The story behind Leeds' first-ever sleep podcast for performers

2020 was a hard year; the pandemic struck and the performing arts industry took a tremendous hit, dragging everyone's mental health and sleep schedule along with it.

Theatres closed, tours were cancelled mid rehearsal and all final-year graduations came to a grinding halt.

I was in my last year at drama school halfway through rehearsals for our final show, when we got the email telling us exactly what we’d been dreading; because of covid, school is closed and all shows are postponed until further notice.

So I packed a bag, said goodbye to my flatmates and jumped on the first coach back home - then came the government's announcement: lockdown.

The rug had been yanked from underneath us, broken into tiny pieces and thrown into a black hole. Would we ever be normal again?

I remember scrolling through social media and seeing downtrodden actors, directors and other creatives vent about how they were losing hope and could feel their inner spark dimming. Some even considered quitting their career altogether.

Hearing this broke my heart, because becoming an actor changed my life. I was the quietest and most shy kid on the planet; I didn’t have many friends and basically lived life inside an imaginary bubble. It wasn’t until my final year at drama school when that bubble finally burst, and I was ok being me.

So I thought: "Surely I can do something to help, even if it’s small!’". My sleep pattern had completely gone down the drain, and in my search to find some kind of respite, I started looking at podcasts.

After trying a few different ones, I came across a show called Dreamful Bedtime Stories, which I got into the habit of listening to every night, and it helped to ease my racing thoughts.

“Having a podcast would be cool” I thought to myself, but how could I think of something that people would actually want to listen to?

I started mulling over the idea for a sleep podcast of my own, but I was painfully aware of how many of them there were already. I needed to find a very specific niche that targeted a specific group of people, something that nobody had tried yet.

I cast my mind back to my training days for some inspiration and remembered something a teacher had once said: “If you’re having trouble with a character or feeling stuck, there’s nothing wrong with going back to the script and looking at the words” and a half-formed idea popped into my head: Can we apply that principle to our lives?

Then it clicked; a sleep podcast by creatives for creatives, each episode featuring different pieces of text and literature such as poems, plays, monologues and adaptations all focused on the performing arts and creative industry - which takes us back to the script, serving as a reminder of the words we love to perform.

I did a quick search for sleep podcasts for actors high and low on every platform I could think of…and there were zero, absolutely none, I’d found my niche!

So I unboxed my microphone and set up a starting space in my bedroom, and in February 2021, the Sleepless Creatives Podcast was born.

The first few episodes were a little wobbly, I didn’t have a great recording space yet and I was still learning about audio editing, but I made do until I moved house and was able to set up my first recording studio with all the bells and whistles.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing to start with, I had no idea what I was doing when it came to producing, promoting and planning anything as these weren’t things I had done before, but with some trial and error, my skills started to pick up.

I almost quit the podcast two years in because my engagement was so low that I genuinely thought nobody was listening, it felt like each episode was falling into a void. But I was pulled back by some kind words from a listener who said she loved the show and even recommended it to her friends, which made me squeal with both delight and disbelief: “Someone actually likes something I made, and they recommended it to their friends? Even better!”

Almost four years later, we have come up in popularity and gone from strength to strength since our creation. I've started collaborating with other artists and performers which has helped the show reach new heights, and I get to do what I love and help others in the process.

So if you’re a performer or creative who's feeling bogged down and struggling with sleep, why not try Sleepless Creatives? New episodes are released monthly and there's a lot of new things in the pipeline. So tune in now, and drift off.

You can listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube and on our website at www.sleeplesscreativespodcast.co.uk.