S3, E3 - Nuala O'Sullivan

Nuala O'Sullivan is a film festival director and runs the Women Over Fifty Film Festival (WOFFF) in the UK. The film festival brings the fun, fearless and real stories about and by women over 50 with an annual short film festival and year-round events and film screenings. The episode was recorded on the 31 October 2023.

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Transcript

0:15

Welcome listeners to Artist Tales, the podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host Heather Martin and this episode is a bit different. I'm talking with Nuala O'Sullivan who is a Film Festival director and runs the Women Over 50 Film Festival. Welcome Nuala. Hello, thanks for having me. Well thanks for being a guest, it's really good to have you. So tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into running the film festival. Well I've got a deep, deep background, long, long background. Long time ago I was an English as a foreign language teacher and spent about 10 years in Asia. And then when I came back to this country I eventually got a job at the BBC World Service where there's actually a part for teaching English as a foreign language and they make resources for students and teachers. And I was employed to create an online soap opera. Very short, just one minute every week. It was online. And the idea was to make this world have a little drama and a cliffhanger every week and on the back of it teach points about grammar and vocabulary and all that. And fairly soon into the job I realised that what was motivating me to get up in the morning was to write the soap opera. I was enjoying that so much. And actually... writing the worksheets for vocabulary and grammar. You know, I had been doing that for so long, it wasn't really exciting me anymore. And it made me think that maybe I wanted to do something in the creative writing field. And I eventually left the BBC World Service and took some time to really concentrate on my creative writing. And I wrote for the radio and for theater. And then I wrote a short film. And it was the experience of, because I was also the producer of that short film, which is called Microscope, and my job was to try and find festivals that we could enter the film into. And then I started going to more film festivals and it was there that I saw, or rather I didn't see representations of me, either on screen or in the room. and I am now 61 years old. And at the time when I was doing that, I was in my early 50s, I can't remember, 51, 52. So it was really my first experience of the invisibility of the older woman, the middle-aged woman. And I thought, actually, I want to do something about that. I want to create a festival where people aren't being made to feel marginalized or ignored. So that's really, that's how I came into the world of short film festivals. LESLIE And I'm quite interested in how you set up the film festival and how you went about doing it because I know, I must admit, I know nothing about sort of, you know, anything to do with film festivals apart from being someone in the audience really. I can write, I can create, I can do different things, but really in my bones I'm a producer. And a producer is just somebody with a big long list and you just tick your way down through the list and then a date comes and the things are either ticked off or they're not, but the thing has to go ahead. So actually, if you've ever hung an exhibition, if you've ever organized a party, lots of things that we do in our everyday life, if you've ever organized a big meeting at work. That's what's involved in putting on a film festival. You know, you've got to find a venue, you've got to find films, you've got to find filmmakers, you've got to find an audience, and you've got to engage them and bring them along with you. And then you've got to put on some great films and have good guests, all that kind of stuff. But I wasn't trained as a film festival producer, so actually a lot of it was guesswork. And I think I've got pretty good instincts, but over the years I've honed and learned, and of course gone to a lot of festivals as an audience member and as a speaker and as an invited person or when I was a film producer. So I've seen festivals from all different angles and I think that's always very helpful in any walk of life, particularly in the arts, if you can see an art production. from different sides. I remember in the early days I was a volunteer at the BFI Flair, the LGBT film festival, because I wanted to know what it was like to be a volunteer at a film festival. And then that has really informed how we work with volunteers at our festival. So I think it's important to get that all-around 360 look at any kind of project. just so for the benefit of listeners. So it sounds like before getting into setting up your own festival you were involved with at least BFI Flair, so you had some experience at least helping out. So starting from scratch to me sounds quite daunting. So did it start small? What were your goals in I guess the first year or two to try to build up this film festival? I just wanted to know if I was an outlier or if there were really other people like me. I really felt very alone in those early years when I was going to film festivals on my own. And you know me, Heather, I'm not backwards about coming forwards. You know, I'm not a Shrinkin' Violet sort of person. So I'd never found it difficult to be in any kind of art situation, you know, being at an exhibition or... being at a play or being at a film, and then in the bar afterwards, I would quite happily talk to strangers about the art that we'd both just experienced. But I found I was being literally overlooked in the bar. I could track people's eyes as they went round the room and they went up and over me and around. So the goal of the first year was to find out, A, is there really, is there a lot of work around by older women and about older women? because really I could count on the fingers on one hand, the number of older women who were totally carrying a film, totally carrying a TV series, you know, 10 years ago. You know, there's a few, of course, well-known stars like Judi Dench and Meryl Streep and all the rest of them, but they're not opening films week after week the way that younger stars are. So I wanted to know, first of all, was there actually... Was there actually a lot of work around a lot of short films made by older women? Was there a lot of work about short films about older women? And crucially, was there an audience for this? Did anybody want to see it or was it just me? So in the first year that was really my goal. Could we get some work and could we find a venue? Could we put tickets on sale and would people turn up? And the very first year with a friend who had a shop in Brighton, and that's why we had the first festival in Brighton, which is on the South East Coast, about an hour outside of London. It's a big LGBT friendly city, so my wife and I had spent many happy weekends in Brighton, so it was a place that we were interested in being in, and it's got a really great art scene. So with a friend who had a shop, so then we had an address, like an official address for the festival, she had a wee shop in Brighton, and... All we had at the beginning was a website and a Twitter account. And we just wrote on this website and the Twitter account, have you got a film? And the rule that we started with in 2015 was the rule that we still live by. So every film has to either have a woman over 50 at the heart of it on screen. She's got to be really driving the action. She can't be enabling somebody else to have the adventure. She's got to be having the adventure herself. Or... there has to be a woman over 50 as the writer, producer or director. And really just by chance, we came up with that rule in the pub one night, but actually we ended up creating this incredibly inclusive and welcoming festival because a 14 year old teenager could make a documentary about their 72 year old great grandma and great grandma and the film and the teenager are all welcome at WAAF. So it was a really good way. to make sure that the conversation about older women's representation was including everybody. It wasn't just us talking to ourselves. So we put out this call on Twitter and on our website and back in 2015 people then were sending in DVDs of their work. It wasn't quite so much all MP4s and online. We got a few things online and I think that first year I think we got, I think we got, it was 60 or 70. submissions. So really early on they started to come in. I just thought, okay, right. So the work is there. And then we found a small community hall in Brighton up the back of Seven Dials called Exeter Street Community Hall. And it had 80 seats and we put 80 tickets on sale. And on that one Saturday in October in 2015, 80 people turned up and they loved the film. And we didn't show, selection process. We didn't show all 60 films. I think we showed about 21 or 22 that first year, maybe 27, I can't quite remember. You know, maybe, so some were, some were, some more than half of the ones that were sent we didn't show. So we had good rigorous selection process even in those early days and 80 people turned up and they loved it. So it was a very, I think it was a very modest goal that we had in the first year. to know if the work was there and if an audience wanted to see it. And we proved that both those things were true. And we knew then that the festival had legs. And from 2015, what's the response been? It sounds like it got off to a good start. So what's it like in the following years? So it just got bigger and bigger and bigger until it didn't. And that was about COVID. Covid, I think for a lot of people, and I listen to a lot of guests that you've had in your show and conversations I've had with people, I think the years of Covid, which we are frankly still in some ways, but those lockdown times, I think gave a lot of us a chance to just reassess what was important and maybe thinking about were we pushing ourselves too much. And the great move to having things accessible online made me really think about how accessible WAF was. And it made me think actually, I wanted to, my new mantra became better, not bigger. And that became really important to me that we had gone from, it was really like, it was almost a half day the first year, and we had increased in size in the festival to a day, to a day and a half, to two days, we've moved up to two and a half days with workshops and. and panel events and lectures and all kinds of things. It was brilliant, but I knew that it was coming at quite a high cost to me. And it was going to be difficult to continue at that level. And the lockdown time, that first year in 2020, we put all the festival online. And it was so interesting where the audience were able to connect to us. you know, from all around the world. And it made me think I wanted to do more of that, to connect more with people, to really... Because we're, as far as I know, we're the only festival like this in the world. There's a small festival in Japan that shows feature films featuring women over 60, but there's nothing that deals with short films for women over 50, pretty much. So I know that WAF is really important, and I want it to reach a... bigger audience, though not necessarily a physical festival. And so since 2020, 2020 we were entirely online, but from 21 onwards, we've become a hybrid festival and we're one day in person and now we're up to months online. And I just think it gives a, it feels a better balance for me as the producer and the director of it and it feels more accessible. to more people around the world without necessarily having to come into physical space to watch the films. And I'm just thinking with the accessibility as well, you know, not all venues are all that accessible, whether it's, you know, mobility or visual or, you know, whatever the challenge is for the person. So, I mean, being online, I don't know if visuals necessarily overcome, but I'm sure there's other aspects to being accessible. It means you're even in the UK, you might be reaching even... more of an audience? Yeah, I mean, having said that, having said about accessibility, I have to give a huge shout out to our home cinema, which is Depot in Lewis, which is about 10 minutes away from Brighton. And it is a really magical venue and it's totally green. It's got a massive big garden. It's got a bar and a restaurant and it's all on one level. So it's wheelchair accessible. And in terms of the accessibility, the they're doing for people with visual and hearing disabilities is really phenomenal. And I also would say that at WAFF, since I think the last five years or more, all the films that we show are subtitled. So we are aware of many of those barriers that might stop people coming to a festival. But I absolutely take your point. It could be more accessible than having a film festival in your own house because you can set it up exactly the way that you want to. Yeah, I think accessibility for a lot of organizations is quite a challenge and I'm even conscious about accessibility for my own podcast, you know. So I think it is something to be aware of. So one clarification, when you say WAF, that's the film festival that you run, so just for the listener. But I also wanted to ask you, how important was it for you to, you know, was this accessibility something that you became aware of or was it something that was important fairly early on? It was a kind of combination and it was also a kind of personal experience that I found that I was turning the volume up more and more on the TV or I was putting subtitles on when my wife could hear the dialogue perfectly fine in English and I was having trouble with it so I was putting subtitles on and then when I did research I found out that I think it's 40% of people over 50 are living with some hearing loss and that number just goes up and up as we get older. And in... I think it was the second or the third year I remember talking to a filmmaker about subtitles and she said pretty much the same thing that I just said there about having subtitles on more in her own home. And it made me think, well if we are a film festival, we're centering on older people, then one of the things that we really should be thinking about is thinking how we watch films in our own home, how we make them accessible to us, that's what we should be doing in the cinema. So it was a combination of personal experience and then doing some research and thinking almost in the same way as when we set up the Women Over 50 Film Festival or WAAF. It was, what's the thing that I can do in the world that will make a difference? And, you know, there are lots of different ways that you can be an activist and you can change the world. But I knew that a film festival, a short film festival, focused on older women was the one... I thought I could do that. And similarly, once I learned about hearing loss as we get older, I thought, hmm, I could make a change here. I could make WAAF be committed to always having subtitles. And it has been a bit of a fight. Some people think aesthetically, you know, they don't want to have subtitles there. You know, so it's, but I was quite committed to it. And that's kind of, that's how that came about. So it sounds like it has become more of an important thing to be mindful of. You did mention a little bit earlier that the toll, this being the driving force between this film festival, sort of, you know, the toll that's taken on you. So, I mean, what is that and how do you manage it? Because it sounds like you've become a lot more aware of it and you know, obviously a lot, you know, these things can sort of overtake people. Part of it came around because I was working with an academic, Dr. Deborah German from the University of Royal Hampton, and we collaborated on a chapter in a book called Women, Aging and the Screen Industries, Falling off a Cliff, edited by Dr. Susan Liddy. And our chapter was basically an oral history of WAF. And one of the things that Deborah wrote in the introduction, she'd said to me quite a few times, she said, so often, particularly women, but not only women, have a... work very, very hard at something and they give a lot, you know, a number of years to usually art, could be politics, could be anything, and then they run out of steam. You know, it takes too much of a toll on them and the thing closes and she says, and then there's no record that it was ever there. She said, and one of the reasons I want to do this chapter is because I want to put it in writing that this film festival exists. And so I was aware, I was aware of that. You know, it was kind of me driving the whole thing. And although we had a board and we have volunteers, there wasn't anybody saying, Oh, you know what, I'd really love to take over the women over 50 Film Festival and she goes, I didn't I didn't really get that idea that it was anybody really waiting in the wings. So I just thought I need to I need to balance my own mental health and my physical health, you know, with my and my life that this film festival can't be the only thing that I do. And although I have very high standards and I want it to look and sound and be beautiful, I have to be realistic that it's really, it's mainly me. And I'm getting older and I want to enjoy the festival. So as always is the case, there were a number of things coming together. The work with Dr. German, Covid lockdown, and you know, people I know getting older and dying. So I just thought, life's limited and I can make this beautiful piece of art, I can make this festival and it doesn't have to be ginormous for it to be beautiful. So it sounds like you've had a lot of influences and you've thought about it as well, because I think you're right, it can be a challenge for a lot of people, and in particular women, who are involved with different projects. We can burn out very easily. the focus is women over 50, but I'm wondering whether you're also conscious of intersectionality of what I mean by that is there are women over 50, but the experience of women over 50 is diverse. There are people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, people from different face, people from different cultures and skin colours and even sexualities and that sort of thing. So I'm wondering how much of that comes into the film festival as well? You and I go back a long time, we were volunteers together at Switchboard, the LGBT helpline. So I grew up in my adult years, once I came out as a lesbian, I began to understand more about intersectionality in lots, you know, the different ways that oppression can impact people. So I was aware of that from... an LGBTQI point of view. And as I said, we started that first year in Brighton, which had a big LGBT community. And in fact, we've always had a poem or a spoken piece, a short prose. Most years at WALF, we've commissioned somebody to write a piece which they perform. And the brief has always been, write something about older women and film. So it couldn't be any more broad. And we've had just... fantastic films, women in Wales and women in England, you know, just all different, all different kinds of women with all different kinds of stories. But the very first year our festival was opened with a poem about Clara Bowe and it was by Alice Denny, who's a trans spoken word poet. And from that very first year, we were very clear that we were a trans inclusive. festival, you know, so we were, you know, we really kind of put our stall out. And actually back in 2015, there was no controversy about that at all. That's just something that's kind of come up in these last years. But we've always been very trans inclusive. And this year we had our very first non-binary, really beautiful film, non-binary representation on film. We've always been aware of that. I think again, more from a kind of personal point of view. The very first year I remember looking round the hall and saying, well, this is a big white hall. You know, it was great that we got 80 people, but all those 80 people were white. And there was only one moment of a black person on screen, and that was an older black man. And that was just a reflection of the films that we got. I mean, it wasn't that we... Of the films that we didn't play, there was none that had any better representation. So from that first year, I knew that we were going to have to do more to show more diversity on screen in all of those other areas that you mentioned, disability, race, ethnicity, religion, in lots of different areas. And that's something that we work very hard at in terms of how we get our message out and who we encourage. And for example, this year we had our first ever film from the travelling community in Ireland. So each year we're reaching further out and further out to try and get as much representation and to make people feel that WAF is a festival that belongs to them. LAREE And what sort of reaction are you getting from what sounds to be an ever-increasing diverse field of work? But no really, the kind of comments we get from filmmakers, a lot of filmmakers travel to come to the festival or are interacting with us because we do a lot of online activities. When we're online, we'll have online panels and online socials where filmmakers can meet. And the real comment that we get so often is, I feel like I've come home. I feel like this is my clan. I feel this is my group. You know, the older women, and it's not exclusively always older women but the topic, the centre of the thing is about older women. And there's a kind of community and a kind of support. People often talk about the support they get from other filmmakers and from the audiences at our festival. There's something, it may be a cliché but there's something very nurturing about the WAFF filmmakers and they really do help and support other filmmakers. There's a lot of There's a lot of networking. A lovely story to illustrate this is a few years ago, we have a short script competition, and a short script came in, and it won the top prize in the competition. It was a film called Weightless, and it was by Louise Monaghan. And two years later, now this year, that script had been produced and made into a film. and it came into our festival and it played on the big screen at Depot. It had Toya Wilcox in the starring role, if any of your listeners of a certain age might remember who she is. Great singer from the 80s, I'd say. But that film came about because the scriptwriter got in contact with a director. They were both previously involved in WAF, and that is a real kind of WAF story that people meet. at the festival or through some WAF screening and they get together and they create a project and it comes back to WAF and other guys. So I would say without a doubt one of the key things that people say about WAF is that it's encouraging and welcoming and nurturing. LAREE And it really sounds like that to be honest and you know by all means blow your trumpet because that's quite alright. And I'm just thinking too that you know within the arts community more broadly you know I'm conscious you know, grants and funding and things. And I'm just wondering if that's something that you have looked into or applied for, you know, grants or funding to support the Film Festival? Yes, yes. We are funded again by the BFI, the British Film Institute. So they have a part, they have what they call film hubs that cover different parts of the country. So we're a member of Film Hub South East for the South East of England, except London. and they give us funding for the festival and for some of the year round work we do. And we also get, again, from BFI, we get money from Film Hub London for work that we do in the capital, and then for some work that we do in elder care residential homes where we take our films into care homes. We have a little pop-up, like a pop-up cinema. The project is called Moving Pictures, which is... really successful and so enjoyable for residents in care homes who maybe don't get the chance to get out much and certainly don't get out to the cinema very much to have the chance to bring the cinema to them is really joyful. And that is funded by a big British, you know, it's a government backed funder, any British person would know it, the National Lottery. So yeah, we get funding from quite a lot of different sources as well as money from... ticket sales of our events and so on. And what difference does that make for you in the film festival? Oh well, it just couldn't go ahead without it. The cost of running a festival is more than you could ever bring in ticket sales. It's really important that a film festival has funders, that will be those government-backed organisations that I mentioned, and also sponsors which will be coming from the corporate world. So we have connections with Picturehouse Cinemas, Brighton Gin, Rode Microphone and so all of these corporates help with giving prizes and supporting us in other ways. The other kind of people who help sponsor the festival are of course our film schools. We have a current relationship with the London Film Academy and they support a prize. So there's different ways that people and organisations can help support film festivals and every film festival desperately needs them. And it sounds like a lot of the work that you're doing is very community-based, so whether it's in the old people's home or with the colleges and things, so does that make a difference with the funding? Yeah, well, yes, I mean, yeah, the work that we do in eldercare residential homes with moving pictures, I mean, that is, as I say, that's funded by National Lottery. I mean, we couldn't afford to do that otherwise, because part of us being community-based, grassroot film festival is most of the things that we do outside the festival are free at the point of anybody coming to the event, or very low price, or on a sliding scale. So... and that's really important to us. We do work in libraries and community halls and church halls, so we want to be able to offer the films for free. So getting funding really is important to continue this kind of work. LESLIE KENDRICK And it goes back to your point about accessibility as well, I guess in terms of making them a bit more accessible so people are not having to find the money if they don't have it. just as real as any of the other barriers that we talked about earlier, absolutely. So being able to have free, accessible, enjoyable art with no strings attached is really important, I think. So it sounds like a lot of the work you do is community-based. What's the impact, what's the reaction from the people who are attending? The reaction of people, particularly older people who live in care, the reaction could even pass me by. it's so small and yet when I talk to care home managers and they say, for example, a comment of care home manager said recently, two of the people sat next to each other and they shared colour pencils because we do some drawing activity in care homes after we watch films and that she knew that was really significant that these two people had shared pencils, that they were communicating with each other and they were helping each other. So the reaction of people in care homes can be so tiny. Another feedback sheet someone said, I saw this one person swaying to the music. And that's an incredible reaction when she's maybe non-verbal and doesn't give much reaction in the day. That she was swaying to some music meant that she was engaged. So it's a very different audience in an elder care residential home. It's really, really meaningful when you learn that actually the power of cinema is so strong. You know, we have it. We love stories. We've loved stories since we were tiny tots. And there's something very special about watching collectively moving images on a wall. And somehow, I think even no matter how old we are, you know, there's something that's very joyful about that. But it's not the kind of reaction you would you would want, you want, is not the kind of reaction you imagine. Like if a film is really powerful, you'd want to hear everybody crying or everybody laughing or everybody standing up and applauding. That is not what happens in elder care homes. And it's so much more interesting than that. So it sounds, yeah, you're really getting a range of different kind of reactions. And as you say, some of them can be quite subtle. I'm also thinking too, you know, this film festival potentially gives you the opportunity to address or look at issues or topics that perhaps are not talked about as much in society. I'm just thinking, whether it's age-related illness or particularly in women, menopause and that sort of thing. Are you conscious of that in terms of when you're either going into homes for people who are older or if you're going to other venues, are you kind of conscious about the topics or films that may be touching on topics that would relate to the audience? That's a really interesting question. In terms of the festival itself, I think it's really interesting that each year and over the years different themes emerge. So it's not that– and for example this year was a big menopause year. We had three different films about the menopause including Peri-menopause. And we didn't actively seek out – films about the menopause, it feels like it's just something in the air this year. So I definitely see themes kind of arising and often it will be around aging and aging bodies and that's a huge topic in itself and it might often, we often get films about things that women are coming back to, often something that brought them enormous joy when they were young and then something happened. and they were just kind of pushed off kilter a bit. And I'm thinking about films where women go back to painting. They take up photography. They do knitting and crafting and swimming and dancing. And all of these things, I'm beginning to see a pattern. And I think there's something that happens to us in particularly kind of around our teenage years. And we're kind of shamed for... liking to knit or the way we look in a swimsuit or the way that we dance. And there were all these things that we just did really without thinking when we were young. And then somebody kind of said, no, you know, that's not really how you're supposed to do that. Or who do you think you are? Or, you know, all those kinds of things. And there's something about women over 50 who just said, you know what, I don't give a damn. And actually, I loved swimming when I was wee. and I'm going back to it. So we get a lot of, we see a lot of films about this kind of resurgence that comes with older age and a power and a boldness. I'm not sure if that really answers your question, but I mean to say that there are themes that come up, but they're not really the ones that you might expect. They just kind of arise each year in the festival. I think you have answered the question to be fair and it's quite an interesting, you know, it has been quite interesting to hear you talk about it because, you know, I would have assumed that you would have gone out and thought, you know, this year it's on whatever topic but it sounds like the topics are coming to you rather than you actually actively seeking them. Totally and it's one of my absolute favourite bits of being a festival director is the curation. I absolutely adore it. And there's a moment of just intense pleasure when, you know, out of maybe three or three or three hundred submissions, we've whittled it down with a team of selectors to maybe about 50 films and these 50 films have to be put into seven or eight programs of seven or eight films each. It'll make about, you know, a 70 or 80 minute running time. And I do it old school and I cut up the names of all the films just on strips of paper and all I have is the title. the country and what kind of film it is, if it's a documentary, animation, experimental or drama. And I put them all out on the table and I just shuffle them around and around and around and these themes, these programmed themes emerge and I think, ah yeah, oh I see, this is all about, ah this is all about secrets and lies, ah I get it, I get it. And then I put the films together, maybe I'll have about 10 and think, oh I'll get... got three Canadian films there, that's too many there, or I've got five animations, that's not gonna work. So it's a kind of process of being very practical about how many minutes and how many films and the variety of films that I want in a programme. But then there's something else that's just unquantifiable really, and it's about the theme that emerged and why these films go together. And it's one of the things that I really enjoy very much. So there's the themes that come up within the films themselves and then there's the themes that come up in the curation of how the films are put together in any one programme, I'd say. So it sounds like a dual process in a way. So what's next? Where do you think you might go with the Film Festival? Well, I'm very happy, ticking along as is. We're doing more, you know, every year we do more intense community work. and we're doing a lot. We're doing online screenings with carers and elder care residential homes. And then we're doing, we also do, we also screen feature films occasionally with short films attached. We've got one of them coming up soon, but it's kind of, it's more of the same. And I think really it's business as usual, which I think is not very flash bangy whizzy, but it's the reality of what doing. producing a film festival every year can be. You know, it is business as usual. You know, we've got a really good setup and we want to just, you know, mine it like a diamond, just really keep shining it and keep polishing it. We are coming up to our 10th. Our 10th year is next year, so that feels like there might be, there might be a wee bit of birthday cake action, a wee bit, there might be a wee few balloons and things like that to mark 2024 as it is. slightly different year. LESLIE And I think it's well deserved. I mean, the fact that you're going 10 years, in many ways, is an achievement, but it's testament to you and the festival, I think. NULA Absolutely. LESLIE So thanks, Nula. It's been really, really wonderful chatting with you. NULA Thank you so much for having me. I think it's really interesting that a lot of your podcasts have been about photographers, so I feel very honoured to be amongst all these great photographers. Thank you so much for having me. No worries. I have to say, you know, predominantly they're photographers, but I'm conscious of not just speaking with photographers. So they're other artists as well. But yes, yeah, you're right. There are a lot of photographers, but it's great having you. I think certainly I'm very aware of having different voices, different angles, different artistic bent because I think, you know, it's all very interesting and there's just different ways of doing things, isn't it? Totally. Yeah. So great. Thank you. Great, well look, really lovely catching up with you and I hope to speak to you again soon. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode with Nula. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. More information about Nula, including social media handles, is in the podcast notes. I'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps. In the next episode, I speak with Frankie McAllister, who is a Northern Irish photographer based in London. Here's a clip of her conversation. An Irish photographer based in London and my Irish father was actually quite an accomplished oil painter, although that was never his career. And I think I got my visual eye and my creative instinct from him. And also my love of landscape, which is my primary subject as a photographer. I look forward to you joining me in the next episode.