The Preppy Little F&*! Says Thank You
A Celebration of Great Creative Collaborators
Geoff and Steve started The Creativity Guild to create a community of mid-life creative explorers looking to reignite their creative sparks. We want to build a fun place for us all to reconnect with our creativity, start the projects we’ve always wanted to work on and be the people we’ve always wanted to be.
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I recently published an article about the worst person I’ve ever worked with, which included the experience of being screamed at and called a “preppy little f*@k.” The story of my time working with this caveman comic garnered quite a reaction - loads of stories about him, loads of stories about other workplace a**holes, and lots of support and empathy. It was a wonderful, powerful show of support for being nice, kind, and a great collaborator.
I am generally a positive person, and I try my best to celebrate instead of criticize, so I wanted to follow up on this post about a negative experience with a miserable human with… well… a celebration. A celebration of great creative collaborators that I worked with around the same time as my miserable experience.
And before I begin the celebration, I would like to do something we haven’t really done here before in the Creativity Guild. I am inviting all of you - asking you, even! - to collaborate with me by celebrating some of your great creative collaborators in the comments section.
(Full disclosure: I am nervous about inviting you all to participate because I’m worried no one will do it and the comment section will be a ghost town. Please help me assuage my fears and jump in! )
A final caveat - this is not an exhaustive list. It’s a few quick stories from the same time period I worked with the comedian in the mid-nineties. This is just a selection and if you and I have ever collaborated creatively, I know it was awesome!
High School Comedy
In high school, my good friend Colin Ferguson and I used to do school announcements every day at lunch in front of the whole school. We turned most of it into comedy, and it was a highly unusual form of creativity. (Colin moved to LA after university and has starred in many TV series (Eureka!), movies, and is also the Maytag Man!) We also did very nerdy stuff like debating and public speaking (which mostly ended up as comedy, too). We did all sorts of creative work together and for me, it felt so much safer exploring this ‘public’ creativity with a talented friend like Colin. It didn’t feel as scary because we did so much of it together. And as a result of these creative pursuits with Colin during this crucial teenage period of figuring out your identity, I realized that I love telling stories, I love comedy, and I love surprising people with weirdness.
Thank you, Colin!
McGill Improv
Colin and I both ended up going to university at McGill in Montreal. Soon after arriving, we both joined an improv troupe, appropriately titled, McGill Improv. Improv changed my life. I got to collaborate with SO many great people - Gill Deacon, Craig Francis, John Moore, Richard Renaud, Chris Orange, Tami Gabay, Jason (Chilly Gonzales) Beck, Tamara Davis, and eventually even my brother, Brian (who is hilarious), and our great friend and travel guru, Loren Christie.
I learned so many phenomenal life and creative skills performing live without a net for many years:
Say yes! Accept offers!
Don’t block!
Listen!
Look for conflict!
Think about status!
Don’t TRY to be funny!
Stay in the moment and go with the flow - don’t try to plan things in your head!
Trust your instincts!
Most important of all, you have to trust your fellow improvisers implicitly when there is no script - it’s one of the most pure forms of collaboration.
Honestly, doing improv was my favourite part of university. Every week, we would do shows in the campus bar, Gert’s, and every week, it was the thing I looked forward to the most. Once a year, we would do a 24-hour improv marathon, and I still remember some of the bizarre and exceptionally weird scenes and characters that emerged at 3am with 5 people in the audience.
Improv teaches you about the structure of creativity: scenes, storytelling, conflict, emotions, and characters. It teaches you to trust your creativity and go with the flow. But mostly, it teaches you how to work with other people - every creative person could benefit enormously from doing improv.
Thank you, McGill Improv and to all the great people I’ve done improv with!
Eye On Toronto
My first exposure to the world of professional media was a summer job at the legendary Toronto TV station, CFTO. I was exceptionally lucky to get the summer job, and even more fortunate that my first boss was Elizabeth Lancaster. She was the Executive Producer of a daytime talk show called Eye On Toronto and she let me do all sorts of stuff creatively, including going on shoots, producing stories, and even appearing on air. I did some WEIRD stuff - I went to the Hockey Hall of Fame and set up a gag where, while I was in the middle of conducting an interview, a hockey player (my brother) would fly in from out of frame and body-check me randomly throughout the story. Liz trusted me, taught me, and let me learn by doing. And she has continued as a career-long friend and mentor to boot.
Thank you for taking a chance on me and letting me do weird stuff, Liz!
eNOW
While I was at Eye On Toronto, I got the opportunity to move into a full-time gig as part of a startup crew being put together in a separate building at CFTO called The Annex. Several amazing creative projects came out of that building with the same core leadership - Mark McInnis, Leanna Crouch, and Leslie Merklinger. They started a show called e-Now, a weekly entertainment journalism show, which later became e-Talk. I remember so many fun brainstorming meetings, script meetings playing with language, and experiments in editing bays. The hosts were Carla Collins and Dan Duran, and Carla is a talented comedian and wonderful human who let me try a lot of fun, goofy stuff with her, too.
Thank you, Mark, Leanna, and Leslie, for teaching me how to make shows, how to collaborate and make better creative work as a group, and for creating a great learning environment!
Road Crew, and Mockumentaries
The same leadership team in The Annex also created a Saturday morning block of children’s programming, which later spawned a 26-episode season of a show for tweens called Road Crew. Jenn Beech, Patrice Goodman, and I worked with head producer, Marni Shulman, as on-air hosts, writers, producers, and directors - it was the best learning experience I’ve ever had. We created the backbone outlines of episodes with the executive team and then went into the real world to improvise and bring those backbones to life. We worked hand in hand with exceptionally talented camera operators like Chris Elias and Byron Auburn, and phenomenal editors like Peter Christian, too. It was SO much fun!
I remember Leanna telling the Road Crew team to remember this experience because it was VERY rare and special and might not happen again in our careers. She was right. No one gives you 26 half-hours on national television where you get multiple roles, enormous creative freedom, and a young audience that values fun, play, and weirdness!
The same team of execs also let a group of us create mockumentary comedy pilots on weekends and evenings, which is how I met one of my future great collaborators, Craig Norris.
Thank you, Jenn, Patrice, Marni, Chris, Byron, Peter, and everyone else involved in Road Crew for one of the most liberating and fulfilling creative experiences imaginable!
The Luckiest Creative?
Isn’t it BONKERS how lucky I was early in my creative career?
Just putting this list together has filled me with creative energy and gratitude. Not gonna lie, it also feels good to celebrate all these people who had a very positive impact on this early phase of my life and career, especially after spending too many words talking about one sad-sack tormentor from early in my career.
Writing this post also makes me grateful to be collaborating with Geoff on The Creativity Guild. He and I share a deep love of creativity and we are greatly enjoying our renewed commitment to it. We met up in Geoff’s backyard recently and did a big strategy chat about what we want to do with the Guild. Starting later this summer, we are going to step up our game and I could not be more excited.
Thank you, Geoff!
Which Collaborator Will You Celebrate?
Now, I want to turn it over to all of you. Our goal here is to build a community where we can celebrate creativity and this is the first public call for celebration. So whether it is in the comments on this Substack, or on another platform of your choice, I would love to see you give a shout-out to at least one person you have loved collaborating with.
Thanks for doing THIS collaboration with Geoff and me - we appreciate each and every one of you for spending your time with us here.
The Kicker
I collaborated with so many talented people at the CBC - during a time where I had ZERO CLUE as to how to produce a documentary or sound design it! Ira Basen, Steve Wadhams, Karen Levine all taught me the ropes and gave me opportunities that would later pave the way to my work as a documentary producer for the national programs. They all taught me so much, and eventually became great lifelong friends, too. What a gift!
Oh wow I love the challenge you've thrown down here, Steve! I'm gonna start with my mom -- who in the 70s would spend ages setting up craft materials for me and my sister to do art at the kitchen table, and who read so many Dr.Seuss books to me that I could not help becoming obsessed with words and how they worked. Next I'd have to mention my sister Amy Moss -- an art teacher in Richmond now -- but just a hugely creative soul who was my duet partner, co-conspirator on many skits at family dinner parties, and late night idea-discussing buddy all through university and into adulthood. Just one of those people whose opinion I respect. On that note -- I should probably mention my husband Doug Heselgrave -- a music critic and teacher with whom I often "check in" to better understand if the flow of my writing is working, and if the ideas are hitting home. My early work in Theatre taught me a LOT about collaboration, too. I studied theatre and creative writing at UBC in the 90's and I recall people like Lee Henderson (now an author and teacher), Denise Ryan (author and journalist), and Kevin Chong (author and teacher) added so much to the "mix" in that department, and inspired me to take my writing more seriously. Professionally -- I had incredible mentors and peers at the CBC: Yvonne Gall and Kathleen Flaherty come to mind immediately, both women who respected my vision and talent before I did, and showed me the definition of good female mentorship, which I try to pass on now in my roles as a university instructor and boss. They were great "story" co-conspirators -- always adding fresh ideas to the pot -- never dulling the cooking flame. Yvonne literally sat beside me for hours and taught me to be a better audio editor. Theresa Lalonde at CBC showed me there was a place amongst journalists for those with a penchant for telling stories that were a little bit quirky or wacky -- and that a sense of humour is ALWAYS welcome in the workplace. We collaborated on various stories for a national show called "Sounds Like Canada" (hosted by Shelagh Rogers) and on that show we did things like send a puppet across the country -- or host a national competition to determine "Canada's Favourite Sandwich." At the National Film Board Digital Studio -- Dana Dansereau and Vince McCurley taught me to collaborate with technologists and programmers -- which is like a kind of cross cultural exchange for someone like me with an arts degree who had previously mentally hung a big "there be dragons" sign overtop of the entire field of programming and digital development. Jeremy Mendez was an inspiring designer there -- who helped me understand more about UX and graphic design "by osmosis" than anyone before or since -- and collaborated to integrate story ideas and text into visual interactive experiences. At Roundhouse Radio I worked closely as a producer with radio hosts Kirk LaPointe and Minelle Mahtani -- both of whom inspired me to aim high in terms of both the kinds of stories I was highlighting, and the professionalism with which I delivered my work under pressure. MInelle in particular opened my eyes to what it means to tell stories for a BIPOC audience. Finally -- I am lucky these days at JAR Audio (my podcasting company) to have great collaborators like Chris O'Keeffe (a gifted consulting creative director -- seriously -- people should hire him!), Roger Nairn (an ambitious business partner who demonstrates true collaboration and respect for creativity daily), and of course, yourself -- someone who I now consider a kind of "business collaborator" who speaks my own creative language.