Elliot Moss
That was Nina Simone with See-Line Woman. Good it was too. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today, I am very pleased to say is Jasmine Richards, Author and Founder of Storymix, the children’s fiction development studio with a social purpose. Growing up in what she describes as a ‘rough and tough’ area of north London, Jasmine was hooked on reading. Her favourite place? The local library. But the only books she read with the Black female character lead were stories rooted in trauma. Having graduated from Oxford University and while working in the publishing world, Jasmine had, as she says, “a moment of realisation and rage” as she noticed her eldest child was not represented in his reading books either. Jasmine resolved to tackle the issue, using her own writing, editing and development knowledge and in 2019, she launched Storymix, its aim to increase diversity in children’s books and amongst authors and create heroes for every child in its stories. Jasmine has since written over a dozen books for children and Storymix’s collaborations with emerging and established BME writers and illustrators have sold over 60,000 copies in the UK and the US. Jasmine joins me in just a few minutes to talk about disrupting an industry. And the musical disrupters in today’s Jazz Shapers are Lady Blackbird, Gilberto Gil, Jimmy Smith and here’s John Handy with the fabulous Hard Work.
John Handy there with the brilliant, as I promised, Hard Work. This is Jazz Shapers and my Business Shaper today is Jasmine Richards, she’s the Founder of Storymix, as you heard. It’s great to have you here.
Jasmine Richards
Hi, Elliot.
Elliot Moss
Hello. I want to read you something, which apparently is your favourite quote and it’s one of mine as well. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.” From of course, Dr Seuss, I can read with my eyes shut, which I read to all my children at some point. True story. You’re an avid reader.
Jasmine Richards
Yes, I think you could say I’m an avid reader and I think beyond that, I feel that my life experience and what I’ve managed to achieve is directly linked to my love of books and there is so much data to show that a love of reading, so a joy of reading, so I’m not talking about books that are phonically decodable, it’s not about learning to read but loving to read for fun and for joy, has a bigger outcome on your life chances, so you live longer, get a better job, it has more of an impact than where you go to school, what your parents do for a living. It’s magic. Reading is magic and very powerful.
Elliot Moss
First book you read, do you remember it?
Jasmine Richards
Oh my goodness. First book I read…
Elliot Moss
Or the first book that had an impact on you.
Jasmine Richards
The first book that I read probably independently and read again and again and again was Matilda and I could feel and see quite a lot of myself in that book, like her love of reading and being quite young and being able to read, I definitely had a deep empathy with that.
Elliot Moss
And these facts that you talk about, I feel like I’ve heard them sort of in passing but they’re absolutely fundamental. Why is that story not a better story told or have I just been asleep for the last fifty years?
Jasmine Richards
You know I feel like in the world of publishing it is really well known, so there’s some fantastic work that is done by an organisation called Book Trust and they talk about all the time about having books in the house is fundamental to kind of social mobility and having access to story is the thing that makes the difference. So there’s lots of people doing fantastic work. Another organisation called Book Start, they’re the ones that make sure that every child when they are in Reception goes home with a book. So, I mean that information is out there but sometimes you know I sort of see things out there about like tutoring your kids and helping them to get ahead and I just want to say, just give them a book or just read to your children, just read for fun, like that’s the magic pill if you’re looking for it, you know, it’s reading.
Elliot Moss
But the writing piece for you, you didn’t do it to address an issue did it because it’s in your bones. You did it because you’d read when you were young. Is that right? I mean now obviously, Storymix has been set up to facilitate a specific thing, which I want you to explain in a moment, but you personally, were you compelled to write?
Jasmine Richards
It’s really interesting because when I talked to people I went to school with, they said I always said that I was going to be a writer. I don’t actually remember that but I do remember all the notebooks that I used to keep and all of the sort of short stories and poems that I would write but I actually think because there weren’t many writers that looked like me, when I finished University I didn’t think that I could be a writer but I thought I could work in publishing and be close to books that way and it was whilst working with authors that I realised that an author is not a superbeing okay, it’s just someone who grafts, it’s someone who does many drafts of something and gets better over time and I think it was working with writers and seeing that, that gave me the confidence to write but I almost had to be on the other side of it to have the confidence to call myself, name myself as a writer.
Elliot Moss
And now just give me the elevator pitch on Storymix because I really, I think it’s really fascinating.
Jasmine Richards
Okay so Storymix is an inclusive fiction studio that centres kids of colour and stories full of joy and adventure and we create pathways into publishing for racially minoritized writers.
Elliot Moss
But essentially like an incubator. You come and you are the one that finds fantastic ideas, you then find writers, you then pitch the ideas to publishers and then things go and get made.
Jasmine Richards
That’s pretty much it. So, packaging, it’s called packaging, I hate that phrase because I don’t think we make baked beans right, we’re making stories that are delighting people and changing people’s point of view on the world but has actually existed for a really long time, so books like Nancy Drew were created by a team of people who would do the storyline, do all those plot beats and then find a writer or writers to put the flesh on the bones and so I’ve worked in publishing for almost twenty years and lots of my work has been in this realm, which is called IP or intellectual property, making IP. It was the realisation that you could use this model, which is really well known in the world of publishing, probably not outside of that world, to tackle a really specific issue because it’s a way of getting books onto the shelf quickly and taking up space, literally taking up space on the shelf.
Elliot Moss
Very clever. Jasmine Richards is my Business Shaper today, she’s the Founder of Storymix, we’ll be hearing lots from her very shortly. Time for some more music right now, it’s Lady Blackbird with Feel It Comin’ and by the way, just in case you didn’t know, Lady Blackbird was the International Jazz Act of the year in the Jazz FM Awards in 2022.
That was Lady Blackbird with Feel It Comin’. Jasmine Richards is my Business Shaper today. She’s the Founder of Storymix, they do clever things with getting books greenlit, though apparently it’s not as novel as I thought it was, there you go, shows my ignorance in the world of publishing. And she’s also an author in her own right. I said at the beginning, and you talked about people of colour just then and there’s kind of, nomenclature and language are a very interesting thing, especially in this world of equity, diversity and inclusion and there are landmines everywhere, especially for those people that don’t know what they’re talking about, and I would include myself in that as much I’m a very committed amateur. You have expressed this in the terms of racially minoritized which I think is a really interesting and I haven’t heard that before in terms of a group of people who have been, something has happened to them. Just give me a bit of depth around that, a bit of insight around why those are the words you’ve chosen because words are weapons and you’re an author so you know what you’re doing.
Jasmine Richards
Oh well thank you for saying that, that I know what I’m doing. I don’t always feel like I know what I’m doing but I just felt it’s a very recent phrase that I heard and I was like yes, I feel like that gets at what we’re trying to do, so the reason, you know, in a way Storymix shouldn’t need to exist, right, that pathway for talented creators, regardless of background, should just be free and easy, should just happen, okay, but it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen because in the industry, the gatekeepers, it’s a very sort of monocultural, it’s southern, it’s white, it’s middleclass, so those are the people making the buying decisions and then the people getting published, it’s similar again, they’re white, middleclass, southern, so you’ve got the people making the decisions and people making the books all being of one culture and so clearly something is happening in society why that is happening. So, with the phrase ‘racially minoritized’ it’s sort of talking about the sort of societal impacts, the challenges that prevents talent getting through the door and I felt like it really sort of encapsulated what I think Storymix does, which is okay we get the books onto the shelves but we also take this model of packaging and sort of use it as an apprenticeship. So for me, success looks like a writer working on one of our series and then them turning around and saying, you know what Jasmine, I loved working on this five book series with you but I’ve sold my own project to Puffin or Macmillan, I can’t write for you anymore, I’m doing my own thing. And that is what I want to do, I want to sort of open the door and I want to bring through as many people with me as possible and what I always say to my team is it’s always going to be hard, we are always going to be in the business of new, we’re always going to be working with writers who need a little bit more extra support as they’re building up their writing muscle and as soon as they’re at the point where we could sit back and not have to do as much work, that is when they’re going to fly, that is the business.
Elliot Moss
And it’s exactly the same I think, for different reasons, around climate change. When I was sort of twenty, people talking about climate change but they were the nutters, they were the people that we all said what are you talking about, actually fifteen probably because it was probably 37 years ago, you know back in the Eighties, people went these were, this was a fringe thing and eventually it has become mainstream and now of course it’s every sentient person’s worry and obviously inclusivity, I’m not comparing the two in terms of gravity, I’m just saying as issues, it’s now that your point is, once it goes mainstream, thank you very much, I’ve done my job in a way and like you said, I like your phrase ‘we shouldn’t have to exist’ but of course there’s an imbalance. What interests me is the channelling of your own experience and then through the eyes of your son as well when you went, but there’s no one that looks like me, that representation point which is at the heart of inclusivity and I think the book was, that you’ve talked about in the past, is called ‘Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry’, I think it’s a book exploring the struggles of African Americans in 1930 Mississippi. What hit you? Was it just the story? Was it as simple as that because you’ve described rage. That’s a big, that’s a big emotion and how have you channelled, if it was rage, how have you, how come you’re so calm?
Jasmine Richards
Because I had, I had my moment of rage. So, the ‘Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry’ experience is when I look back as my childhood and the books that I read as a child, so like I said, I read Matilda, I could see elements of myself in Matilda but the first time I fully myself as someone who maybe looked like me, had the same hair texture as me, was this, it’s a really wonderful book, you know ‘Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry’ but it’s a book rooted in trauma. So that’s the time I get to see myself fully, is a book rooted in trauma and then if we fast-forward and you know I’m there with my son, we’re moving from picture books to chapter books and I’ve worked really hard so that he’s you know into reading and you know I really want to make sure our books represent our family and you know the society we live in and sometimes I have to order in books from The States but that’s fine, that’s fine, that’s okay and then we’re sort of moving on to chapter books and I’m in the book shop and I’m looking at the shelves and I can see Horrid Henry for days – and that’s casting no shade on Horrid Henry – I can see Beast Quest, which is another series that I actually was in the room when we came up with that idea, so I used to work for an other IP company, it was my second job in publishing, I was in the room and there’s about a hundred of those books now and I had this moment of thinking what if, when we were coming up with that series idea, I had piped up and said, “Hey, this is a fancy adventure. Why don’t we make our protagonist Black or Asian, like be crazy?” You know, “Why don’t we do that?” and if that had happened, right now, there’d be a hundred books on the shelves with a protagonist of colour. No, I didn’t say that because I was the only person in the room that looked like me, I was the most junior person in the room but I, it was in that moment that I couldn’t just be angry with publishing because I had been publishing, I had worked in publishing for all of this time and I hadn’t ever dared put my head above the parapet, I was worried about how I would be perceived. I was worried that I wouldn’t progress and then here I was with my own child and he wasn’t there and that was the moment of rage, I was like that can’t stand, I need to do something about it.
Elliot Moss
And Jasmine Richards did something about it and she founded a business called Storymix and we’re here talking about and she’ll be coming back in a couple of moments. Right now though, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Natasha Knight invites business founders to share their industry insights and practical advice for those of you thinking about getting into an industry, whether it’s publishing or anything else, and starting your very own thing. In this clip, focussed on entering the Arts industries, we hear from Fabien Riggall, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Secret Cinema.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and indeed you can hear this very programme again with Jasmine if you pop Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice or if you’ve got a smart speaker, why not ask it to play Jazz Shapers and there you will find a taster of our recent shows. But back to today, it’s Jasmine Richards, Author and Founder of Storymix, the children’s fiction development studio with a social purpose. When it was just you, that’s all well and dandy, and then you have to get bigger because Storymix has ambitions and you have collaborations and you want to output lots of things which are good, which change the world. How has the author managed to segue beautifully, elegantly, like a swan over there on the water, how has she managed to do that or has it not been quite the ride that I’m describing?
Jasmine Richards
It’s interesting, so my first book published in 2012, my first book was published in the US for Harper Collins, didn’t find a home in the UK and some of the feedback that we got at that time was ‘love Jasmine’s writing, can she write something a bit more urban’ because my…
Elliot Moss
There’s a trope if there was one, right, I mean seriously?
Jasmine Richards
There was one, right because I like dragons, I like you know if there’s not a dragon, it’s not a story, right?
Elliot Moss
And now you need it to be ‘urban’ in big inverted commas, whatever that might mean.
Jasmine Richards
Right, so I feel like in that way that Jasmine as an author was a little bit ahead of where the UK was in terms of the market and what they could get their head around, what they could pitch, where they would put me on the shelf, all of those things. Whereas in The States, they’re always just that little bit ahead. So it was kind of bad timing for me as an author but with Storymix, it was great timing and you know the pandemic was hard for so many reasons but from my point of view as a female founder, as a Black female founder, the pandemic meant, you know this really young business that was only a year old, we moved from meetings in person to meeting online and you know I had a young family, you know my day was kind of very short in terms of the school run, you know all that school run right, so all of a sudden things opened up in terms of me being able to pitch to publishers and to run the business and then we had the murder of George Floyd and that happened during the pandemic, where everyone had this moment to reflect and there was this sort of seismic shift, there was this epiphany that happened in publishing and beyond and here I was, this little sort of cottage industry, creating books that centred kids of colour and that was exactly the thing that publishers wanted and needed urgently, in 2020, so we were a very young business that was very much in demand very quickly, so then we had to think about how could we scale, how could we grow but still keep the integrity, still keep the authenticity, you know and that has been a journey in itself I’d say.
Elliot Moss
But a nice problem to have.
Jasmine Richards
An amazing, yeah, an amazing problem to have and I did wrestle for quite a long time that such a horrible thing had to happen for publishing and the world to change but you know when I was in that bookshop and I was thinking about the change I wanted to make, the impact I wanted to make, I could spend time feeling bad about the reason why or I could get on making, making the content, making the books that are gonna mean in the future because the really important thing to realise is, the books I’m creating aren’t just for black and brown children, right? They’re for all children because if a white child only ever reads books with a white hero, they start to lay that stuff down, they internalise it, right? Whereas if all children are reading that all kids get to be the hero, then actually the next generation is going to be much better than our generation.
Elliot Moss
Just thinking about something you said earlier, which was you know, I was in the room and at that point I could have said, ‘why don’t we make…’ would it have even landed? I mean, as you said, you were the youngest, you were the only Black woman in there, you were the most junior person in the room. I mean I don’t think you were being hard on yourself but I wonder whether sometimes these seismic shifts just have to happen externally or do you wish you’d have been braver and said it then and if you had, do you think Storymix would have been founded much earlier?
Jasmine Richards
I can’t speak for anyone else in that room whether it would have landed or not, I can’t speak to that but what I can speak to is that I have been in rooms whilst I’ve worked in publishing where they’ve said, ‘we can’t have a Black character on the cover, it won’t sell’. ‘We can’t commission this book because it won’t sell in other territories’ and I used to swallow all of that, I used to swallow all of that and go, oh yeah because that’s the received wisdom, and I’m just going to keep on, keep on, keep on, progress and you know, maybe I’ll get to a position in-house, in industry where I’ll have a bit more power, right. So, you just, and I don’t think I’m the only Black person that after the death of George Floyd looked back on all the stuff that they had swallowed over this time and gone, oh my goodness, like all of these little micro aggressions, little bits of trauma and you just carried on, carried on, so I think there was a huge moment of reflection for lots of people about that and actually, I sort of received phone calls and emails from people I’d worked with saying, ‘I was just thinking about that thing that happened. I just want to say sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t an ally, sorry I didn’t say something’ there was a lot of that so it wasn’t you know everyone was reflecting and realising that a change needed to happen and a change has happened very quickly, I would say.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from my Business Shaper today, it’s Jasmine Richards, Founder of Storymix and an Author in her own right too. Time for some more music, it’s Gilberto Gil with Toda Menina Baiana.
Gilberto Gil with Toda Menina Baiana. I am with Jasmine Richards, she is an Author and she’s also the Founder of Storymix and they do really cool things. Though swallowing the thing that you, you know, you heard moments and the micro aggressions, how has that informed your leadership style now because as you, because I think about you and you say it quite a lot, look I happen to have Black kids and brown kids be the heroes and heroines, but the stories are about, they’re great stories, right? They’re fantasy stories or they’re you know adventure stories, mysteries, whatever they are so of course they happen to be Black and brown but actually, it’s about just a great story. In terms of that pain and that rage and that inequity, how does that translate into you being a just and great, informed, enlightened leader, if at all?
Jasmine Richards
If at all. I think in terms of thinking about who my team are, the most important thing to me is in the same way that we incubate writers, right, in the same that we’re creating those pathways for illustrators, I want to do the same thing with the people who I work with, right, or the people who come on this journey. And Storymix is almost four years old, we’re still quite a young company and I don’t expect those people to stay the whole time but then I want them to go on to those big publishing houses and I want them to become editorial directors and publishers, so in that same way of being a launchpad for writers and illustrators, I kind of see that in terms of editorial staff that we work with, in terms of the marketing and the PR people, I want Storymix to be this place where you get to flourish regardless of your background, so it’s like this safe space, it’s a safe space for our writers and illustrators and you know sometimes, there’s some unlearning that has to happen for those writers. I’ll read something and I was like I can’t hear you in this and it's like a, you know because I’m doing proper writing and we have an idea of what that sounds like you know and it was something a bit like Enid Blyton from the 1950’s and I’m like, no but where are you in this? Where are our lived experiences? That’s what I want to see and it’s like permission, permission to come through and the same thing with my staff like, you don’t have to pretend, I spend a lot of time code switching, I don’t want that in our team, like…
Elliot Moss
Code switching meaning?
Jasmine Richards
Code switching is when you are in different situations so, I’ve got this intersection of being working-class and Black, right? So, depending on…
Elliot Moss
And a woman.
Jasmine Richards
And a woman.
Elliot Moss
Well done. I mean, literally, exciting, you have got like…
Jasmine Richards
All of the things. I’m dyslexic as well, actually. Well here we go.
Elliot Moss
Oh, I mean, listen, this is, this is amazing.
Jasmine Richards
All the boxes.
Elliot Moss
She’s got the boxes ticked.
Jasmine Richards
But I only found out I was dyslexic at University.
Elliot Moss
Which is the irony of that, English Literature at Oxford, a writer and there you are, you are dyslexic.
Jasmine Richards
Yes. Yeah, yeah. My tutor was like you can’t spell for toffee, do you know like, I don’t know how you got here, I don’t know how you did it.
Elliot Moss
Great storyteller but your spelling is awful.
Jasmine Richards
And you are always losing stuff and you’re late, I wasn’t late today, I wasn’t that late was I? No.
Elliot Moss
Essentially, what I’m hearing is, which I really like, it’s like just be yourself, express what your life has been like, use those lived experiences to translate to become the story, don’t conform and as you now understand, code switching, don’t be that person, just be you.
Jasmine Richards
Just be you. Yeah, yeah.
Elliot Moss
Just be you. And the just be you thing, which of course then I imagine the industry needs a lot of changing. You’re confronting the industry and by Storymix existing, you do that. Are you, in your own mind, a revolutionary?
Jasmine Richards
I don’t know if I’m a revolutionary but I do say to my team, to myself, to the industry, that storytelling is activism because stories are what shape us so, I am very deliberately trying to change the trajectory for people’s careers, I’m trying to change what gets chosen on prize lists, what gets stocked in the library because all of those little things, or big things depending on your point of view, are going to make the difference. So, for me, storytelling is activism. I’m not on Twitter fighting the good fight and people who do that, like more power to them and that’s where their energy is, I’m just going to quietly be here in the background creating brilliant books that delight, that are full of joy and say to the world, you can be the hero. So, we’ve got a series called Secret Beast Club coming out in February, so out very soon, which is about kids who discover unicorns and dragons in urban areas, okay, so it’s the whole idea that in urban areas, there is magic and there is a sense of sort of nurture that happens. These are kids, Jade and Aiysha they’re called, you don’t get to see riding unicorns, you certainly don’t get to see that in Hackney, so the first book is set in Hackney, Unicorns of Hackney, so yeah, that’s my activism.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for my final chat with my guest today, it’s Jasmine Richards and we’ve got some Jimmy Smith for you and you know I love him. That’s all up in just a moment.
Jimmy Smith puts a smile on my face, Got My Mojo Workin’. Jasmine Richards has been my fabulous Business Shaper. She’s the Founder of Storymix and an Author in her own right and the name of your most recent book is?
Jasmine Richards
Called ‘The Unmorrow Curse’.
Elliot Moss
And what’s it about?
Jasmine Richards
Norse gods, days of the week and a time loop.
Elliot Moss
Of course, I mean as…
Jasmine Richards
I mean, why not?
Elliot Moss
Yeah, I mean that’s completely logical. Do you still like writing? And honesty is required here on Jazz Shapers.
Jasmine Richards
Okay, so what you need to understand is, writing a book is a very lonely…
Elliot Moss
She goes into politics mode here.
Jasmine Richards
Yeah, you can see my hand.
Elliot Moss
Elliot, let me explain.
Jasmine Richards
No, no, let me explain. So, writing is actually quite a lonely process and you’re in a room by yourself.
Elliot Moss
My wife’s a writer.
Jasmine Richards
Yeah, writing like 70,000 words. I actually much prefer working collaboratively with other writers, story liners, I actually really enjoy business, I really enjoy negotiating and trying to get the best terms on a contract so, right now in terms of where my energy is, I would say it’s more the business but I manage to get a book out a year and just keep that muscle going for myself.
Elliot Moss
I think you’ve emerged from yourself and you’ve realised you quite like being a fixer and a collaborator and a kind of, as you said, the negotiator, making it happen, realising the dream, it doesn’t have to be you that’s physically written it, is what you’re saying.
Jasmine Richards
Yeah, I think that’s exactly right and I think I’ve always said, one of my super powers is great ideas, you know, I’m good at that bit, that’s okay to claim that and say I’ve got really good ideas but that discipline to sit and write 70,000 words, you know I can do it, I have done it, I’ve done it many times but I mean it’s maybe not what I want to do with all of my time, right now, where I am in my life, I might come to it, I might come to it when I’m older and my kids are older.
Elliot Moss
But it fits in with what I’m hearing about your vision which is a vision for change in the industry, you’re not bemoaning how awful this industry is or the people within it, it’s just simply, it’s sort of been stuck. It’s getting unstuck. What’s it going to take for real change, beyond bits here and bits there and I’m not saying they’ve been peripheral but what’s it going to take for it to be a time when Storymix doesn’t need to exist? What two or three things need to change?
Jasmine Richards
Fundamentally, I think the publishing houses have to look like the society that they serve, right. So, they are the guardians of culture, okay. They are the gatekeepers and as long as those gatekeepers are only a sort of sliver of society, then we’ve got a problem. So, that’s a massive thing that has to change and I mean that is happening so we are getting more regional offices, not we, but publishing houses have got offices in Manchester and in Birmingham and in lots of other different places so, then who’s coming through the door is different, we’re getting some regionality there, there’s lots of efforts in terms of trying to get people from different cultural heritages through the door but are they staying? That’s the other thing. I think there’s been this push to get people through the door but the retention and them getting to the level where they are the most important person sitting at that table, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. That will need to happen.
Elliot Moss
And that makes sense to me. You said earlier that you’re sort of happy to be behind the scenes and pulling the strings and all that stuff but are you also comfortable having a symbolic presence in the industry where people do come to you because of all the boxes you ticked before so brilliantly, but is that, are you okay with that or is that, does that come naturally?
Jasmine Richards
I actually have become far more confident and comfortable with doing that because actually, when you are in the room and you are talking to lots of people, what I’ve learned is, you have no idea what will come out of it, right, so I might find a writer, might find an illustrator, might find a publisher who wants to work with us, that might find an audio producer who wants to do audio content with us, like you just need to be out there representing your business and saying this is the change we want to make, if you want to help, listeners, if you want to help, get in touch, right, let’s, let’s do this thing so, that’s just the role of a founder is to be out there and be symbolic and I think the hard thing for me is I’ve been so used to sort of being the head chef and the dishwasher and doing all those things through the business, letting go of some of those other elements to give me the space to do that piece, where you’re sort of front and centre and sort of talking about your brand, that’s been hard, to allow myself to say that’s part of what my role is, you know?
Elliot Moss
I hope you get really comfortable with that bit, the role, because you’re doing a great job of it and it’s a really important one to do, so keep going, keep being head chef, keep being the proprietor, let other people do all the dishwashing and the writing as well. Shh, the writing. It’s been great talking to you. I’m sure your mum, Monica, is proud.
Jasmine Richards
Oh my goodness. You said her name, she’s going to be losing her mind.
Elliot Moss
She’s going to be very happy and I know she listens to the show, which is very good, I’m very happy. Just before I let you go though, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Jasmine Richards
Well, I did an English Degree right, so it had to be linked to that, it’s a song called Wuthering Heights by Cecile McLorin Salvant and it’s an incredibly powerful song. So it starts off, it’s very spare to begin with, actually I don’t want to ruin it in case people haven’t heard it, it just gives me goosebumps every single time.
Elliot Moss
Cecile McLorin Salvant there with Wuthering Heights, the song choice of my Business Shaper, Jasmine Richards. She talked about being in the business of new, she’s been breaking boundaries for as long as she set this business up and she will continue to do so. She talked about storytelling as activism, which I really like, it’s a way to make things happen. And finally, she raised a really important dilemma for all entrepreneurs and all founders, that moment when you have to go in front, right in front of things and become the biggest brand advocate and let other people get on and maybe do things in a slightly different way but if you do that, then real change happens. Fantastic stuff.
You can hear my conversation with Jasmine all over again whenever you want to, as a podcast just search Jazz Shapers or you can ask your smart speaker to play Jazz Shapers. Alternatively, you can catch this programme again, Monday morning just before the Jazz FM Breakfast at 5.00am.
We are back next Saturday with my next Business Shaper, it’s a big one, serial entrepreneur Charles Dunstone is with me, he’s the co-founder of mobile phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse and founder of the TalkTalk Group, a broadband and TV provider, as I’m sure you know. Up next, after the news right now at 10.00 though, it’s Nigel Williams, he’s got great music, interviews and live sessions too. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
You can hear my conversation with Jasmine all over again whenever you’d like to as a podcast, just search Jazz Shapers or you can ask your smart speaker to play Jazz Shapers. We are back next Saturday with my next Business Shaper, serial entrepreneur, Charles Dunstone, he’s the co-founder of mobile phone retailer, Carphone Warehouse and founder of the TalkTalk Group, a broadband and TV provider. The Jazz FM Breakfast is up next with Nigel Williams. Have a great one and I’ll see you on Saturday.
On this Saturday’s Jazz Shapers I’m joined by author and founder of Storymix, the children’s fiction development studio with a social purpose. Jasmine Richards is my guest. I am Elliot Moss and I will have more of that alongside the music of the shapers of jazz, soul and blues this weekend.
On this Saturday’s Jazz Shapers we heard from Jasmine Richards, author and founder of Storymix, the children’s fiction development studio with a social purpose. That programme is now available for you to listen to again as a podcast and through your smart speaker, just search or ask for Jazz Shapers or you can hear it again nice and early on Monday morning, 5.00am.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Jasmine Richards, author and founder of Storymix, the children’s fiction development studio with a social purpose.