Adulting - #63 Growing Up In The Time Of Corona with Liv Little & Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

Episode Date: May 10, 2020

Hey Podulters, this week I speak to Liv Little and Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff from Gal-dem (@galdemzine), about their platform, book and new podcast (find here https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/growing-up-with-gal-dem/id1509199829). These two women are part of a huge movement, their magazine is award winning and aims to 'share perspectives from women and non binary people of colour. Liv dreamed up Gal-dem whilst still at uni and since it has grown into a huge platform that challenges much of traditional media with its 360 approach to reporting on news from marginalised groups. I hope you enjoy! Please do rate, review and subscribe! O xx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded. Or 11 p.m. Eastern. Restrictions apply very special episode of Adulting during this quarantine time. I hope you're all doing okay during lockdown and not feeling too stressed and that everyone in your family is doing okay. Today's episode is with the two wonderful women from Galdem, Zine, Liv Little and Charlie Brinkhurst Cuff. I talked to them about their platform and their online magazine, which is also in print too,

I should say, which looks to platform the voices of those people that are so often marginalized by society, women of color, queer people of color, and tell stories from a point of view that doesn't always get shown in the mainstream media. It's an incredible feat. You should definitely check them out and you'll hear more about it in the podcast. But I speak to them about their book that's come out, which is a collection of people's stories from growing up as a person of colour and also about their podcast, which is now out. I really hope you enjoy the episode. I really love speaking to Liv and Charlie. I thought they were so great, so inspiring. Today I am joined by Liv Little and Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff. Hi.

Hi. So for those people who might not know who you are and what you do, please could you give us a little introduction for about your work and where you're at right now with it so um yeah i'm live i am the founder and ceo of gal dem and um gal dem is a media company that is essentially committed to kind of sharing the perspectives of women and non-binary people of color through different different formats um and we work on kind of events cultural partnerships brand partnerships producing editorial content and um and a print magazine um and I'm also a producer and a writer

myself as well amazing and Charlie hi so yeah I'm Charlie Brinkhus-Cuff um I'm the head of a editorial at Galdem and I've been around since the beginning. So when it was founded in 2015, essentially I oversee all the editorial content that goes up on site, but I contribute sort of across the platform. Beyond that, I'm a journalist by profession and I edited a book a couple of years ago now called Mother Country, Real Stories of the Windrush Children. So yeah, that's my thing. Is that everything I do, Liv? I always forget.

You do loads of stuff. You do lots of stuff. That's like a nice summary. So I've actually followed, Galdem, your Insta page for ages, and I love seeing it pop up in my feed, and you definitely target stories which I feel we don't often see in the mainstream media and that maybe aren't given rise to be platformed. I think you're both like a similar age to me.

When did you decide that you were going to really put your work to doing this and making sure that these voices and stories were heard? Did you feel like it was a big risk to take at the beginning? What was your foundation for starting the work that you're in um I don't necessarily think I viewed it as like a big risk in in the in the in the kind of early days and that maybe that maybe that was like naivety I don't know but I think it was also because you know in the kind of early days in the foundations of Galdem it was really about bringing a community together and less a focus on the business side um and I think it was in the last kind of three years or so that that we kind of were viewing it as a as a as a business as a as a fully functioning

kind of media platform because when it first started we were I was in my final year at university and I think Charlie was doing her masters maybe yeah yeah something yeah um and so and so yeah and we had we had lots of other jobs and things that we were kind of balancing around it and it and it and it's grown quite quite organically and then kind of ballooned into I guess um you know what it is today but yeah I guess in the in the first days it was it was and it still is of course about community but it was slightly more informal I guess in in the beginning yeah I definitely didn't view it as a risk um personally it was it was a natural progression in my very sort of nascent career at the time um just coming out of my undergrad um going into newsrooms and magazines um where I sort of aspired to work and and yeah feeling like um or seeing the problem in front of me and wanting to do something to change it so yeah

when Galdem came along it was like hell yeah um what, in my eyes, I viewed it as a kind of like, you know, not a fix, but something I could contribute to in like a really positive way. And definitely, I can imagine it probably would start off that community feel, but you've got like 100,000 followers on Instagram and you've got, you're really pushing out to different types of media. You just had your book out and now you're turning to your podcast. With the content, where it originated was it just telling stories and making sure that you know we were seeing a 360 on what was going on in the world did you have a direction in mind of where where

it was going to go because you cover a huge range of stories and like your magazine online has got lots of different topics from politics and culture and has that expanded organically over time or did you have a view to know that you know this is this is what our vision is going to be and this is where we want to go and were you surprised to um it's so amazing to have amassed such a big audience was that something really exciting or was that always part of the goal in the in the very long term view I think in terms of um types of content and I and I think this was this was very deliberate and and a reflection of the fact that often within kind of the media more broadly but you know specifically kind of when you're looking at journalism is that

as a person of color you're kind of expected to have a narrow window of interest um in terms of you know the kind of stories that you might be commissioned to write and so I think we were always very deliberate in saying that you know we wanted we wanted to cover all topics just you know similarly to to lots of publications we wanted to cover a breadth of topics of course this kind of scale and the scope of that has evolved over time um and has grown over time but I think it was a very deliberate thing to have stories writing and contributing and looking at topics across the board. Yeah and I think that as Galdem has grown well firstly yeah the growth that we experienced

was all very organic even from the very beginning Like we were strategic and I think we were incredibly professional given the fact that we were doing it so informally. You know, we were doing it in our spare time. We were all students. We were very young. We didn't necessarily have that much experience in the media industry. But we set up our platforms in a way which meant that people felt like they could engage with them in a way that they they held us to professional

standards even when we um even when we weren't sort of professionals um so yeah but yeah sorry in terms of the the editorial side nowadays like we obviously have the ability to think a lot more strategically about what it is that we want the site to be doing and saying and yeah we've streamlined it into um a platform where we have a focus obviously on on pushing forward the most marginalized voices into the forefront and making sure that they're uplifted publishing lots of op-eds personal essays alongside um features which um expand you know across the world features that look at global issues as well as just in the uk um but yeah always remembering that our core mission is to uplift and platform the voices of women and non-binary so whilst your space evidently

tackles this amazingly and it's it's such a beautiful thing that you created we we have lots of conversations around how we're becoming more woke and things are becoming more inclusive but it would look to me as a white middle class woman that the mainstream media still isn't really getting onto the tack of really trying to diversify the content that it's putting out and I think that change is coming but whether or not how do you view it do you I imagine that at the time of its inception this would have been something which you maybe really wanted to see and couldn't find access to because as you say like mainstream media wasn't really there yet but even now in 2020

how far do you think we've come on the other side of it evidently your platform is still very much needed to to navigate these stories because I really don't think that they are being covered in the publications that we might see more broadly. Do you think that it's changed? I mean, I know it's not necessarily your place of comment at all. I'm just interested to see how you think it's evolving in the other spaces.

I do think there has been some change that we've witnessed in the five years that Galdem has been running. But I think that, yes yes the mainstream media is still a step behind uh where we would like them to be um there might be you know a slight increase in stories to do with like say Afro hair like you would have never seen a story about Afro hair on the BBC um like in the way that they publish them nowadays i think

they even did like a little series on it um yeah five years ago when we started i don't think um but you know even with last year uh when it comes to more serious issues there was just a real lack of interest in in in women of color and non-binary people of color um we did a story on a young woman um a young black woman who went missing um called joy um and her this was at the same time that um libby squires had also gone missing i don't know if you remember that story so it's really it's really weird talking about hearing anyone else um with joy's story we noticed the fact that the mainstream meeting media wasn't picking up on on it they weren't reporting on it um in comparison to other stories of missing students um and we had to make a big

fuss and it was only when that happened that we saw again the bbc pick up the story um terry wilson did like a long feature on it but um yeah in short Galdem is still very needed because there are still very very important stories um which aren't being told from our communities uh and with coronavirus that's been shown into thrown into even more sharp relief for sure because as we know uh BAME communities are being more being more affected by by it than other communities yeah so there's basically there's still a long way to go yeah totally and I think that can be evidenced by the fact that Lawrence Fox just had a huge piece saying this is going to be explosive whatever they called it um and they seem to be able to

platform him and his views which are already widely represented amongst many people in the media. And yet there are so many stories about systemic or institutionalized racism, which just never got covered or never even acknowledged. I think the first step that we've got to get past is the fact that we are, as a society, racist and people can't seem to get past that hurdle. And until we get past that, there seems to be no room for discussion. And so I do agree that, you agree that your magazine is heavily needed. It's just a shame that because there isn't that translation sometimes, the people who need to hear it and need to read about it aren't necessarily getting access to it.

Do you think that there is more of a desire now for people to get a better understanding and to be more well-versed? There's been some incredible books, obviously like Rene Adelodge's Why I'm No Longer Speaking to White People About Race which I do think really elevated the conversation and and made other people kind of try to unlearn some of the things that we've been indoctrinated into believing um but do you feel like there is the generation coming up now is really wanting to right some of the wrongs of our of our history that seems like a massive question sorry um i i definitely think you know with with a greater access to to information and to like alternative sources of like news and media and stories that yes of course absolutely

i've noticed that with um with you know the generation that's coming that's coming behind us 100% I think there is um absolutely a desire to to to kind of right the wrong so that's on that's on like you know a kind of broad range of topics whether we're talking about climate change or absolutely I think I think that's something that the next generation are passionate about for sure um and I think I potentially wasn't as aware of certain issues um when I was the age for example when I look at my sister who's 14 and is really like understanding a lot about reproductive rights and like things that I don't think at 14 I was necessarily super switched on on onto and and that's just what someone who was born 12 years after me so yeah I think I think yeah I think that they they have a desire to to to know more

and I think just because by nature of growing up on the internet and in the way that they are potentially um but I can't remember what the first part of the question was don't worry I actually can't remember what I said either now um but moving on I guess so you've got you started off with your platform and then you went into a print magazine and then your latest thing has been your book um I Will Not Be Erased is that that's right isn't it yeah I Will Not Be Erased our story about growing up as people of colour yes so. So how difficult was this for you to write? Did you feel like this is something that really needed to be told? Because, I mean, I've spoken about this in lots of different angles,

whether it comes to sexuality and queerness or different people being represented. We kind of have to do retrospective representation in literature because all too often the stories that get published are by the same subset of people that have had the privilege of being published. And so I do, I can imagine how important this must have felt to be able to shine a light on the way that living as a person of colour and growing up in that sense would have been so different from what we're told as you know like default white living um I wonder if you could expand on a bit more on the book and the stories that you tell in that yeah I mean I'll let I'll let Charlie kind of introduce it but but in in some I mean we didn't write the whole book by the way we were editing um we've got we've each got a story in there um Charlie kind of looking at dance and her relationship to dance as a young person growing up and how that didn't like quite pan out for her and the kind of reaction that she

had to that around like how does her body type fit into this industry and that sort of thing and then mine was looking at more looking at kind of sexuality and first crushes and falling in love with a girl and I think we tried to and I in love with a girl. And I think we tried to, and I think we did a really good job of covering a real breadth of stories and of experience. And of course, you know, this book could have been probably 50 times the size that it was because, you know,

there are so many important perspectives that we don't necessarily, you know, get to hear from as young people. And it is a YA book. It's something that everyone can enjoy and people have been enjoying of every age, but it is essentially a YA book. So it was about trying to create something

that would speak to, I guess, the next generation in a way which wasn't condescending or like, you know, you're doing this wrong. It was really about just being honest and sharing and reflecting. But the premise was born out of Charlie and her kind of relationship to diaries. So I'll let her talk more about that. Hi. So, yeah, I always sort of kept a diary while I was I was growing up and um it was something that was very very important to me as a space for reflection for bitching about my parents

I actually never really wrote negative things about my friends but yeah and also just you know coming to terms with a lot of the things that happened to you as a young um black mixed race girl growing up in a very white environment um and I always I always hoped that I could do something with with the diaries when I was older it was always on my mind I remember and so yeah when it came to the book we were approached by the publisher who wanted to work on something with us and so we had a brainstorm we're thinking about this concept of writing letters to your younger self um and how you know a lot of our work at Galdem um sort of revolved around the idea of of lifting up our younger selves lifting up the generation that that is is coming up now um but we we really wanted the letters the the things that we were writing to our younger

selves to not feel patronizing or condescending in any way so we thought a way to sort of um to make sure that didn't happen was by focusing on the words of our younger selves as well so you know you often get anthology books that are letters to a younger self but you don't often get to read the thoughts and feelings of that person's younger self if that makes sense and that's where the diaries sort of come into it um but it's not just diaries in the book ultimately it's uh lives used um old facebook messages we have people who wrote poems for themselves um and and yeah obviously as I said diary entries um from sort of age range of about like 11 to 16 or 17 I think um yeah I think we've I think we've created something really special and it's not patronizing um it's honest um and I and I hope that the young people funny

what were you saying sorry I think I was saying it's also funny and cringe worthy and like awkward and just lots of feels basically yeah yeah um yeah and they really vary in yeah they vary in tone and um and they vary in in topic a lot which I think is important for a book that is trying to encapsulate so much I actually love that dichotomy of looking back at that really weird time in your youth especially thinking you're like early to late teens when you 100% think that you know what life is and everything's really dramatic and you're like really emotional and I find that as you say it's a really interesting sounding board and tool to reflect on what life is like now and that was kind of one of the reasons why I started this podcast because it was kind of about how how, when I started this, it was like, I just finished uni and I kind

of thought I'd go to London, get my job and it would all be sorted. And, you know, then I'd buy a house. Then it turned out that life was full of so many more complexities than, you know, getting these tick box things, which I still haven't done any of the things that I imagined I would have done by 26. I think when I was 14, I thought I'd be married with a baby by now. And that is just something that I'm not trying to do anytime soon. And I think when I was 14 I thought I'd be married with a baby by now and that is just something that I'm not trying to do anytime soon and I think that reflection period can be so interesting and I love the idea of taking from that and and looking back with compassion on yourself because sometimes I think we can feel a bit coolly towards our younger selves as well and and it can be an odd thing to explore and so with your podcast that's coming out now that's something which you're bringing

forwards you're getting people to I love that it's text messages and Facebook's I also didn't keep a diary because I did keep one diary years ago and my sister's found it and read it and I was so scarred so I wouldn't have anything but sometimes Facebook status will pop up and I can remember the day it might just be like the smallest status but I'll suddenly have like a whole memory of everything that happened that day it's amazing how that happens yeah my god oh my god the Facebook statuses don't even want to know I'm like I had to deactivate my Facebook or too much um but yeah so so on the topic of the podcast we basically opened up the floor to people who we kind of know and love or whose work we admire

and and kind of walk them through the process that we went through um so we invite each of our guests to kind of bring either like like we said a diary entry text message whatever it is whatsapp notes on the phone it could be anything um and we ask them questions about how they felt at that time how they how they like what how they would reflect on it at that time. And I think it's not even just a case of, oh, my God, look at me. I was so dramatic at that point. I personally was so dramatic at that point, and I cringed heavily reading back at my Facebook messages.

But it's also like there can be a lot of wisdom there, you know, and looking back on on your youth not necessarily with this idea of oh my god you didn't know anything at all but sometimes I don't know when you're young and and maybe there is a degree of innocence or there's not you know there are there are lessons that that we can kind of reflect on which I think has been really interesting as well some of it was you know we had we had we have one of our guests on there Sasha who's talking about how from a really young age she identified the fact that it was really important for her to have therapy and to speak to someone. And that's so kind of, you know, something that we would associate with being so grown up.

But she knew that she had to use her words and get them out in order to heal so I think it's it's just fascinating it's it's so moving so heartwarming and and and such an interesting concept that brings about so many different topics um throughout the throughout the episodes that we've that we've got. Charlie do you have anything to add to that bit sorry? Um yeah just I know just to reiterate it really um yeah it Yeah, it was a really special experience kind of bringing the book to life in a way. We've done readings of the book before, but we've never done it in more like an interview setting and being able to create a safe space within this tiny little recording studio where our guests were generous enough to share some of their really vulnerable moments with us um will stay with me for a very long time and I just I really hope everyone

enjoys it um and is able to connect with it in the same way that we were what things have you throughout writing and compiling the book and interviewing people is there anything that's really been thrown up to you that contrasts with maybe what you thought it meant to be a grown-up do you feel I'm sure you'll be the same as me but I have some days where I feel like you know what I kind of know what's going on I feel pretty settled and other days I completely go back and regress to being my inner child and feeling quite insecure about the world and anxious and that that kind of undulating feeling was something which I wasn't expecting I really thought you know you'd get to 16 18 21 these ages supposed to have so much significance and kind of start to feel settled but I feel like we're constantly growing whether that's through learning or unlearning or you know rehashing old mistakes

and having to learn for them again is there any kind of big thing that you're learning through this work or through the things that you do that are making you question like what does it mean to be an adult yeah I mean I think the the piece that stands out for me in relation to that is probably um Kemi Alamori's piece in the book uh where she's talking about her relationship with her mum um and she also wrote something um about that relationship with her mum and her parents during lockdown quite recently and I think a lot of us who have had to go home perhaps to our parents houses are feeling that sense of like regression basically where you have to sort of relay the boundaries around your relationships now you're an adult

and like be like okay mum you can't just barge into my room but um yeah in in the book kem writes about just like how um her relationship with her mum has evolved from her you know at some points like what's the thing that she does she flicks she flicks ink on her yeah like truly horrific it just evil yeah behavior in this diary entry that she's she's sharing with the reader um and then it it it come it kind of brings us up to present day and her um she's asked her mom to send her the diary entry um or to send her her diary and she has to sort of face up to the fact that you know um her mum probably read these entries of her uh talking about her quite negatively and yeah for me just for me personally it made me think a lot about my relationship with my parents and um the ways in which I need to be more conscious

of the fact that um I want to be like respectful um towards them in my in my supposed adulthood even if I have that deep urge in me at points to um to return to being a child when I'm around them if you get what I mean I don't know if that makes sense but um yeah I guess the same question to you Liv about like what kind of things you're learning about like what it means to be an adult and what kind of lessons because you feel like you're going to know everything well by the time you're like 21 and then I feel like every single day that I uncover another massive load of stuff I've got to learn I mean every day I feel like especially right now I mean there is there are so many lessons and things um to learn gosh yeah I don't know and even even just doing the kind of work that we're doing I feel like

every day I don't know Charlie if that's how you feel but I feel like I'm yeah I'm constantly having to reflect and like yeah I was just gonna say I think that we um we by the very nature of what we do if we weren't open to continuous learning that, that Galdan would kind of disintegrate very quickly. We pride ourselves in, in, in, yeah, in always being open to learn about new people,

new cultures. Yeah, I guess it's our job. Like I always say this, but it's my job, definitely our job to kind of just, to just stay curious and to stay. Yeah.

To stay curious. And, and, and, and like Charlie says to, to keep learning about things and to be open to new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things. And I think the whole, our whole business model and the work that we're doing, it's not something that has been done before. So that's kind of more, you know, it, it, it brings, it brings so true. Um, we kind of, and, and, and considering the fact that we're, the mission that we have is quite large in the sense that we're

trying to shake up and transform an entire industry. It's like, there is no specific rule book on how to do that. So yeah, it's a lot of learning and a lot of adapting and figuring things out. And I think especially now adapting even, adapting even even further um but it's exciting and it and it keeps us going so yeah there's so many things I want to comment on there especially one of the things you said Charlie about our parents I think it's so interesting that when you realize that they were individuals and sort of adults with their own agency before they were parents and that kind of gives you a whole new lesson in humility when it comes to like how you actually act around your parents because they go from being like your caregiver to suddenly I realized that like my mum was in her 20s once and was going out and living her life and

you get this whole new like feeling of respect for them and and I think I ended up doing like a lot of apologizing for being such a dick as I was a teenager. I was like the worst 14 year old in the actual world. My mum is an amazing human being. And yeah, I think that, that is such an interesting lesson in itself. That thing of like your parents are humans and they're not just your parents and they have lives and they've had experiences.

And I think it wasn't until I was quite relatively old that I sat down and spoke to my mum about like the fact that she'd worked like within film, like, and she shared all these resources and the fact that she'd worked like within film like and and she shared all these resources and all of these things that were like very much not like we're the same person at all but it's like we were going through similar things and like periods of transformation at a similar time like she shared all these amazing books on like black women in film and all this kind of stuff and it's like rah like okay cool my mum is not just mum she's Michelle she has a whole thing going on.

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yeah um we've both got identical twin mums and and kind of grew up very close charlie literally in the same house that's a whole other thing that's a whole other thing yeah oh i love that but it is so true i actually sat down with my mum for one of the first episodes of this podcast and did like baby boomer versus millennial. And I'd never asked her just questions about her life. And we spoke for hours and I was like, oh my God, she's never offered up this information because she was like busy being my mum. And when I actually sat down, I was like, shit, you're actually really interesting. And I felt so bad. But something else I want to talk about. So you're right. You're completely pioneering. You're steering like a new ship in the world of media and you're really uncovering these stories.

And when I first came to understand what feminism was, it's one of those things, as you say, it's a never-ending journey of searching for answers to questions and you have to be very ready to discard views that you thought you understood, language that you might have used. There's a constant reiteration of changing the way you think about things. And I can imagine, as you say, because you cover such a broad variety of topics and speak to people from so many different backgrounds with ideologies and cultures and religions, and it must be really overwhelming

because what you're doing is activism. How do you balance that with your do you have a good like work-life balance or is it because it's such a passion project that you kind of let it seep into everything I can say quite firmly that we don't have a good work Charlie stop it oh come on come on uh as I know I'm joking I am joking but but but um historically love and I have struggled to um to um to turn off from from work and I think it's only been in like recent years months that we've tried to be more strict with ourselves about um about work-life balance for sure it's so important like honestly I think and you know the reason why it was so hard like in the beginning obviously it's hard like running a business is just like the craziest thing but in terms of like

at the beginning we were juggling like jobs and you know and just life stuff relationships but also you work full-time but then you also have this other thing which is basically full-time but it's not full-time yet because it's not paying you yet so like naturally um something something has to give and and and in a lot of those early moments, it was, you know, our kind of wellbeing, our mental health. I think since we kind of went full time and had like a full time team and whatnot,

it's been like very much a kind of conscious effort of ours to be disciplined with ourselves and to set boundaries. And I think especially now, you know,'re we're physically working in our homes as well it's like even more important that we that we are relatively strict with ourselves and I've seen like Charlie getting better at it like I I joke and I laugh and I say oh my god you're the worst but like but it's it's a learning um it's a learning curve and it's a learning process and and and it's hard and and like journalism and the news like it's like a 24 7

thing as well right so so it's not it's not easy and I think also when something is so tied up in your identity and you care about it so deeply it's it's like it's even more likely that you know that these things are going to happen but also had we not I don't want to glamorize it because you know I was kind of having chronic migraines and losing hair and Charlie was like developing all these weird twitches and her RSI was really bad at a point I don't want to glamorize it at all but I'm also like slightly aware of the fact that some of the sacrifices that we made were beneficial in kind of getting us to the to the place that we are now so that we can establish more of a a work life thing I'm and again like

I want to stress that I'm not saying that people should kill themselves for work although I just want to clarify that the weird twitches live reference uh was merely an eye twitch not anything else it is so difficult with with these things like this you're so right because it's like sometimes you do have to do that stuff but it's so I kind of hate hustle culture and this um love of productivity and the one thing I'm actually quite enjoying about lockdown and quarantine is it's forcing people what I know we kind of said at the beginning that you can fill that time if you're that way inclined but I think it is making us realize that I mean capitalism sucks we know that anyway but the productivity and the beginning that you can fill that time if you're that way inclined but I think it is making us realize that I mean capitalism sucks we know that anyway but the productivity and the way that

we want to like shoot every hour into something that's really worthwhile it seems so antithetical to what our bodies and our brains are designed to do and are you finding that lockdown is kind of throwing up new emotions around work and productivity that is it changing your mindset or did you know that anyway and you're now just feeling like yeah I was right that's the way we live is a bit fucked actually um I think I think it for me anyway personally it's been like a process of wind down and I know that where I am today is very different to like a year ago so I'm I'm really happy with that but I think one thing that it has taught me to to to do or to just or I've had to do really is just just be like extra gentle and kind of kind with myself and and acknowledge how my body is feeling

in a way that maybe I wouldn't otherwise because we have a lot of not time but you know we're you know we're not we're not running out and around after work for events and every night and dinners and lunches and meetings and all of that kind of stuff yes I have slight zoom zoom meeting call fatigue but um yeah I think I think I've been forced to just really to just really listen there are some things that still have to get done but um but but where I can just just figuring out a balance and also kind of just acknowledging that I guess all of our work styles are going to be slightly different during this time. And so, you know,

you might need an extra five minute break here or there. Like, you know, you've got to kind of figure out, figure out what works. I think for me that the one benefit to this like horrible situation, and I obviously say this with the colostomy that um i guess i just want to acknowledge the fact that i know that we are so privileged to be in the position we are as as um people and within the media still having our

jobs um like my mum works in healthcare as does libs auntie um and yeah it's like it's very real um for a lot of people who um are being exposed to coronavirus but yeah anyway I think for me I guess one of the things I have liked is feeling like I have a bit more control over my days because nothing can pull me away to distract me if that makes sense um in the same way that it can when you're living life outside of lockdown um but apart from that um yeah it's been it's been tough and like yeah you that you know we were talking about boundaries before but yeah you have to be even strict with yourself to not work through your lunch break to not keep working when when the end of your working day ends um so yeah it's been interesting yeah and I think it would tell us a lot about

the ways that we can and can work kind of moving forward so I'm hoping that there is some slight obviously like again with the codicil that this is a horrific situation but hopefully there will be some kind of positive imprint or or you know thought for for companies and whatever in terms of how how it is that that we can work work and adapting a little bit more. Like I saw Emma Gannon posting about her book and how people kind of said this is absolutely ridiculous and this could never work and this way of working is not a thing that could ever happen. And now it's forcing people to look a little bit, look and think a little bit differently.

So, yeah. Yeah, it's certainly one of those times of like cognitive dissonance. My dad's a doctor, my sister think a little bit um differently so yeah yeah it's certainly one of those times of like cognitive dissonance because my my dad's a doctor my sister doctor as well so that I've got like two people in my immediate family who are like kind of out and working on the front lines and when I speak to them obviously as I imagine when you speak to your family members or healthcare workers it suddenly feels so frightening so immediate and like you can't escape it and then on the other hand sometimes I wake up and I'm like oh this is lovely I love this like because there's something so nice about not feeling that pressure of those cogs turning and I do think that it's it just highlights our

ability to exist in like two truths at the same time and I think that that's something which you must see in the media and in your work all the time especially but I guess when you're trying to push through a story or push through a narrative. And I mean, we see it a lot with climate change and veganism and all these kind of things, which we know to be so, so important. And yet there's some part of our brain which is able to override that and tap into something else. And with that in mind, like you were saying, you know, the media is evergreen, it's ever present, it's rolling 24 hours and all the time. And have you found, you ever felt doubtful have you ever found have you had a lot of criticism have you had like you obviously worked so hard in order to get your voice heard but I can imagine

there's still some of those old-fashioned barriers which sometimes can be really hard to permeate how how do you battle against knowing what you want to be doing and then I guess sometimes just feeling utterly fatigued I wouldn't necessarily say like I don't know for me personally anyway Charlie um that like the kind of core pushback or criticism has been like necessarily super vocal you know kind of call outs or that kind of thing I think that the things that become frustrating for me is in maybe like more of the like day-to-day conversations or things which are unsaid or like subtle things which are said or you know kind of lack of understanding or lack of desire to change or like kind of pretense that there's a desire to change which then as as as we work kind

of you know it becomes apparent that actually that's not what they want it's like it's like a tokenistic kind of thing um but for the most part we've been very fortunate in a sense that you know we have had a lot of support we've had a lot of support from you know the guardian and and and and like kind of mainstream press as well like we've had support and amplification in that way quite quite organically which has been which has been great but of course where you know this it's often it's the things that you know often the things that you can't see like knowing that as a as a black queer black woman founded business you know it's it's we have a 0.01% chance of getting the kind of venture capital funding or whatever.

It's bad for women. But when you look at women of colour, it's even worse. It's those things which are not necessarily things which are said on an ongoing basis, but they're things that you're aware that you're consistently pushing up against um but like if we weren't fueled by a desire to change things or or we didn't have the kind of resolve or the or the I guess foresight or you know idea that that this is absolutely possible then it would make those barriers barriers feel kind of crippling because they are everywhere, but also, like I say, not necessarily always super visible. Does that make sense? I don't know if that makes sense. That makes complete sense to me. Those insidious

systemic things, which, you know, kind of impacts. So I love Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez Perez which often talks about in relation to women in general about how there's so many glass ceilings that we have to break and that you might not even know exist they just feel so so normal obviously we're talking now about like big scale change and going forwards but one thing I want to talk about because I think it's kind of in line with what the podcast is talking about is whether we as humans like I believe we've got the capability to change and grow and i think that we have to believe in being able to change and grow otherwise we'll never be able to do anything better and this seems completely at odds with the cancel culture situation that we're living through at the

minute um and like right now at the minute there's a lot of talk about influencers who've said things um which are like a color colorist colorist it's colorist a term it's like colorism um and that but they have tweets from like years and years ago i'm not gonna ask you to comment on that exact thing but what what's your view on people's ability to change if we've done something wrong in the past i don't i personally i've had so many think pizzas about cancel culture and i have lots of opinions on it. But when we talk about growing up, I think we have to be able to move past. What's your view on that? It's a complicated one. I was just going to say that, yeah, in relation to what we're seeing on the timeline right now, horrific colourists and anti-black comments surfacing from the early 2010s, but also tracking up until nowadays, into the 2020s.

I think you've got to accept that for some people, your apologies and your claims that you have unlearned the behaviors you projected into social media spaces will never be enough and that it is totally their choice if they have been seriously hurt by your actions as to whether or not they want to accept your apology um i do believe that people can change um but that change has to be if you are a person in a public space I think that change has to be visible and it has to it has to be presented as being ongoing um and yeah that's my take on it yeah I think I think that I think that there's

like I think that there are so many like layers like in terms of um cancel culture and I think that there are so many layers in terms of cancel culture. And I think that holding people to account is really important in a lot of ways. I think we know that that's so important and integral to the journalism that we produce. I think that it is so important when we're looking at kind of government bodies and um corporations um to be able to have like a space in a in a public forum I think that there are issues with cancel culture in general um I think that whole thing can become toxic and and that's not for me to say that if you've got a horrible view or if you're racist that you shouldn't be cancelled I don't think that at all but I think that there needs to be yeah an understanding and

a degree of I've seen it happen to to to all sorts of people who maybe said something which was like not great when they were 13 or something and it's like well we can safely assume that that person has grown up since they were 13. And like we can kind of, there's evidence of that because we see, you know, like Charlie says in the public forum, the work that they've been doing for the last, say, five or six or seven or eight years. And that shouldn't be negated by something that was said a long time ago. I think that, yeah, I think it's I think it's quite a nuanced thing and like I guess in my mind it's kind of like a case by case assessment

but I think that it's dangerous to fall into a trap on social media of like that being the way that we that we communicate um and yeah yeah it can be very toxic it can be very toxic and I think for me if there's someone who is in like in my kind of network or community or like one of my peers who I who I feel like oh that was a bit strange like I being the person that I am and like fine that's not everybody's cup of tea but I would be more inclined to like send them a text or like drop them a message and and and see what's going on if it seems like out of character or I don't know whatever it is but I I think it depends obviously on what it is that's been said but but I think for me like sometimes places like Twitter can like prevent meaningful conversation and connections and it becomes like a

this performative thing of like I'm morally superior to you and and yeah I don't find that like helpful yeah I think the saying goes isn't it like the the only true apology is change behavior which I think is what you're saying which I completely agree with and sometimes there does have to be a lot of space between the initial actions and a forgiveness because as Charlie said you know you can't expect forgiveness from everyone if we've done something wrong and I agree about social media I think it really throws up this polarization like this anger and sometimes I find it really like suffocating like you say there's no nuance and there's no room for people to explore ideas is this something you come up against in your work where sometimes you find it quite hard to put forward a case that maybe is a bit gray and you don't have a direct line for it? You're just trying to open up a debate.

I find it sometimes where people want a concise message that's got definitive rules by it. And life isn't like that. But social media wants us to be on the left, on the right. Do you know what I mean? Is that something you come across in your work where you wish there was a bit more space for people to explore an idea without necessarily having a conclusion immediately? I'm probably like not the best person to ask because I'm my social media, whatever, or the people that are around me. I kind of, I, we have space and dialogue and like and there there feels like there is room to to explore and to be honest I probably don't take all of those conversations or questions like to

the internet for example I might just have those conversations with my peers and we might talk about stuff and we might figure things out together in that way um but yeah that's probably because I've got I don't know a very like well curated or whatever set of set of people around me and I'm also not also not someone who's like super active on on like things like Twitter anyway but Chas I don't know if you like do you do you ever find that there are topics that you want to explore and like I guess like social media doesn't necessarily provide a space for nuance or discussion like have you ever come up against anything where it's been like just shut down or I don't know where I've said something stupid on Twitter no no not

something stupid on Twitter that like you're an idea and it wasn't like oh and it didn't feel like a sort of safe space to do so yeah yeah um yeah I mean I think I think that's one of the reasons why I'm so happy we have Galdem because I can say all my unformed opinions to you guys instead of putting them out on social media um I'm very careful with how I use Twitter these days I was a lot more faulty on it back in the day you were actually and proper yeah well I don't think I you know I don't think I ever fed into um the sort of deep toxicity you just tweet you just did a lot more but I just yeah which which naturally means that you you end up tweeting about you know the trending topics of

the day and which can lead to more um antagonistic conversations but but yeah i mean i think yeah i speak i speak that if i yeah if i want to discuss something that i don't think is fully formed and i don't think there's a safe space to do that um really at all yeah um then yeah i'll speak to the gal then speak to my dad yeah and I think it's important that we have those spaces where we can like have those discussions because I don't know there were just so many layers to it there were just so many layers to these conversations which like are influenced by like gender class like race like so many different things and so I yeah I think it's important that you know especially as like people of color like we we like we hold space and we have space to explore conversations sometimes

difficult conversations you know and and and and and theorize together I think it's it's really healthy I think spending your time tweeting half-assed theories is on Twitter is not necessarily a productive use of time or like the best use of time I don't know I yeah I completely agree you've got to have those safe spaces and those friendships with which you can kind of say something which you know might come out not perfectly but then you've got the room to kind of tussle with it and figure out what it means to you and what it means more widely the one thing I do come across with my work and I'm sure you'll have this is lots of usually women because predominantly my audience are women will reach out to me and be like they don't have necessarily that circle of friends or they don't have that

trusted community that they can look to for resources or for these conversations and obviously Galdam your book and your podcast are going to be amazing spaces for people to look to but as a final question I wanted to ask you for me and I think you're saying the same thing, you know, the most important thing in life is kind of, well, not the most important thing, but really important part of growing up is to carry on learning and to be open. What resources alongside Galdan

would you suggest to people who maybe don't feel like they've got those safe spaces within their immediate community to explore ideas? Or what things have you found really crucial to your learning and growing alongside the resources that you produce of course um I mean there are so many honestly like I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by people who I've been able to really yeah just find spaces where I feel accepted and where I'm able to explore certain parts of my identity I think like they're amazing like specific groups which are like centred around uplifting

and like bringing together a community of like queer people of colour, for example. So for me, you know, platforms like Babes and Pussy Palace and things like that were really kind of crucial to me when I was like coming into myself and figuring out what it was that I loved and who I loved and all of those kind of crucial to me when I was like coming into myself and figuring out um what it was that I loved and who I loved and all of those kind of um big big questions and then there are of course kind of like other editorial um platforms you know we've got like our friends at Amalia who

like do amazing work um we've got you know there's Black Ballard again, like capturing the experiences of black women and girls. Yeah, we're fortunate that, like I say again, this is people that we have in our circles, but it's been really amazing to have access to these groups and resources resources and like words and projects and creative ideas by groups that you see yourself um reflected in um and I guess yeah some of those is designed specifically to hold space for for example queer people of color and then you know in editorially platforms like um yeah there are platforms like Black Ballad and Amalia but Charles I don't know what you want to add um yeah just to add that like i guess like kind of riffing off this a little bit i think that if we're if we're thinking about um audiences like beyond um goddamn score audience and how

they can sort of learn a bit more about race um and and gender issues. You know, as I said, like my profession is journalism and that essentially means, often means being quite good at researching. And I use just all the tools I have available to me. And I think that it can become quite frustrating for women and non-binary people of color feeling like the onus is on them to educate people when the resources are already out there um and you know we're we we've had to find them for ourselves and and make use of them ourselves um you know throughout our whole lives as well because you know as as you point out um we're not taught a lot

of this stuff in school um so yeah it is out there um if you start sort of curating your social media a little bit more to to make sure you follow um commentators and things from backgrounds that aren't your own um if you follow platforms like galdem like black ballad in the us like wear your voice magazine um but yeah also just just stay curious and like if you don't understand something before you comment on it put your research in like you would with any topic that you truly care about have a little google use reliable platforms like the guardian and the bbc and and other spaces and galdem obviously yeah i do i know what you mean and i i completely feel that and we we do have to have that research element and i i get the same thing sometimes

when people ask you questions and it is really important that we're assertive and believe in ourselves to be able to accrue information because sometimes it does take a bit of like destination to decide like do i want to take that bit of information and and so yeah i think you you raise a really important point there um so I just wanted to ask is there anything else that you wanted to draw attention to that you're working on I know it's a bit of a weird time so maybe apart from the podcast on your platform at the minute with no events or anything but is there anything you wanted to highlight or point us have a look at as well as growing up with Galdon we've also launched a membership model um which we had been

planning for the last kind of year and we had had our kind of campaign lined out and all of our comms lined out. And of course, this happened. And so it became even more pressing that we continue to push forward with the membership model. So there are three tiers and people get perks from like top tier kind of merchandise, print issues, access to events across across the year access to like a broadcast only whatsapp group where we share opportunities jobs events cool things like a really well curated kind of gal dem approved set of stuff to to try um and and yeah so so you can and you can also pay it forward so you can buy membership for yourself and and another one that

will will kind of offer up to someone in our community who needs one, but can't necessarily afford it or whatever. And so, yeah, memberships is like is a huge thing for us. It's been incredible considering what is going on that we've got almost 500 people who have signed up to become members already. We're about halfway to our target now. But yeah, that's um that's that's the that's the kind of like big thing that is really important and I think now more than ever it's important for people who are able to be to back independent businesses to back independent journalism because our voices are needed more now than ever before we're needed to kind of hold

people to account and to provide a space for the voices who are being most impacted by what's happening with COVID but who are having the kind of least representation so memberships are kind of crucial to the future sustainability of Galdem so if you want to see us continue become a member. Did you have anything to add to that Charlie? I think you've nailed it to be honest yeah that was a really good pitch i'm signing up as soon as we log off um well thank you so much for joining me it's been such a great conversation um and oh no it's been fab thank you everyone for listening and make sure you follow gal dem on instagram and have a look at what they're doing and subscribe of course course. And I will see you next week. Thank you.

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