You Are The Media Creator Day has been growing since its inaugural year in 2022 as a rebooted replacement to the former YATM Conference. In 2023 it added Failed Nights to the programme, the Wednesday evening before Thursday’s main event. In 2024 the after party and sea swimming were made official fixtures. This year Creator Day became Creator Week in everything but name.
A ‘Hall of Fame’ event kicked off the 4 day bonanza, hosted by Gordon Fong at Bournemouth University. Gordon, who ought to be the first name and face in a local hall of fame, wanted to showcase those at the beginning, middle and later stages of their careers and businesses.
It was an evening of nostalgia, hearing from speakers that I’ve known at various points in my own career, going back to my early years working at BU (Matt Desmier, Mike Hawkyard and Mark Cribb), right up to the past year or so (Ella Crossen-White, Lisa Morelli and Arabella Lewis Smith – an odd coincidence that this would split by gender).
Just walking onto Talbot Campus, specifically through the older Poole House entrance for the first time in a while, pummels me with memories. My first day as a student, my first day at work, the windows above where I both learnt and taught.
It was only right that the evening concluded with a post event pint in Dylan’s. I told the story of the time I hosted an alumni reunion in 2013 and the only place my guests wanted to go was this bar. It was outside of term time then and closed, but the door was open and they were happy to sit in the dark for a mo to reminisce. 15 years on from my own graduation and I ‘get’ this a bit more now.
Failed Nights followed the next day, back at Foundry for the third year running and hosted once again by Matt Denyer. I love the concept of this event, three speakers sharing stories of where their career, or life in general hasn’t gone to plan.
This year we heard from Mark Franklin, Beth Carter and Alix King. These were all very honest and candid talks, with the vulnerability gifted by each speaker being key to what made for such a compelling listen.
Mark Franklin presented the idea that to regard an occurrence in our life as a failure is a choice. It’s one of those alternate takes that goes some way to reframe the whole of your life in your mind. I asked Beth whether she considers any of her failures shared to, only be failures by choice and the question split the room (I was almost boo’d out!).
Perhaps our understanding of failure needs reappraisal, hopefully without breaking the concept of this series.
At the very first Failed Nights event back in Autumn 2022 at Black Cherry Theatre in Boscombe (now closed) we heard from a chap who’d been to prison because of his unlawful finances. It makes for a large umbrella term for failure when included alongside the other stories we’ve heard since.
Timings made attending this evening a challenge for me but I was determined to make it work to support my friend Alix on a talk that I know meant a lot to her. She nailed it and it had everything, a full spectrum of emotions in 20 minutes. I’m glad I was able to be there for it, else I would’ve missed two other great talks also.
12 hours later and we were back in Poole for the main event, across the road at the Lighthouse. I took something from each of the speakers, as always. The range of topics, or perhaps ‘perspectives’ does sometimes send my mind wondering in so many directions that I lose sight of the overall focus to the learning. Not a bad thing, quite the opposite. It just takes me a few days to digest all the insights and make conclusions.
That was helped this year by framing the event with the theme of relevance, established beautifully by Matt King’s opening short film of the same title (you can see it below). Matt has provided an opening video previously, and is currently working on a video case study for me with Grapevine, but this production crossed a line I often speak about between business and art. We can debate at length where that line is and how you define either side.
On this occasion I’ll stick to the premise of being by choice. Matt created what he wanted, not what was needed and was editing at 5am the morning of the event to realise a vision that nobody expected to see. In that art? Maybe. I think the end result here is.
I particularly enjoyed the two ‘village vignettes’ delivered by Christophe Stourton and Rachel Extance, who I passed the batton to this year. Each were perfect, concise tone poems on community. It was lovely to be able to sit and enjoy these without the mild anxiety of delivering my own!
Following the fun of said vignette and the world record attempt last year I was so keen that others had their turn. I was quietly determined to not step a foot onstage, but I am grateful that Mark Masters had other ideas about that…
There’s so many people who could’ve been presented with the ‘YATM Family Tree’ certificate that my mind was starting to run through all the names when Mark introduced the concept. I really didn’t expect to hear my name. Thank God he didn’t want a speech, I was speechless.
We all have our stories of how we found our way to YATM, but they’re all pretty similar really. That’s how Mark’s arrived at his recent term used across his own marketing of ‘misfits’. I’ve never really fit in, or wanted to. I’ve always been drawn to people who are the same in that nature, even if we’re totally different at face value.
Each year it becomes a bigger challenge to walk from one side of the Lighthouse to the other at Creator Day, I love stopping to talk to everyone. For those who only got a smile or wave from me, I am sorry, I probably desperately needed a wee by that point!
Continuing with Wednesday’s attempt to live two days in one, I left Creator Day at 6pm, caught a train to Southampton to see illuminati hotties open for Pup, left before the headline set, got a train back to Poole and hot footed it to the Quay to reunite with the YATM fam.
There was a real chance I’d be arriving back too late in the day and the last folks standing would have run of steam. As I turned the corner to be greeted by Ella CW and Mark Masters I knew my gamble had paid off. By the time we left the karaoke at 1am I knew I was unlikely to make Friday’s events (sadly, I did not).
There were some who were at the karaoke who I was also with two days earlier at BU. There was only one who opened both with the first talk of the week and the first song of the night and that is Ella Crossen-White. I was honoured when she asked for my input on her talk (and so relieved that she got big laughs for her jokes that I told her to lean into), but she didn’t need my help any more than she needed me to sing along to Adele from the front.
We first met back in Autumn 2023 when I was part of a panel Mark put together for Bournemouth and Poole College. She came up to Christophe and I afterwards and we both knew then that this wasn’t any student who had the talk scheduled in their day. Ella was keen and determined to propel herself forward. A year later she was talking to the next cohort of students. Ella has ‘relevance’.
Tickets for next year’s Creator Day Week are available now for the early bird price of £145. An absolute steal for 4 days of events. Congrats to Mark Masters and all involved for a successful 2025. 👏
Liam Toms 