The lightbulb moment

Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

9 months. That’s how long I waited to get into the BBC after I pressed “apply” on the apprenticeship application.

Five months in, I found out I’d got the job and I was on cloud nine. Finally, the career I’d always dreamed of, and a stable job for at least a year.

Now, another 9 months later, I’m trying to work out what happens next. The apprenticeship ends in 4 months and I’ve really got to get my skates on. I’ve spent the past 18 months feeling secure, floating around on my little cloud, but now it’s time to face reality.

There’s been a lot on the virtual mind map, so to speak. Presenter was always the original route. Then researcher popped up. Podcast producer had a strong run. Video editor came later. Even animal coordinator was briefly in the mix at one point. But none of them quite landed. Presenting will probably always be my first love, hence winning Best Radio Presenter a few months back, but there was still an itch I couldn’t ignore.

That itch started quietly. Pinterest first. Then furniture websites. Then being on holiday and finding myself more obsessed with the woven wall lamps and the marble detail above the lift than I probably should admit.

And then it hit me.

“Oh God, I miss design.”

I spent over a decade in interior design, and a big part of that was styling spaces for camera, before I stepped into broadcasting. For a while, I thought of that as a chapter I’d closed. I don’t anymore.

Lately I’ve been reading how some of the best production designers talk about their work. The Barbie movie especially. Those sets genuinely moved me at the time, looking back to 2023 when that world felt completely out of reach. Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer talked about chasing an “authentic artificiality” in a world that is completely absurd, but still has to feel real enough that you believe in it. Every object in a room is a decision, and it’s telling the audience something whether you mean it to or not.

That instinct feels very familiar to me.

It’s what I was doing in interiors for years, just at a different scale.

The difference is that back then, however much I loved that world, I didn’t understand production. I knew how to design a beautiful room. I knew how a space should feel. I knew how things read on camera. But I didn’t know how a production was actually put together, let alone a film on that scale.

Now I do.

This year, training as a BBC production apprentice has taught me how production and storytelling actually work from the inside, across both screen and audio. And when I put that together with a decade of thinking about space, atmosphere, texture, light, and how a room tells a story, something has clicked.

The two halves of my background are not separate at all.

I already had the design part. Now I have the production part too.

And that means the world I thought was out of reach doesn’t feel out of reach anymore.

It feels open.