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Jazz Shaper: Liv Little

Posted on 20 February 2021

Liv Little is an award-winning Journalist, Creative Director, Author and Curator.

Elliot Moss

Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.

Welcome to Jazz Shapers, it’s where the Shapers of Business joint the Shapers of Jazz, Soul and Blues. My guest today is Liv Little, Founder of gal-dem, the online and print magazine committed to sharing perspectives from women and non-binary people of colour. Half Guyanese, half Jamaican and raised in south-east London, Liv says, “My childhood was very much about me being comfortable enough to know that my voice is as important as anyone else’s.”  Frustrated by the lack of representation at University but also in the classroom and politics, Liv, then aged 21, created online magazine gal-dem in 2015. The name gal-dem coming from Caribbean slang meaning ‘group of girls’. Liv sought to address a British media with a profound racial and gender imbalance by empowering and supporting underrepresented voices, showcasing the work and thoughts of these communities and disrupting tired stereotypes. “What is so important for us”, Liv says, “is that the next generation as much as our generation and generations above us, have space for certain conversations that we wish we would have had growing up.”  Hello Liv, how are you?

Liv Little

Hi. I’m good thank you. Nice to be here, or to virtually be here.   

Elliot Moss

To virtually be here because this is the thing in 2021, everyone’s virtually somewhere which really I don’t know what it means physically so we’ll just have to work out, physically you are probably in southeast London I am guessing, is that right?

Liv Little

I’m actually in east London and the only reason I am in east London is because I fell in love and she lived in east London, because I have been a kind of south London ride or die up until this point.   

Elliot Moss

So, east London. How is east London compared to south-east London?

Liv Little

It’s fine. It’s okay. I think sometimes I do miss south London, that’s where all my friends, my family, are at but we are actually about to pack up and move to the beach, we’re moving to Margate so we’re kind of, yeah, bye London.

Elliot Moss

You’re going for sunshine and blustery winds.

Liv Little

Exactly, exactly.

Elliot Moss

Perfect. Now, Liv, we are talking because, as is often the way, I meet wonderful people on the programme and someone says ‘Ooh, you should meet this person’ and the beautiful thing about what I do, is I bump into all sorts of new worlds and worlds which I was aware of but didn’t really know what was going on. Just tell me in your own words what gal-dem is about and why you created it.

Liv Little

Yes, so gal-dem is a media company that is committed to kind of sharing the perspectives, you have already touched on it in your intro, but I guess the point of it really is to provide a space that doesn’t already exist in media, a really creative space, a dynamic space, a space which we all wish we have had, I guess, growing up in the media and it was born out of a desire to find people to connect with, not necessarily to build a business in a sense, and that kind of naturally followed because it was something that so many people could identify with or wanted to exist and I just, as of the end of last year, formally really the start of this year, handed over the steering of the ship to a wonderful human called Mariel Richards who is now CEO, so she’s kind of shaping it in a new way and new direction after five years of it being me in that position.

Elliot Moss

I look when I get the bios of when people were born and I laugh sometimes, Liv, in a good way, I go, “Oh right, 1994. Well, that’s basically, you could be my daughter”, it’s like that crazy thing. You were an incredibly young entrepreneur, what were you scared of at the time or was it more of a, you didn’t know what you didn’t know and you just cracked on?

Liv Little

I kind of think it’s more of the latter, that’s not to say that there’s not fear and insecurities and anxieties and things which crop up on the process but a lot of it was like, let’s do this thing, why would I not try this thing out?  I didn’t feel as though there was any reason for it not to exist or for it not to work or to be what it needed to be and I think I didn’t always envision it as being the thing that it is now, I think that’s kind of grown quite organically so in a sense I didn’t know what to expect so, you know, not that I went into it completely blindly but there was a degree of that, you know, I was kind of 21 I think at the time at Uni, figuring things out for the first time in many senses and then it’s grown since, I think when it transforms into a business and you start to go through the process of gaining investment and that sort of side of things, yeah there can be a lot more fear attached but I think, yeah, it was just a bit of a I’ve never done this before so you don’t necessarily know what to expect when you are going into it.  

Elliot Moss

We touched on the fact that there was kind of a well, why wouldn’t I just do it and then you take this idea for creating a community and giving something to the community and beautiful, you know if you go on the site it’s really rich in content across art and culture and politics and so on and so forth.

Liv Little

We have an amazing kind of editorial team who just are incredible, headed up by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff who is an incredible journalist and, yeah, they’re just brilliant so, you know, without them we wouldn’t be able to tell the stories that we are able to tell and of course with the kind of thousands of people who have now contributed to the site so there’s a lot of variety, diversity and different opinions and I think people aren’t necessarily used to hearing different opinions from the communities that we represent I think sometimes, there’s a sense that we all think and feel the same things which is obviously not true.

Elliot Moss

And now, to get to that point where you are able to hire great people and they are there, obviously you touched on it briefly, the funding point. That’s when the sort of the young twenty-something, 21, 22, 23 year old has to become a bit more grown-up. How did you approach, not in a patronising way at all, it’s just like it’s a bit of a jolt, it’s a bit of a shock.

Liv Little

No, no, no. It was scary.   

Elliot Moss

Now as a fifty year old I say the same thing as I am involved in a start-up and it’s exactly the same, you go for funding and you feel like a kid and you don’t know anything. How did you go about getting the money?

Liv Little

So we did like a very small kind of pre-seedish I guess kind of raise and I think, gosh okay, so it was such a journey really and truly because we were all working, I was working full-time and also like attempting to run a business, I was working in TV which, as many people know is very long hours if you are working in the production end of things, so it was very draining and complex and I think it became apparent that it wasn’t something that could be done in tandem with other things in order to actually get it to the place where we had resources and so, yeah, I spent, I basically stopped working full-time and decided to try and go part-time, type-freelance. Fortunately I was able to get a few TV jobs which facilitated that which I think is kind of rare so alongside it I spent a year basically learning, studying, working with an amazing woman in business who showed me a lot in terms of how investment works, in terms of the terms, I spent a lot of time building contacts and networks and all that sort of stuff and it was, you know, one of my mentors was saying, you know, when you are raising, that’s a full-time job, you should only do that but of course I couldn’t only do that because I had to have a job so that I could live, I guess, so it was taxing and it was tough but it was also great in many ways and we were able to find, you know, our first lot of investors as people who I really rated and who, you know, were kind of the perfect investors, we got a bit of cash from a investment firm called Backstage Capital and they are headed up by a queer black woman called Arlan and we also had Roxane Gay who is one of my favourite authors of all-time, another kind of queer black woman from the States who invested and, you know, it came together but it was not like it just came together and it was easy, there were lots of pitches, there were lots of… I remember my first pitch in front, the first pitch that I did was in front of like a huge room of investors and it was the most terrifying experience I have ever had and everything on the journey up there seemed to go wrong but, yeah, eventually we got what we needed to get to get to the place that we are now and then, you know, there’ll be decisions made about what the kind of next stage of gal-dem will look like and what we need to do again, I guess.

Elliot Moss

And one tip from Liv, if people are funding?  What would be the mega golden tip?

Liv Little

I think, ooh mega golden tip, I don’t know, let’s see, let’s see whether this is useful or not but I think one thing that I didn’t necessarily realise at the very beginning of the journey is that, you know, as much as yes you want the investment and yes for those who haven’t done any kind of fundraising before, we have this like very Dragons’ Den style imagination and what it means to raise money and I think something that gets lost in that is that it’s as much about wanting to work with that person in the kind of long-term and there were a couple of people who did want to put money in who I didn’t feel were necessarily a great fit for us as an organisation and that can feel scary and what are doing saying no to capital but, you know, it did work out and we did get people who were right for the organisation and vice versa but I think just being very deliberate because those are relationships that you are going to have for a long time and I couldn’t be happier with the investors that we do have.   

Elliot Moss

Stay with me for much more from my Business Shaper, that’s Liv Little, she’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Right now, we are going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions which can be found on all of the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Victoria Pigott and Dr Rebecca Newton, Organisational Psychologist and CEO of Coach Advisor, discuss the impact of women in positions of leadership and on Boards.

You can enjoy all our former Jazz Shapers and hear this very programme again by popping Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice, or if you have got a smart speaker, you know the drill, you can ask it to play Jazz Shapers and there you will find many of our recent shows. But back to today’s guest, it’s Liv Little, she’s the Founder of gal-dem, the online and print magazine committed to sharing perspectives from women and non-binary people of colour. When you were talking about raising funds, that really important bit of advice you gave around be discerning about who you want to be invested in you. Have you always been quite strong about what you’re about and about what your values are and about the kind of people that you are connected with because one of the things when I looked around this subject, you talk a lot about community, a lot, and not just in the sense of the people that you are writing for or that there’s film for or any other content, but it feels like the people you kind of hang out with if that makes sense.

Liv Little

Yeah, yeah, I mean and I think this industry is just so, it can be beautiful and it can also feel toxic I guess at times and I think I’ve got a really beautiful unit off of people who, yeah, I work in the same space off but who I also really do genuinely love and care for, whether that’s, you know, like Charlie or Mariel or Yomi or Artega or Travis, they are all of these people who are kind of occupying a similar space who I can say, yes I genuinely want to be around you and I think that’s really important and I think that’s really conducive to creating really amazing work and just being able to support each other because like I said it’s like an industry in which we are in the minority and so I think having that network of people who you know and love and can trust and know have your back and you have their back I think is really, really an important thing and without it, it would be very, it would be really tough, it would be really, really tough. I need to know that I can send Travis a voice note and they’ll just get it and vice versa I think, I think those relationships are really, really key and I think my gosh they became even more important over the course of the past year when the world collectively we’ve been experiencing so much stress and on a personal level so much trauma as well I think, yeah it’s important to have friends within that space, people who you genuinely get along with, I don’t believe in networking for networking’s sake, I believe in just loving and showing that you love the people whose work and whose approach to life outside of work you just genuinely do rate, if you know what I mean.

Elliot Moss

Absolutely, and the question I guess I have is, is that close group diverse or is it intentionally, does it have its own identity?  And I mean that in the nicest way, in the sense that obviously, you know, there are not many young black women who are running businesses, certainly not enough and it’s changing but it’s not changing fast enough. Is it by design that people who understand are on the same journey, who have the same lived experience are therefore your close group or, and is that absolutely essential because the wider world is so unrepresentative?  Is that the point?

Liv Little

In a sense and not one, I wouldn’t say that those people who are my kind of really close friends who also happen to work in a similar space, they don’t all kind of run businesses, it’s all, it’s quite varied but one thing that I did have that is really key as well, another group of friends who do actually run media companies or are CEOs at media companies which are small and independent, well ish, and independent like Tag Warner who heads up Gay Times and Iv who heads of Gwok and Efussah who heads up Armalia, I think we have our own little group chat and that, again yeah, having that space where we can share stresses and hopes and fears and anxieties and unknowns and conflict and everything is really important to have that as well as a space so, yeah, I mean I feel very fortunate to have that and to have had that naturally because we all get on as people I think, yeah so it definitely does help, yeah.

Elliot Moss

In terms of your own team internally, you touched on the quality, yeah, of the output and I love, you’re giving shoutouts to everyone in your team, you are naming them which is rare actually, I’ve got to say and it’s really nice. How would they describe you, this team that you have assembled at gal-dem?  What would they say about Liv Little?

Liv Little

I don’t know. I hope that they have enjoyed working with me. Like I said, I’m not actually involved in the day-to-day any more, that’s the queen that is Mariel who has kind of stepped into that role and is shaping things in her own way but I think some people who I’ve worked with, I’ve worked with for many, many years and some people I’ve worked with for less time than that and it’s been beautiful to watch how all of us have kind of grown and evolved and stepped into our own and are doing all sorts of amazing things across the industry. And the thing is, in the role that I’ve had, I’ve also worked, you know, in different jobs alongside gal-dem in TV and different spaces and places and writing and all of that sort of stuff but because of this incredible journey that I have been on in the past five years, that we have been on in the past five years, I have been able to work with so many incredible people so there are some people that I have worked with on a daily basis but there are some people that I might have worked with on individual projects, there are some people that I might have met and worked on a project with in New York or worked on a project with when I was at the BBC and I just feel so incredibly fortunate that I have been able to come across so many different people who have inspired me and who work in lots of different disciplines, some authors, some journalists, some artists, some sculptors, some hosts, some DJs, like people that are doing so much distinct and incredible work or people who are working in the nightlife space or people who are working in art curation and Black Blossoms, there are all of these incredible platforms and individuals and people who I’ve been able to come across and I hope that, yeah, they’ve loved our interactions as much as I have because I take a lot from all of them.

Elliot Moss

Well, it feels like you’ve given them a platform and space to express themselves which is critical and unusual.

Liv Little

And I mean that these are people who don’t need, who are not you know, needing me to create a platform or a space so lots of people who are creating their own platforms and space and together there’s this kind of really rich ecosystem which exists because of that because so many of us have felt like actually people aren’t doing things for us so we have to create things for ourself.

Elliot Moss

Yeah, there was a quote I’ve got here from an article last year and it’s interesting in the context of Covid-19. You said, “I get to create the environment I wish other publications had. There aren’t the same levels of hierarchies or bureaucracies here so you can try stuff out. Sometimes I look around and get overwhelmed. I can’t believe the whole thing went from my feeling of isolation to this” and it just made me think about the isolation that everyone’s feeling that you’ve felt. Has it been harder to let creativity blossom or conversely, actually a platform to say we’ve got to connect, we’ve got to do more to make it rich for everybody?

Liv Little

I mean it’s been challenging for sure but there has also been like I said from all of these kind of people that run businesses in this space or run projects in this space that people haven’t stopped, they’ve continued to find ways for people to connect and enjoy art and work but, you know, also acknowledging and holding space for the fact that a lot of us are hurting right now, you know, there’s so much that’s going on in people’s personal lives and family and the loss of loved ones, it’s been a lot but I think that everyone who has been continuing to hold space, has been doing an incredible job. I think, for me on a personal level, me stepping away like I mentioned from CEOship has been, you know, about it having been five years, five incredible years, and it’s also it’s time for me to kind of explore other parts of myself so I am wearing slightly less of the business hat now and I’ve gone back to University and I am studying Black British Writing and taking this time to go inwards and reflect and study and learn and write and, you know, do some of those things that I maybe haven’t had the time or space or emotional capacity to do over the past however many years. So, yeah, I mean it’s a time of transformation for sure.

Elliot Moss

Stay with me for my final chat with Liv Little, by the way, Forbes Europe 30 Under 30 listed as well, thought I’d drop that in. She will be with me for a little bit longer plus we’re playing a track from the one and only iconic Ella Fitzgerald. What a combination. That’s all in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.

You mentioned you are now studying again which I think is always a fabulous thing. I am always jealous of people who… my next iteration of myself Liv, I’m going to join you and do something else.

Liv Little

Do it, do it.

Elliot Moss

I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it, I’ve just got to find the time. What are you getting from it for you now?

Liv Little

For me?

Elliot Moss

What’s it giving you that?  Yeah.

Liv Little

A time and a space to… this is the thing is I think when you are in the thick of it and you are doing it, it’s beautiful and you learn a lot as you go just by trying, right?  But I think there’s something to be said for actually having the time and space and to be able to carve out two years I’m doing a, you know kind of part-time because I still have to work and things but part-time to spend two years learning and studying in a kind of structured environment with people who are I guess experts or knowledgeable in that space, I think is a really, really special thing and the MA that I’m doing is the only one that I’ve ever seen that exists in this way and as an author myself I had my first piece of fiction come out in October as part of a collection called Hag. I think it’s really, really important in kind of shaping your practice that you are able to read, study and learn from, especially in my case kind of black authors that have come before and queer black authors that have come before, I have just read an amazing, not just read but last term read an amazing book by Jackie Kay called Trumpet which, you know, I feel is relevant to this space because it is about a jazz musician and I just think, yeah, being in an environment where you are reading two, three whatever books a week and you are studying in this way, that’s one way I guess to consume knowledge and I just think I wouldn’t have been able to have carved out this time and space to learn in the way that I am now had I not shifted my working framework and I am also working on a novel and various things and so having the capacity to read and to have to read is a really good discipline for me on a personal level as well.   

Elliot Moss

Is the next version of Liv going to be the writer then rather than the businesswoman or do you like doing both?

Liv Little

Yeah, I mean I’ve always been a creative person, I’ve always been someone who has loved writing, I’ve written, you know, I do a lot of kind of profile type pieces and I say a lot, not a lot, because again it’s very hard to hold space to do both things and do them really well so I think this next chapter is about me helping to shape Mariel and the team and Galvin and what is happening there but it’s also about kind of feeding into my creative practice and writing and studying and doing those things that I am really excited about and I have always been really passionate about. I absolutely, you know, have loved kind of growing a business, I had never intended to be, you know, an entrepreneur or a business owner, those things kind of happened quite organically and I’m so grateful to have had these experiences and to have done it and I think I’ve been good at doing it in many ways but I think, yeah, it’s also, there’s also like Creative Liv which I hope that people get to see more of in the next kind of couple of years.

Elliot Moss

Creative Liv, Business Liv, Nice Liv, Fun Liv, Enjoyable Liv, Studying Liv, it’s been great to talk to all of those Livs. Thank you so much for your time in these strange times…

Liv Little

Thank you so much.

Elliot Moss

…and virtually with all the other issues that we are all going through at the minute. Just before I let you disappear for the rest of your day, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?

Liv Little

So, I think…

Elliot Moss

I knew a creative person would react, ahh my, I mean Elliot, what a decision. You are asking me what, I can’t choose one. But you’re going to have to choose one.

Liv Little

Yeah, no, so it was not easy but I chose Al Green, Let’s Stay Together. I love romance and I love this song, it’s very honest, it’s a kind of plea to stay together and to work it out, it’s about love, it’s about romance but it’s not necessarily about like a shiny kind of romance but I love it and it’s beautiful and who doesn’t love Let’s Stay Together, who doesn’t feel warm and happy inside when they hear it?  At whatever point of the day that song comes on, I will stop and I will sing along and I’ll maybe try and get my girlfriend embarrassingly to dance along to it with me but, yeah, it’s just, it’s a beautiful song and who doesn’t love Al Green.

Elliot Moss

That was Al Green with Let’s Stay Together, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Liv Little and I do indeed hope it brought a little bit of warmth to you today. She talked about if you can’t find the platform that you want, go build it yourself, and she did. She talked about networks and the importance of networks, not networking, but networks that give you support and finally she looked at this last year as a time of transformation and that must be right for everybody…

Liv is the Founder of Gal-dem, a media company committed to spotlighting the creative talents of women and non-binary people of colour. Liv has fronted projects for brands such as MAC and Google and has been voted as a future leader, LGBTQI+ broadcaster of the year, and a rising star at WOW. She was also included in the inaugural BBC's 100 Women series. Liv is obsessed with storytelling and has written for a range of outlets including Feminists Don't Wear Pink, The Guardian, Wonderland and Elle Magazine.  She has spoken to audiences of up to 10,000 people and has been recognised as one of the top speakers in Britain by The Dots. 

Highlights

Gal-dem provides a space that doesn’t already exist in media, a really creative space, a dynamic space.

People aren’t necessarily used to hearing different opinions from the communities that we represent.

The first pitch that I did was in front of a huge room of investors and it was the most terrifying experience I have ever had.

I basically stopped working full-time and decided to try and go part-time, type-freelance.

I spent a year learning, studying, working with an amazing woman in business who showed me a lot in terms of how investment works.

There’ll be decisions made about what the kind of next stage of Gal-dem will look like and what we need to do again.

This industry, it can be beautiful and it can also feel toxic. At times I think I’ve got a really beautiful unit of people who I work in the same space as, but who I also really do genuinely love and care for.

I don’t believe in networking for networking’s sake, I believe in just loving and showing that you love the people whose work and whose approach to life outside of work you just genuinely do rate.

It’s been beautiful to watch how all of us have kind of grown and evolved and stepped into our own and are doing all sorts of amazing things across the industry.

I’ve always been a creative person, I’ve always been someone who has loved writing.

I have loved kind of growing a business, I had never intended to be an entrepreneur or a business owner, those things kind of happened quite organically and I’m so grateful to have had these experiences.

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