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S2 E4: Money as a Hidden Creative Collaborator — with Paul Macauley & Laura Mugridge

Season #2

"As soon as I think about the wider issue of money, I just sort of go... uuuuurggghhhhhhhhhee."

That's Laura Mugridge's immediate, visceral response when asked about money. For her creative partner Paul Macauley, there's a tightening — an involuntary tensing the moment the subject comes up.

Paul and Laura are a Brighton-based creative partnership — award-winning theatre makers and the duo behind Inside the Lines, a warm audio comedy about two friends who run a colouring-in shop. Together they make independent work largely outside institutional funding structures, and money has always been present in what they do. Just rarely spoken about. Until now!

In this episode:

  • "I just sort of don't want it. I need it, but I don't want it." Laura on her relationship with money — and why she hears something completely different when her partner asks about money
  • "I wasn't really a professional and I wasn't really an artist. I didn't belong in either place." Paul on the years of living a 'split life' — and the Christmas pantomime that changed everything
  • "I want to feel like I've got more control over it." Paul on spreadsheets, agency, and why earning money through your own creative work hits differently when it's always felt like something that happens to you
  • "Are you just waiting for your big break?" A stranger at a B&B in Stratford. The tired old trope — and why Laura, who proudly makes all her income from theatre and theatre-adjacent work, finds it so jarring
  • What 'Brunch Gate' taught them about communication and money — and how they landed on "commercially minded, but not commercially driven"
  • "Don't let the money cart lead the creative horse." On making Inside the Lines without waiting for permission — in a landscape where Arts Council funding is harder than ever and economic conditions mean theatres are playing it safe
  • "Come and sit over here. Have a glass of milk and a party ring." Why making warm, silly, joyful things is — right now — its own kind of rebellion

This is a conversation about money, yes. But it's also about creative independence, partnership, the stories we carry from childhood, and what it means to keep making the work you believe in when the conditions are anything but easy.

Series one of Inside the Lines is out now on all podcast platforms and has found a brilliant audience who want more. If you've listened and loved it, this is your chance to vote for what you want to see in the world.

Series two of Inside the Lines is coming, be part of it by supporting the crowdfunder! https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/inside-the-lines-series-2

Links and resources

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