Successfully Navigating the Creative Industries with Natalie Edwards- Yesufu of Transition Stage Company
BLK Brit interviews Natalie Edwards-Yesufu, a Creative Entrepreneur with an international career in visual arts and motion pictures. She is founder of the award-winning Transition Stage Company, which specialises in film and factual entertainment. As Creative Director of the prestigious scriptwriting competitions Enter Stage Write and Amplified, these interactive showcases for under-represented talents bridge gaps for people from diverse backgrounds and initiate industry accessibility with support from broadcasters such as Channel 4 and UKTV (BBC). This interview discusses the importance of generating opportunities, overcoming challenges, building your team and the scope of the UK industry.
As part of Transition Stage Company events, Story Town is a three-day conference 25th-27th January in Birmingham catered towards authors, writers, visual artists, theatre makers, gamers, producers, and storytellers.
For tickets visit Eventbrite at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/story-town-ideas-you-own-tickets-758977691707?aff=ebdssbdestsearch&keep_tld=1
What Transition Stage Company offers
“Transition Stage company is really unique, we do films, we do theatre, I would say it is a production and development production company. When I started out in the industry a long time ago, I moved to the US and then moved back to Birmingham, I realised there wasn’t many opportunities for creatives. And there’s a big demand at the moment or loads of chat about regional diversity in the sense that there’s not much production in Birmingham, and also diversity as in not much people of colour or working-class people in the industry. At the same time, there was a massive campaign to get Channel 4 to move to Birmingham. When I came back from the US and did my Masters in Birmingham and came back into the creative industries, I realised there’s a lot of talk and nonsense and my solution was if you want to have diversity or if you want to have more production in the West Midlands, it comes down to IP (intellectual property) and who creates the IP. So I created a screenwriting and playwriting competition for the UK as a conduit to get more ideas in the West Midlands and also to find those diverse voices. I feel like a lot of people talk about this, but it’s just about building their brand and pumping their chest and show who they are… I know that I’m a little pebble thrown in the water, I’m not a big fish but I felt if I created the competition in the West Midlands, a massive call, and I bring commissioners down from all the broadcast channels in the UK, I solve the problem of finding writers and new voices, I bring commissioners and hopefully with one of the writers one of their scripts can be turned into something that can be made in the West Midlands. So I created Enter Stage Write (ESW)- going back to what Transition Stage Company does… we pull the IP out of those competitions. We also have a book club where we pull the book and develop it into TV and film… We also have events - this year we have Enter Stage Write and we have a conference called Story Town. This was an answer to the uncertainty in the broadcast industry… I’m a problem solver so with all the strikes and a lack of money in the screen industries, I feel like a lot of creatives spend so much money on degrees, filmmaking, writing and acting… I’m an entrepreneur and you can make a living out of being creative. I created Story Town so I can teach creatives how to trademark their work, how to generate IP, how to market it and build audiences; how to make money from your passion. I feel like that’s a missing thing in the UK- entrepreneurialism… Stop waiting to be chosen, choose yourself!”
Choosing Projects and Problem Solving - How Do You Do It?
“I don’t know (laughs). And I think that is the difference between a creative and an analytical mind. You have this idea, you birth it and as you go along you try and work it out brick by brick… Creatives are risk takers, the idea is never fully formed (laughs). You have the idea and you just go out and do it. People don’t realise that when you create platforms, films, books, the real risk takers just do it and they learn on the job, I think people don’t understand. There’s a lot of impostor syndrome - no one has it together! You have your idea… as you develop it you start making it, you problem solve, we’re all like swans, on the top we look like we have it together but we’re all shaking our legs underneath, we’re all panicking. It doesn’t matter what film you make, what theatre show you produce, you could be in the industry for a hundred years, every production is different and has its own challenges. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you only learn from doing and if you have an idea just go for it. I can’t really articulate how I find the projects within my company and how I make them work, I just do it.”
Networking and Building Your Team
“Having a network and having a team or having a support system is fundamentally how you become successful. Moving from the creative industry, anyone who’s created a business or a platform they have fantastic people around them and you can’t do anything alone. I think half of my journey moving from the US to the West Midlands has been alone, and I feel like as I’ve built a team around certain projects, I’ve accelerated. And I would say to any creative, anyone in general, your network is your net worth, that’s for one, and two, you are your team- choose the people around you correctly. You don’t want too many people that are like you, you want different people that are ambitious but have different ways of thinking. I would also say when you embark on any project or work with someone, you get contracts. People don’t really think about these things because people's emotions and people have different points of view, but if you plan to do anything with anyone your contract says this is how we’re going to work together.”
Unique features of Enter Stage Write and Amplified
“I’ve noticed in the USA and UK there are a lot of screenwriting competitions and writing platforms for people who are playwrights and screenwriters but usually they are judged by readers, then you find out if you’ve won or a finalist. What’s different about ESW and Amplified is it has the community element, the entertainment element and the writers are essentially the rockstars and they are put mainstage. The reason why I had this idea, I have a really good example of why it’s important to have the audience judging the scripts as well as commissioners. I feel like as creatives or people that work in the industry, we are in a bit of an echo chamber and it can become quite pretentious and the only thing that matters is not what we think, but what the consumer thinks... When we have the script performed on the stage with professional actors it’s always interesting to see what the audience thinks entertaining and what the judges think is entertaining. Another reason why it’s important is once we had a writer, she wrote part of her script in Jamaican Patois and some of the judges obviously are from the UK and don’t understand, so when they’re reading this script they’re thinking, ‘What the hell is this.’ And in once case this script was probably marked the lowest out of the top five. But because the judge saw it performed on stage, he understood it. And I think that’s a problem with diverse creatives is the fact that if you do not understand whatever community it is, you’re not going to really get it from reading it, but seeing it performed with emotion and intention. Even me, I can be guilty, sometimes we haven’t got the imagination to see it.”
Navigating Neurodivergence
“People assimilate information in different ways, even just working with my team, I have a weird way of communicating and takes them a while to get used to it, but now they understand how I communicate and assimilate information, so there’s shorthand. I feel like if you want to get the best out of people, be patient with them, learn how they understand information and work backwards. And once you do that you can get the best out of anyone. I learn things by story, if a teacher gave me a story or analogy, I’d understand it straight away instead of just looking at words. So my advice is sometimes those people are gems because they process information in different ways or their brain works uniquely, there’s some hidden gifts there that you can tap into.”
Opportunities in Different Locations
“I’ve been very fortunate to be able to study and work in the US, work in France, London, Newcastle, in comparison to the West Midlands, there is a lot of talent there but it is so fragmented. I feel like we can be better at working together, everyone talks about diversity and representation, but what can you do for your community? Sometimes we waste so much energy trying to fit into spaces that don’t want us- it’s hard. But also creating your own business and platform is hard, it’s like choose your hard. If you look at all the people who are diverse in the UK that have made it in the creative industries, they were plucked because they had their own platform and built their own profile and flowered their own garden. Rapman, Adjani who created Dreaming Whilst Black, these people went out there and did their own thing, Michaela Coel as well. If we focus so much on making our own thing instead of rallying for diversity and representation, although that’s important, and we focused on our own garden, I think there would be less need for that. People need to choose their battles. Going back to how the West Midlands fares compared to other places I’ve lived in the world, it’s the same problem; we need to network laterally and work together to create something, you know.”