buying back to. The more you create, the freer you become. Every time I create, I'm opening up or I'm buying back the freedom or the possibility to see what happens if I stay in the process just a little bit longer. So there's always an anxiety around it like where's this all heading towards, but the fact that I can even be in this process is the gift itself.
01:18:20
Yeah, holding the paradox. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that.
01:18:27
My pleasure.
01:18:29
If that's okay, I'm going to now move on to my closing questions, some of which I have been told are very hard.
01:18:35
Okay, let's go.
01:18:38
The first one is what is a favorite word, or your favorite word, and I like to frame it as one that you feel so comfortable with. You could wear it on yourself, so tattoo it or live with it for a while.
01:18:56
It would be creativity. I wouldn't tattoo the word creativity on me, but if you're asking a word that I'm just so comfortable with, it would be creativity.
01:19:07
What does connection mean to you?
01:19:11
Connection means to know and to be known.
01:19:17
What song? Best represents you to be known what song best represents you. That's the toughest.
01:19:32
Oh, I don't even like this song. Yeah, I actually don't like this song.
01:19:40
Have you heard the theme song to Arthur?
01:19:43
no, I don't think. So what is it? If you get the time, just youtube arthur theme song okay I'll read the lyrics to you.
01:19:52
Hold on oh, that's very funny okay, hold on.
01:20:02
I don't even like the song, but anyway it goes every day when you're walking down the street and everybody that you meet has an original point of view and I say, hey, what a wonderful kind of day if you learn to work and play and get along with each other. You've got to listen to your heart, listen to the beat, listen to the rhythm of the street, open up your eyes, open up your ears, get together and make things better by working together. It's a simple message and it comes from the heart. Just believe in yourself.
01:20:30
That's the place to start okay, wow, I mean, I mean it's right on message.
01:20:40
Everything we spoke about. That is the song. I don't like the song.
01:20:44
I can't wait to find out what it sounds like.
01:20:48
Yeah, you'll have a great time. You'll have a great time.
01:20:51
That's fantastic.
01:20:52
Yeah.
01:20:54
What is the sweetest thing that has ever happened to you?
01:21:08
Sweetest thing it's so small. It is the fact that whenever I said to my mom I wanted to be something, she just gave something that would start that journey. So, for example, like there was a period of time when I was like 10 or 11, I wanted to be a rapper and then for Christmas he just gave me a notebook. But the notebook wasn't. The notebook cost maximum £1.50. It wasn't like it wasn't a big gift, but it was that. But I wrote my first lyrics in that notebook and then I went to school with it and then I found out I was actually pretty good and then that then turned into poetry and that then turned into writing books and she's always given me something that just allows me to be who I thought I wanted to be at the time. So the notebook that my mom gave me at 11 years old at Christmas was is the sweetest thing it's beautiful.
01:22:00
What is a secret superpower that you have? And I say secret aka you haven't told us about it yet do you know what techiness is?
01:22:10
okay, so I'll explain. Techie, so something's techie, and this might just be london slang, so something's techie. It is that something is finicky, it's a problem, it's going to be a headache. Yeah, it's a headache. So my superpower secret superpower is that I can detect techiness from a mile away.
01:22:37
Oh nice, I can tell when something is about to be techie, and then I, just, I move accordingly.
01:22:42
Definitely a superpower it's a superpower, but it's sometimes it's not useful, because if you ever say it before it happens, then you almost create a time paradox where it doesn't happen, but now you've got another problem because you said it was gonna happen. It's too long. So basically, it's the reason why it's a secret is that if you reveal it, then it ends up creating another problem I see that yeah what is a favorite book that you can share with us?
01:23:09
the bible is actually a very foundational till this day, but it's a. It was the first book that I cared about. It's the first book I cared to read. It's the first book I cared to read. It's the first book that gave me a sense of purpose and a sense of self beyond what people was telling me in life, and it taught me how to write.
01:23:36
Because I grew up reading the Bible aloud to myself and because I was reading the King James Version, it was intentionally translated to read like a Shakespearean Sure, so it affected how I write and timing and all that kind of stuff. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah, that was like my school as far as like how to write, how metaphors work and also as well how text can contain something spiritual, because the Bible itself says that the word by itself will kill you. So, like these words by themselves, without any spirit, it will kill you rather than give you life. It's the words and the spirit that actually do something. So I learned that concept through the Bible, which is you can say the information, but unless your spirit's in it in some way, it's not going to do what you need to do. It might actually do the opposite.
01:24:28
Beautiful Thank you, imagining that you can step into a future version of yourself. What is the most important advice that you think future you needs to give to present time?
01:24:42
André, it's probably I don't know it'll probably be something about the importance of shaving off or pruning or letting go of something. I think in my future I will grow. In my future I will amass things, but I don't think the importance of my future is about what I accumulate. I think it's actually about what got shaven off and what I let go of and what isn't as important, and making sure that the main things stay the main things. I don't know what the advice would be, but I'd probably have to do something to do with letting go of something.
01:25:25
And this brings me to my last question what brings you happiness?
01:25:30
So this is a deep one. The thing that brings me happiness is to know that the world heard me, the world heard me and the world can be the planet, or the world can just be whoever's in my orbit right now, spending a lot of time by myself. As a kid, you invent all these different worlds and ideas and all that kind of stuff in your head, but it's just in your head and then something happens when you say it in a playground and then the next day your friend says it and then by the end of the week, everyone in the playground saying it. So, oh, that's cool. I thought this was just in my head, but actually this is something that's useful for everyone.
01:26:14
So I think the thing that brings me happiness is to know that what gets cultivated in the quiet, solitary hours of the morning or night is actually a way of me connecting with my world and again going back to knowing them, getting to know them and being known by them. My happiness comes when me, in my complete weird self, like I consider weird and you know, I mean I, I mean I don't think I, I don't think, I think super regular and that being shared, and you hearing the echo back, or you seeing someone do something that that you helped influence in some way just helps me to feel connected to my wider world. So, yeah, that brings me happiness.
01:26:59
Thank you so much for sharing that. Thank you for thank you for everything that you shared. André, I'm so excited and so happy that I was able to approach you and bring you these questions. I think that a lot of the work you do is important, and I'm hoping that your words are going to resonate and perhaps that you'll be planting seeds through this podcast.
01:27:22
I will also put links to everything that you do and to the books and Freedom Balance, the art college, as well as a couple of previous interviews. I've listened to that I thought were really great. Is there anything? How can people get in touch?
01:27:37
So you can get in touch, either online Instagram you could do freedom underscore balance on linkedin just look for Freedom & balance, I'm there somewhere or the best place is to go on my website, so Freedom & balancecom. If you just scroll down just a little bit, there'll bea tag that says enroll. Put your email address and your name in there and whenever we release a new program or a new film or a new anything, a new invitation to play, you'll get something in your inbox to invite you to this play, and that's the best way you could contact with us cool.
01:28:10
Thank you so much for sharing again, and I'll definitely be enrolling to make sure that I continue to hear from your work. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and then hopefully I'll see you another time in person soon. Yeah, somehow perhaps another speaking opportunity or a play prompt yes, somewhere.
01:28:28
Yeah, and I look forward to it as well cool.
01:28:31
Thanks so much, André. Have a great day thank you, you too.
01:28:44
So, friends and listeners, thanks again for joining me today. If you'd like to hear more, you can subscribe to the show on the platform of your choice, and if you'd like to connect with me, you can find me at Anne V on threads on Instagram Anne V Muhlethaler. On LinkedIn If you don't know how to spell it, the link is in the notes or on instagram, at underscore. Out of the clouds, where I also share daily musings about mindfulness. You can find all of the episodes of the podcast and much more on the website outofthecloudscom. If you'd like to find out more from me, I invite you also to subscribe to the MettaView, my weekly newsletter, where I explore coaching, brand development, conscious communication and the future of work. That's the MettaView with two Ts themettaviewcom. So that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to Out of the Clouds. I hope that you will join me again next time. Until then, be well, be safe and take care.