Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood, and I'm your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have been interviewing a
Joanne Lockwood: number of amazing people as simply having a conversation around the
Joanne Lockwood: subject of inclusion, belonging, and generally making the world
Joanne Lockwood: a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd love to join me in the
Joanne Lockwood: future, then please do drop me a line to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. That's
Joanne Lockwood: S-E-E, Change Happen dot co dot uk. You'll be able to
Joanne Lockwood: catch up with all of the previous shows on Itunes, Spotify, and the
Joanne Lockwood: usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a
Joanne Lockwood: decaf, and let's get going. Today
Joanne Lockwood: is episode 32 with the title standing
Joanne Lockwood: in the middle and feeling excluded.
Joanne Lockwood: And I have the absolute honor and privilege to be joined by my great
Joanne Lockwood: friend, Tom Morley. Tom describes himself
Joanne Lockwood: as someone who is compelling, cheeky,
Joanne Lockwood: unbelievably expensive, irreverent, but at the end of the
Joanne Lockwood: day, value for money. And when I asked Tom to
Joanne Lockwood: describe his super bear, he said it is authenticity
Joanne Lockwood: and turning up. Hello, Tom. Welcome to the
Joanne Lockwood: show. It's good to be here. And that
Tom Morley: whole authenticity thing, you probably know this phrase, once you fake that,
Tom Morley: you got it made. But thank
Joanne Lockwood: you for joining me. I know we've spoken many, many hundreds of hours over the
Joanne Lockwood: last lockdown months, but Jo it's been
Joanne Lockwood: great. We've finally got to catch up and schedule this in. So Tom,
Joanne Lockwood: tell me about standing in the middle of feeling excluded.
Tom Morley: Well, first of all, I have to I have to fess
Tom Morley: up about the decaf because you and I have worked together.
Tom Morley: I know you wouldn't go near decaf.
Tom Morley: So, I prepared for this by making myself a real full cafe.
Tom Morley: So, if I, yeah,
Tom Morley: rein me in if I go a bit too far at any
Tom Morley: point. So Bounce off the walls. Yes. Yeah.
Tom Morley: Standing in the middle. I'm still feeling excused excluded,
Tom Morley: refers to, being the
Tom Morley: youngest child in a family, youngest of
Tom Morley: 4 boys. And the other 3 always Lockwood like a
Tom Morley: gang to me, you know, fully formed gang. And
Tom Morley: because, I mean, this happens to the 4th child. You have to
Tom Morley: look for a role. And I was naturally sort of quite
Tom Morley: anyway. So and encouraged by my mom, I'd say,
Tom Morley: you thought she could, move me into the area of
Tom Morley: graphic design, I could make some money. We were a poor family.
Tom Morley: So she thought, last, I've had a child who could make us some money.
Tom Morley: So that kind of excluded me even more from the gangs. They thought I
Tom Morley: was kinda namby pamby while they were, you know,
Tom Morley: building camps and falling out of trees and stuff.
Tom Morley: So when I when I grew up, I thought, right.
Tom Morley: I looked around and I thought, right. If I become a vocal
Tom Morley: harmony facilitator that
Tom Morley: I look I could see you stand in the middle of the circle and you
Tom Morley: divide the the group into 3 and you teach this group
Tom Morley: and then teach that group and you teach all different parts. Now we're looking at
Tom Morley: you all the time. So I thought that I'm
Tom Morley: bound to be included then. I'll not only be included, I'll be the leader.
Tom Morley: But the the there was a a quirk. I took
Tom Morley: a drum with me and I used to lead with the drum.
Tom Morley: And then everybody said, oh, great. That drumming
Tom Morley: thing was great. When you come back, can you bring the drums? And I
Tom Morley: said, this is vocal harmony. It's it's it's not about drums. Just
Tom Morley: 200 people, one drum. Right? And me, the leader
Tom Morley: in the middle. They said, yeah, we love the drumming. Bring the drums.
Tom Morley: So eventually, it was like, Polanski
Tom Morley: is the tenant, you know, when you you kinda get moved to
Tom Morley: be this person that everyone wants you to be. So I bought
Tom Morley: 200 drums and, gave me out. They all loved it.
Tom Morley: And but the trouble was with that, at the end of the session,
Tom Morley: they all kind of loved me and everything, but they went to the bar and
Tom Morley: I ended up loading the van and missing all the jokes and all
Tom Morley: the humor. And, and then by the time I got to the bar, they're all
Tom Morley: leaving. Bye, Tom. Great session. So
Tom Morley: I kinda discovered that I couldn't
Tom Morley: engineer physically a way of being in the
Tom Morley: gang. I had to kind of join the gang,
Tom Morley: by being I mean, that's why authenticity comes into it in
Tom Morley: the intro. I found that, if I was authentic,
Tom Morley: I didn't have to trick it 200 people into looking at me. I
Tom Morley: just hang out, you know, and say, I'm a
Tom Morley: bit fed up about this or this went wrong or that went right
Tom Morley: or and, and, actually,
Tom Morley: man, I could save myself so many years of training,
Tom Morley: to impress people because, nobody really needs to do that. You
Tom Morley: just need to say, oh, you know, I'm feeling
Tom Morley: a bit down today. Oh, come over here, mate. Tell me about it.
Tom Morley: It's all you need to do.
Joanne Lockwood: I love the way you said, that you you were kind of you
Joanne Lockwood: had this vision about this, yeah, as you said, vocal harmony facilitator.
Joanne Lockwood: Now that sounds such a great role, vocal harmony facilitator and I've never come
Joanne Lockwood: across that. But it cast me back to the days as a young person, you
Joanne Lockwood: know, sitting around the campfire and you do those rounds, you know, London's burning,
Joanne Lockwood: London's burning and it all starts at different times and you try and get it
Joanne Lockwood: that harmony going. So I really I really took took me right to that point
Joanne Lockwood: in my life and with with some fond memories. But isn't it incredible
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes that despite our best efforts, the thing we want to
Joanne Lockwood: be proud of relate to, they relate to something you
Joanne Lockwood: just it's incidental like your drum, you know, this is who you were this
Joanne Lockwood: vocal harmony facilitator and suddenly you become the drummer that it's
Joanne Lockwood: like almost like forcing you to be someone you weren't trying to
Joanne Lockwood: be. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, the I mean,
Tom Morley: my brothers all,
Tom Morley: moved into the furniture business. They made a lot of money in antiques. They
Tom Morley: were moving furniture all around the world, you know?
Tom Morley: And, and that my joke was, well, you
Tom Morley: people, you get everybody and sit, everybody's sitting down.
Tom Morley: I'm gonna get everybody standing up. So all my groups always get them standing
Tom Morley: up. And then when I bought the drums, that
Tom Morley: kinda African wooden, drums with these beautiful
Tom Morley: hats on, you know, covers in this beautiful African material
Tom Morley: and string, and they're really lovely things. And I turn up at these
Tom Morley: posh venues as the facilitator, and the door peep would
Tom Morley: say, oh, are they the new bar stools? You should go
Tom Morley: around the back, mate, and bring them in the, good tensions. Jo,
Tom Morley: again, I was, you know, and,
Tom Morley: you know, they used to drive or they still do, you know, drive furniture around
Tom Morley: the country. I'm not doing that. I end up driving these drums up and down
Tom Morley: motorways, you know, nearly going out. I I mean, I could swap
Tom Morley: stories with them about how I was falling asleep at the wheel.
Tom Morley: I was meant to be jetting around the world, you know,
Tom Morley: with, nothing but some songs in my head
Tom Morley: teaching people vocal harmony. So,
Tom Morley: yeah, it's it's been a disaster.
Joanne Lockwood: So do you think that people kind of labelling you as the
Joanne Lockwood: trades person because you were the lugger? Because that's one of the
Joanne Lockwood: inevitable things when you're the one that's setting up the kit, doing all this. You
Joanne Lockwood: you it's almost like this seeing you as the as the hired help rather than
Joanne Lockwood: the the main cause, aren't they? Yeah. I mean, there there is,
Tom Morley: there's an element of, you know, kind
Tom Morley: of prophecy in it, that what you're trying to run away
Tom Morley: from just follows you around. And like I say,
Tom Morley: when I don't try, then,
Tom Morley: I just connect with people anyway, but I've kinda burden myself
Tom Morley: with 300 drums. I mean, luckily,
Tom Morley: just before just before lockdown
Tom Morley: proper, I knew I was gonna be working online because
Tom Morley: I could see it coming. So I I unloaded the van and
Tom Morley: I've got it as a backdrop in my studio here, all the drums
Tom Morley: piled up. And everyone said, why don't you use green screen? But 3 days
Tom Morley: later, some vandals, who normally
Tom Morley: just knit mopeds and set them alight in the,
Tom Morley: local churchyard decided to nick 1 and set the light
Tom Morley: against our van. So it blew up in the
Tom Morley: middle of the night and we got these messages from the neighbors
Tom Morley: saying, there appears to be a van on fire. It looks a bit
Tom Morley: like yours. I hope you hope it's
Tom Morley: alright, but I'd taken all the drums out. So,
Tom Morley: maybe maybe I shouldn't have taken them out, come
Tom Morley: to think of it. I should have just left them in there, got an insurance
Tom Morley: money, and then said to people, it's vocal harmony from
Tom Morley: now on. Sorry. Damn. I
Tom Morley: thwarted my fate.
Joanne Lockwood: Alright. Just talk about, you know, some of your life in general. You you've got
Joanne Lockwood: a quite striking appearance and your look
Joanne Lockwood: is very you. Do you find that that's ever led you
Joanne Lockwood: to be judged or excluded or do you find the opposite?
Tom Morley: Well, yeah, both judged and
Tom Morley: excluded and included. I mean, the whole thing
Tom Morley: about anybody who's a rebel,
Tom Morley: or, you know, visually a rebel or they speak like a rebel,
Tom Morley: What they're really doing, is they are trying to
Tom Morley: move away from the mediocrity
Tom Morley: of normal life, which they would,
Tom Morley: you know, obviously not like.
Tom Morley: And there there's a small tribe of people you can
Tom Morley: join. It's why a lot of bands meet at art school.
Tom Morley: It's, you know, when I first went to art school in the foundation year, I
Tom Morley: was dismally, kinda
Tom Morley: disappointed because it was just like an extended 6th form. Now,
Tom Morley: I thought I was gonna be with Salvador Dali and
Tom Morley: people, you know, kind of budding surrealists or dada
Tom Morley: people, but they're all people going, yeah. I quite like,
Tom Morley: Magritte. I'm gonna do my version. So but then when I
Tom Morley: got to Leeds, Leeds Polytechnic is where I met Green and we formed
Tom Morley: Script League. That that now they
Tom Morley: they really were proper artists. You know, a lot of us,
Tom Morley: we are a whole kind of cohort of
Tom Morley: rebels. Part partly because it was the freest course in the
Tom Morley: country. It was just like big warehouse and you had to
Tom Morley: fight for space, with the 2nd 3rd
Tom Morley: years. And so it was, it was a real kind
Tom Morley: of growing up. All the tutors weren't interested enough. They just
Tom Morley: wanted to do their own work, except maybe someone like Jeff Nuttall
Tom Morley: who's a situationist. He's dead now, but a lovely guy.
Tom Morley: And he would just come around and challenge us sometimes. Jo that's rubbish. That's
Tom Morley: brilliant. Publish it. Why are you doing that?
Tom Morley: So, yeah, we grew up fast there. And also
Tom Morley: nobody, nobody
Tom Morley: encouraged us to say, well, it's Monday. What are you
Tom Morley: gonna do this week? I mean, that wouldn't occur to them. So we
Tom Morley: had we had to say, it's Monday. What am I gonna do this week?
Tom Morley: I've got all these resources. Because in those days,
Tom Morley: you could you could get, money to do
Tom Morley: crazy things from the college itself. We we got grants
Tom Morley: from the government. We got our rent paid. We got, you know,
Tom Morley: so we were really free. I mean, we didn't know how
Tom Morley: lucky we were. There was just a point in history
Tom Morley: when that was encouraged, you know, kind of creativity
Tom Morley: was really encouraged. And nobody said, What are you gonna do with this
Tom Morley: when you leave? They just said, go and
Tom Morley: influence, you know, be an influence in the world. Be a good influence whether you're
Tom Morley: a sculptor, painter, performer.
Tom Morley: You know, it was a it was a different time. We can believe it.
Tom Morley: It's probably only 10 years after we left art school. The, the
Tom Morley: Royal College was saying, we're gearing ourselves to what
Tom Morley: industry needs. And we're looking, what? How can you call
Tom Morley: yourself an art school?
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, picking up on something you just said there, which I find really, really
Joanne Lockwood: resonates is this,
Joanne Lockwood: you know, you basically said you can't keep everybody happy, you can't please everybody.
Joanne Lockwood: And it always resonates for me where it's better to
Joanne Lockwood: engage 1 person than to have a 100 followers who aren't
Joanne Lockwood: engaged. It's that meaningful connection that you want.
Joanne Lockwood: So motivating and engaging your tribe, your cohort, whatever resonates with
Joanne Lockwood: you is actually far better than trying to keep everybody happy because if you keep
Joanne Lockwood: everybody happy, nobody's happy in my experience. At least you're better off with half
Joanne Lockwood: the world loving you. Yeah. Well, half. I
Tom Morley: mean, I've, I said to my wife who who
Tom Morley: thinks sometimes I'm on social media too much. I said,
Tom Morley: well, look, I, I am ridiculously
Tom Morley: expensive. I I need to engage those people who are
Tom Morley: gonna pay, and they don't all know about me, so I
Tom Morley: will just tell the whole world what I'm doing all the time. 99%
Tom Morley: of people will hate me. 1% will love me. Nought point nought
Tom Morley: point naught point 1 percent will employ me, but they'll pay me so
Tom Morley: much, that, it'll get us through the year just
Tom Morley: fine. And Jo, yeah, and and at first, I wanted
Tom Morley: everybody to love me when I was a kid, but, man, is that, you
Tom Morley: know, that that
Tom Morley: that's a fool's, what is it?
Tom Morley: Fools' fools game. Aaron, yeah. People do it.
Tom Morley: Fool's game. Yeah. It's not winnable game, isn't it? You It's not winnable game.
Tom Morley: Yeah. It and, advertising will
Tom Morley: suggest you can do it if you buy this product or,
Tom Morley: or buy into this brand or you get this and you get that and
Tom Morley: you get that. And then everyone gets to 35, 40.
Tom Morley: They're absolutely exhausted, and nobody cared
Tom Morley: anyway. You know?
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I think one of the things I hear a lot of people talk about
Joanne Lockwood: in the inclusion world is that this this deadlock
Joanne Lockwood: of feeling like you have to include everybody, how to include everybody
Joanne Lockwood: in this. And I think in order to break that down, you have to
Joanne Lockwood: recognize that not everybody it can be included.
Joanne Lockwood: And as long as you're fair, you're respectful, you're giving
Joanne Lockwood: people equality of opportunity and you're giving people dignity
Joanne Lockwood: then there isn't really a lot you can you can do fair than that.
Joanne Lockwood: And some people may not be suitable. They may not have the capability, may not
Joanne Lockwood: have the interest. And I I I say it's perfectly
Joanne Lockwood: valid for a brand to say, I cater for
Joanne Lockwood: very thin affluent women in our sportswear line, and this
Joanne Lockwood: product isn't for you. In the same way that when you're an artist, you you
Joanne Lockwood: produce music or entertain, you know full well that not
Joanne Lockwood: everybody is gonna be happy with that. And you go, well, fine. That doesn't matter.
Joanne Lockwood: I've got I've got people who love me for what I am, and that's that's
Joanne Lockwood: the authenticity side, isn't it? Yeah. And I think that,
Tom Morley: what you're describing is is a kind of utopia
Tom Morley: where, the brand that caters for
Tom Morley: the thin, affluent white people,
Tom Morley: is kind of seen as such as that is a very small
Tom Morley: minority. And the rest of you were doing your clothes over
Tom Morley: here, your style over there, and there's no judgment between them.
Tom Morley: However, it's set up differently
Tom Morley: and advertising probably understands
Tom Morley: psychology more than most. So it's
Tom Morley: the whole thing about FOMO is,
Tom Morley: has just got crazy now. So I mean, the it
Tom Morley: when when they started airbrushing photographs long
Tom Morley: before Photoshop, when they used to airbrush
Tom Morley: photographs with a real airbrush, you know, in a proper lap and it
Tom Morley: would take hours, hours and hours to extend the model's legs
Tom Morley: or bring their, hips in or something. Now, of course, everyone
Tom Morley: can do it on their phones, but they spend a lot of
Tom Morley: money doing that. And in a deliberate
Tom Morley: way to exclude people, but
Tom Morley: say, however, you won't feel
Tom Morley: excluded if you buy this product or you get on this
Tom Morley: diet or you follow this plan or you so so it's all,
Tom Morley: I mean, the the whole of western culture is based on
Tom Morley: exclusion, deliberately, say, can sellers, products
Tom Morley: and division, divide and rule. So it to
Tom Morley: be a rebel and why people end
Tom Morley: up in art schools or communes or bands
Tom Morley: or gangs even. You know? It's so it's to try and get away
Tom Morley: from that, manipulation. Say, no.
Tom Morley: We're setting up a alternative camp over here. But the trust trouble
Tom Morley: is, as Jamie Will talks about this,
Tom Morley: in a much more eloquent way than I do, he says there's 4
Tom Morley: stages. There'll be Andy Warhol's factory
Tom Morley: proper, you know, or studio 54 proper. And then, and
Tom Morley: then it gets kinda watered down, and a few more people are allowed to get
Tom Morley: in. And then it becomes
Tom Morley: something where you can go, oh, I'm drinking out of a
Tom Morley: glass that Whitney Houston might have drunk out of on
Tom Morley: my stag night or my Hindu. And,
Tom Morley: and then it just becomes commercialized. So every rebel
Tom Morley: outpost becomes commercialized eventually, but you
Tom Morley: just then have to move on. The the the concern I
Tom Morley: have for this country, the UK,
Tom Morley: with, Brexit and the kind of shutting down
Tom Morley: of funding for a lot of projects, both science and art
Tom Morley: projects because we can't get, European funding anymore,
Tom Morley: is that the more sensitive rebels
Tom Morley: who would need or the more sensitive artists, I'll stop
Tom Morley: calling them rebels, creatives, who
Tom Morley: would need, the support of a group and the
Tom Morley: support of a group that had maybe premises
Tom Morley: kind of some kind of infrastructure that you could join with all
Tom Morley: those being destroyed. So,
Tom Morley: you know, like, kind of local theaters can be sold off
Tom Morley: to become luxury flats. I I I'm
Tom Morley: completely neutral here, politically.
Tom Morley: But, so that's gonna happen. It's gonna happen because
Tom Morley: of Brexit. It's be it's gonna happen because of COVID. Jo,
Tom Morley: consequently, people who would have benefited
Tom Morley: from those local resources, arts resources, are
Tom Morley: gonna have a harder time now. I'm kinda lucky. I'd I've built some
Tom Morley: resilience. I've learned some CBT techniques.
Tom Morley: I I have my kinda gang,
Tom Morley: and, I'm recognized as such, but it's taken
Tom Morley: decades for me to get to that position. I feel really sorry
Tom Morley: for for young people who are coming through, and,
Tom Morley: there isn't really a lot to support them. As I said, you know, we
Tom Morley: we got grants that we never had to pay back, and that and that was
Tom Morley: hard enough. But to, I don't know
Tom Morley: how the, the arts in this country are gonna survive. I I think the
Tom Morley: spirit will survive, but
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I mean, you're saying that that you've you've got an inner resilience.
Joanne Lockwood: How did you find that? Was it something that was always there or you really
Joanne Lockwood: had to sort of use these CBD techniques or use other techniques to
Joanne Lockwood: develop it or were you always able to rest back on it because you knew
Joanne Lockwood: it was there under the covers?
Tom Morley: I think I had to have 3 nervous
Tom Morley: breakdowns, which kind of
Tom Morley: relied on being depressed for a year each
Tom Morley: time. These were about 10 years apart. And,
Tom Morley: at the bottom of each, I mean, you do hit the bottom there.
Tom Morley: Anybody's been that low knows you do hit the bottom
Tom Morley: because if you don't, you never come back. So and at,
Tom Morley: hitting the bottom of this kind of, there's a
Tom Morley: kind of you sense something. It's terrible. It's
Tom Morley: dark. You never think you're coming back. But I
Tom Morley: always had this thing and it was about harmony and it
Tom Morley: was about the groove. It was about rhythm.
Tom Morley: There was nothing else there. And as I
Tom Morley: came back,
Tom Morley: because that had been the thing that was there, it kind
Tom Morley: of expanded a bit more each time I came back. Jo,
Tom Morley: so any other lies, nonsense,
Tom Morley: political shenanigans, da da da, it all just sort became background
Tom Morley: noise to the groove and harmony. So
Tom Morley: so now I know I mean, who knows? I'd I've
Tom Morley: learned a lot of techniques, so I'll never get depressed again. But
Tom Morley: who knows? If if I do, it it's still
Tom Morley: gonna be there, you know, and, and I'll come back and I'll be
Tom Morley: older and I'll be wiser. And there'll be even less kind of
Tom Morley: detritus of what I should be doing or what I should be
Tom Morley: saying or who I should be talking to. And it will be me in the
Tom Morley: groove. And there's enough people who wanna
Tom Morley: play and dance and sing in harmony in
Tom Morley: the world. And there I'll be in the middle.
Joanne Lockwood: Creating the groove and the harmony. Yeah. And, really? Yeah. Leading
Joanne Lockwood: leading the leading the yeah. Absolutely. And I'll do it
Tom Morley: authentically, because it's now, you
Tom Morley: know, if it's it's almost like I'm a hologram of myself, bought
Tom Morley: of groove and harmony and there's lots of
Tom Morley: space and it flickers a bit
Tom Morley: sometimes, but that's all that's there. You know, when I
Tom Morley: first did it, there was a per there was a kind of scared person in
Tom Morley: the middle of going, oh, I hope everybody loves me because, I make them feel
Tom Morley: so good and their bodies are getting flooded with chemicals and they're all feel
Tom Morley: good chemicals. And, you know, so I so I knew the
Tom Morley: I knew the formula to look like the magician, but I really I I was
Tom Morley: the wizard that was, you know, now I'm just a wizard.
Tom Morley: You know, my own wizard. Don't
Joanne Lockwood: don't look behind the curtain. Yeah. Well, well, there there is no curtain. You
Tom Morley: You know, that that's the thing. They they burn.
Joanne Lockwood: When you're talking there about, yeah, hitting the right bottom, I Jo way you believe
Joanne Lockwood: that I have been clinically depressed or to a
Joanne Lockwood: point where that would be a diagnosis. But I've I've certainly
Joanne Lockwood: bounced off the bottom of well I've as deep as I can get
Joanne Lockwood: and several times in my life things have felt like the end
Joanne Lockwood: of the world. 4 or 5 years ago I was going through a
Joanne Lockwood: phase of my life where I couldn't get out of bed, I was breaking
Joanne Lockwood: into tears all the time, I hadn't I couldn't plan more than 5 minutes ahead
Joanne Lockwood: sort of thing. What do I wanna do later? Well, I don't know. I'm not
Joanne Lockwood: sure what I wanna do now kind of thing. And it was Yeah. I remember
Joanne Lockwood: lying in bed with the world just going Joanne and round in circles, there's no
Joanne Lockwood: answers, no get off, there's no way of solving any problem. And I remember
Joanne Lockwood: waking up one morning and just saying I am. I'm good
Joanne Lockwood: enough. I'm valid. Who I am is okay. And I
Joanne Lockwood: didn't need to answer all the questions that were going around in my head. I
Joanne Lockwood: almost like said well, I'm not brushing them under the carpet, I'm just saying I
Joanne Lockwood: don't need to answer that because I am. I don't justify that
Joanne Lockwood: and that that got me out of bed. And I think
Joanne Lockwood: that that experience 4 or 5 years ago, unlocked some
Joanne Lockwood: of resilience, which I probably had all my life, but now I can fall back
Joanne Lockwood: on it consciously knowing that it's there and it's there to
Joanne Lockwood: save me if you like. And I I think when COVID hit last year,
Joanne Lockwood: for me, it was just a case of, okay, have my
Joanne Lockwood: cry, have my readjustment, have my pity party for a few days.
Joanne Lockwood: And right, okay, what's my technique? My technique is going, well, I've done this
Joanne Lockwood: before. I can do it again. And okay, I appreciate it's a
Joanne Lockwood: privilege that I have that many people don't but I was able to bounce back
Joanne Lockwood: knowing that I was I could do it because I believed in
Joanne Lockwood: myself. I magic stuff out of nowhere. I can do it again,
Joanne Lockwood: I think. So that's that's kind of the resilient techniques I use
Joanne Lockwood: and it's amazing how you can almost do that on a
Joanne Lockwood: day by day basis because we all go through these little micro highs, micro
Joanne Lockwood: lows we don't really appreciate. And I think I mentioned to you earlier that this
Joanne Lockwood: week I haven't had as many sales calls or raised as many invoices
Joanne Lockwood: I had the previous week. So, therefore, my brain is telling me that I'm I'm
Joanne Lockwood: less happy because all those chemicals that were making me feel
Joanne Lockwood: euphoric last week have disappeared this week, so I'm crashing and burning.
Joanne Lockwood: So I've just got to look myself in the mirror and Jo, nothing's Joanne. Nothing
Joanne Lockwood: has changed in the world. You're just going through this down cycle and you just
Joanne Lockwood: got to ignore it and bounce off and go, well, next week, I'm gonna feel
Joanne Lockwood: great again. And it's learning that, isn't it? And knowing that that bounce
Joanne Lockwood: back ability will happen if you keep on. Yeah.
Tom Morley: And I think we are speaking. I just wanna be clear
Tom Morley: here that both you and I are speaking, you know,
Tom Morley: living in one of the still one of the richest countries in the
Tom Morley: world and we're professionals and, you
Tom Morley: know, our houses are not gonna disappear.
Tom Morley: There's there's gonna be water in the tap and the kettle's probably
Tom Morley: gonna work. So, so we have the
Tom Morley: luxury of saying, well, if I get depressed, I
Tom Morley: will still have a roof over my head. A lot a lot of people
Tom Morley: don't in the world. So so I wouldn't say,
Tom Morley: my formula of having a breakdown is gonna work for everybody
Tom Morley: nor would I recommend it. But, it
Tom Morley: does, as you say, it does and we we have the
Tom Morley: luxury of reading books about saying, just be in the
Tom Morley: present. And, actually, it sounds like what you're talking about. And I've
Tom Morley: talked to my wife about this recently because sometimes I get,
Tom Morley: visited by an avalanche of regret. And then I just
Tom Morley: I don't process it anymore in the kind of CBT way, which I'd
Tom Morley: I'd have to sit down for 3 hours and do all these exercises. I'd just
Tom Morley: go, yeah. Well, that's, you know, who's that for? Who's that avalanche
Tom Morley: for? It's not affecting anybody else.
Tom Morley: It's it's in the past. You know,
Tom Morley: who's who's who's kind of in charge of this? And I'm gonna just go, well,
Tom Morley: thank you, Avalanche. I'm just gonna listen to the birds singing.
Tom Morley: And really, it's not avoidance. It's not spiritual bypass.
Tom Morley: It's just a choice to Jo, well, yeah, all that's going on is
Tom Morley: going on for a lot of people all the time.
Tom Morley: But that is what, what those guys
Tom Morley: I I think, or they talk about enlightenment is it is, you know, the you
Tom Morley: t you you study, you study, you study with the master and
Tom Morley: eventually the master just thwacks you around ahead and goes, those
Tom Morley: studies were for nothing except for this thwack. Now be in the
Tom Morley: present. And you go, oh, I said what it was all for. Yeah. That's what
Tom Morley: it was all for. I remember doing a workshop with a
Tom Morley: guy called Chuck Spazano once when I was quite down, and a
Tom Morley: friend of mine took me there. And he, Chuck
Tom Morley: Spazana is kind of spiritual leader in a way, but he was also bit
Tom Morley: like a used car salesman. Lovely guy, American guy.
Tom Morley: He was about 60 of us there for for a weekend in
Tom Morley: London. And it's Friday night, and he said, so you've
Tom Morley: come on the happiness course. Let me tell
Tom Morley: you the short way to do this course. And he
Tom Morley: just stood there and he said, are you happy?
Tom Morley: And we all sat there and he said, that's it. We said, what? And
Tom Morley: he said, oh, you want the complicated version. Alright, everybody.
Tom Morley: Who had trouble with their parents growing up? And then we spent
Tom Morley: that two and a half days processing everybody, going
Tom Morley: through this. And then at the end, he said, okay, buddy,
Tom Morley: be happy. And then having processed it all, we we knew what he was
Tom Morley: talking about. But, that option is
Tom Morley: always available to us, but we've been so
Tom Morley: conditioned that that isn't available to us. We have
Tom Morley: to do all this complicated stuff. We have to you know, I know I keep
Tom Morley: coming back to Deal with it. We have to deal with it. Deal with it.
Tom Morley: Deal with it. Deal with it. Yeah. Process it. Go through this therapy. Go through
Tom Morley: that therapy. Stop eating this. Stop eating that. Start eating this.
Tom Morley: Take more vitamins. You'll never get there unless you do this. You
Tom Morley: know? It's a, there there's there's a guy.
Tom Morley: I was gonna say if you listen to this podcast and you're a CBT practitioner
Joanne Lockwood: or you're you've got qualifications of this and you wanna
Joanne Lockwood: you're shouting at the at the PC right now, Gaye, you don't know nothing. Well
Tom Morley: Well, let me We're not we're not practitioners in any way. We're just
Joanne Lockwood: experience stuff, isn't it? CBT has saved my life.
Tom Morley: I I I really if you look on my,
Tom Morley: on my website,
Tom Morley: and, really, I did process everything for
Tom Morley: 6 months every day, every day, every day until
Tom Morley: I processed a lot of what we
Tom Morley: we then called, mind talk. You know? They call it self
Tom Morley: talk, monkey mind chatter.
Tom Morley: You do have to do it, but the but the annoying thing
Tom Morley: is you do have to do it, but then, you get to a point
Tom Morley: where you go, oh, I didn't have to do all that. But you have to
Tom Morley: do it in order to get to the point where you think I didn't have
Tom Morley: to do it. It's it's, it's like the,
Tom Morley: as I say, you know So you achieve mastery. You get to the practitioner phase,
Joanne Lockwood: don't you? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You have You become the master
Joanne Lockwood: of of that technique. And therefore, you, yeah, go direct to the end.
Joanne Lockwood: You you you've done the graft. You've you've done the wax on, wax
Joanne Lockwood: off and the, all this sort of thing so you've become the sort of like
Joanne Lockwood: the, yeah, the the Jedi or or the,
Joanne Lockwood: the Dojo master or something, wherever you are. Yeah. So you've done the time. I
Joanne Lockwood: get that. Yeah. And then when you get there, you,
Tom Morley: you think, oh, but everyone said enlightenment
Tom Morley: was, when everything would
Tom Morley: be fantastic all the time, you know, and you wouldn't have to
Tom Morley: worry. You wouldn't get any bills. You wouldn't. It's not. It's
Tom Morley: it's, you know, yeah. You feel you're there,
Tom Morley: but, you're living in the real world and that's
Tom Morley: other, I often say the people, you know, run the business and Joanne in your
Tom Morley: own business. It's, it is,
Tom Morley: far tougher road to enlightenment than sitting in the
Tom Morley: Himalayas for 20 years. You know, letting your beard grow
Tom Morley: or I don't know what the equivalent would be for a woman,
Tom Morley: But, you know, just kinda not looking after yourself.
Joanne Lockwood: Shaving your legs for a couple of years probably. Yeah.
Tom Morley: We're gonna get into trouble here. So yeah. But, I mean
Tom Morley: but, basically, not kinda tending, your body
Tom Morley: in any way, but just kinda concentrating on the inside, the
Tom Morley: inside, the inside. Yeah. That's not what we're here for.
Tom Morley: What's what's the point of living in a world if you're not gonna live in
Tom Morley: a world? You know, you can you can get all that
Tom Morley: when you're dead, all that thing thereafter, you
Tom Morley: know, and and we're here to influence each other. I mean, crikey,
Tom Morley: the the world will fall down if we all, just went
Tom Morley: meditating. Well, actually Lockwood wouldn't.
Tom Morley: Let's all go and meditate in the Himalayas and let the animals get on with
Tom Morley: it. I think that's probably the answer.
Joanne Lockwood: It might have a an impact on Gillette's, stock price if we don't.
Tom Morley: Love you. They're gonna be shaving their beard off for a while.
Tom Morley: Yeah. So we're
Joanne Lockwood: a year into Lockwood. You know, we've 23rd March is
Joanne Lockwood: is kind of in the UK when, we we got the the
Joanne Lockwood: broadcast from Boris telling us that to stay at home protect the NHS to
Joanne Lockwood: save lives where that all started almost only a
Joanne Lockwood: few weeks away from that anniversary. So you
Joanne Lockwood: were your business, your life was kind of based around
Joanne Lockwood: being present in rooms full of people, facilitating,
Joanne Lockwood: enlightening, empowering, activating people. And that must have been a
Joanne Lockwood: real kind of nudge or knock that
Joanne Lockwood: you've you've you've found a year it's a year ago. So
Joanne Lockwood: what what was going through your mind at the time? You know, what was going
Joanne Lockwood: through the mind of a of someone who was in that environment and what
Joanne Lockwood: did you how did you find yourself, I don't know, moving
Joanne Lockwood: forward from that? I was a bit concerned
Tom Morley: because,
Tom Morley: I'm, unfortunately, I followed in the
Tom Morley: footsteps of my father who was really lousy at opening
Tom Morley: the mail. And in those days,
Tom Morley: my mom would open it if it was red. If a bill was
Tom Morley: red, she'd open it. And somehow, we were poor, but she'd have squirreled
Tom Morley: away some money, to pay the red
Tom Morley: bills.
Tom Morley: When COVID hit, I I hadn't
Tom Morley: opened it. They don't they don't send red red bills anymore. They send
Tom Morley: black and white ones. Jo I had opened the mail and I opened a a
Tom Morley: letter. I own a little well, I used to own a little, pad,
Tom Morley: kind of rock star pad in Central London, which was part of my
Tom Morley: income, renting it out. And they said, we're repossessing your
Tom Morley: flat. Basically, I hadn't you you know, I could have paid, but
Tom Morley: I just missed some payments. So they repossessed it. And
Tom Morley: I said, well, that'd be good. There'll be about a 100 grand equity, you know,
Tom Morley: that swings and roundabouts. But the lawyers somehow
Tom Morley: carved up all the equity amongst themselves. I mean,
Tom Morley: the one point they were charging me through a mistake of theirs. They
Tom Morley: charged me some of the £2,000 a day interest on the
Tom Morley: loan. So I lost all that money. As I say, the
Tom Morley: the the van got burned. My
Tom Morley: income was based on or my work was based on getting
Tom Morley: people to drum in harmonies, in rhythm, singing
Tom Morley: harmony, drum in rhythm. And, I
Tom Morley: needed a place far away from the workplace
Tom Morley: in order that people would feel safe to do that. Now,
Tom Morley: yeah, online, because of the latency issue, we
Tom Morley: can't drum in time. So everyone's out of time. We can't sing in
Tom Morley: harmony because everyone sounds terrible. I don't know if you ever tried to sing
Tom Morley: happy birthdays. It's like, you know, do that and
Tom Morley: drum. It sounds like sheds falling down in a storm.
Tom Morley: And the whole security of doing this
Tom Morley: out the comfort zone stuff in a venue far
Tom Morley: away from the workplace had gone too. Everyone was at home with the
Tom Morley: dog watching, kids watching, spouses
Tom Morley: saying, is that what you do at work? And so, it
Tom Morley: was a complete disaster for me as far as
Tom Morley: my skills went. But I thought, well, what are the outcomes?
Tom Morley: The team bonding, doing something together
Tom Morley: that's different, you know, seems impossible.
Tom Morley: And, not that I'd advertise it this way, but,
Tom Morley: change in their neurochemistry by, you know, getting up and
Tom Morley: moving and, feeling different, doing something
Tom Morley: different, you know, wearing a pair of sunglasses on Zoom. It's really
Tom Morley: simple stuff. So I just started playing their music,
Tom Morley: from my laptop, which at that time is a 2015
Tom Morley: MacBook, and sharing my computer sound and
Tom Morley: getting them to dance and, and move and bang 2
Tom Morley: pens together or sticks. Now because they're all muted
Tom Morley: and they were only listening to music I was playing them,
Tom Morley: they heard the music. They heard themselves playing along to the music, so
Tom Morley: they were in time. And the amazing
Tom Morley: thing was and this was the paradigm shift for me that kinda
Tom Morley: has sustained me through this year. Everyone's out of time
Tom Morley: together. So if I play them a track at a 130 beats per minute,
Tom Morley: some people will be putting their hand in the air. Some people would be putting
Tom Morley: their head back. Some are you know, so it's it's been a kind of
Tom Morley: choreography that would have been insanely expensive
Tom Morley: to, design as a theater piece, but
Tom Morley: it's happened by chance. So that
Tom Morley: is very exciting. It's very exciting to facilitate, and it's very
Tom Morley: exciting for them to be part of. So and I can do that
Tom Morley: globally. I, you know, I do global events. I don't have to drive
Tom Morley: anywhere. You know, the biggest
Tom Morley: journey I do is from the kitchen to the studio. It's on the 3rd
Tom Morley: floor carrying 2 wooden spoons. You know, so I do charge for
Tom Morley: transport and equipment. But,
Tom Morley: that is, you know, it's I I can do these kind of universally,
Tom Morley: successful events. And everybody says,
Tom Morley: like, as before where I started, that drumming session
Tom Morley: was fantastic. They're not playing any drums.
Tom Morley: Somehow, it's because I've got drums in the background
Tom Morley: and I might play one drum. Although now I tend to just play,
Tom Morley: chopsticks or something and get them to play. But there's drums on the on the
Tom Morley: tracks I play them.
Tom Morley: Jo, so as far as I know this wasn't in
Tom Morley: your question, and, you know, that is the beginning of it, but the end of
Tom Morley: it is I think, when
Tom Morley: Bryce kinda announces we're
Tom Morley: coming out of lockdown as they're starting to do now, the main thing
Tom Morley: I hear from people, not just in the business, but from
Tom Morley: everyone is kind of anxiety because they know it's
Tom Morley: not gonna be the same going back to work. Everything's
Tom Morley: the same and everything's different. And if we talked
Tom Morley: about inclusion here, and exclusion,
Tom Morley: everyone's going to be thinking, you know, what is the right
Tom Morley: protocol? Do we go back? And it's almost like, a
Tom Morley: bereavement. You don't you don't know what to say, you know, when someone's
Tom Morley: died or or more than one person's died. You
Tom Morley: know, what do you what do you say when you get back to the office?
Tom Morley: The office is exactly the same. The coffee machine's in the same
Tom Morley: place. The work is the same.
Tom Morley: It's we we are gonna go through
Tom Morley: something. Well and it it there was never been
Tom Morley: through it. I suppose it will be like, the end of the war
Tom Morley: in a way, the second World War. My mom and dad met him.
Tom Morley: And my my grand told me a lot about the war.
Tom Morley: It's gonna be like that. We're we're Joanne Jo, oh, we're back.
Tom Morley: It's, now what do we do? So I'd and my
Tom Morley: managers are encouraging me to which I'm designing now, you
Tom Morley: know, kind of not calling them rituals, but
Tom Morley: exercises that we can do back in the office to do a checking in, you
Tom Morley: know, forming a circle, and,
Tom Morley: just ways to sort of reintegrate ourselves into the workplace. It's
Tom Morley: gonna be massive. It's really, one of the biggest
Tom Morley: things of of this, well, this
Tom Morley: century so far. It's gotta be.
Joanne Lockwood: Oh, I completely agree. And even before we get actually step foot
Joanne Lockwood: in the workplace, we've got to get to the workplace sitting on the
Joanne Lockwood: train for 2 hours with a mask on because I can't see masks
Joanne Lockwood: disappearing overnight, there's still going to be some restrictions you know
Joanne Lockwood: even we're going to be cautious about walking too close to each other, we're going
Joanne Lockwood: to be cautious on escalators but we want to pack ourselves on the
Joanne Lockwood: Waterloo and City line anymore nose to nose, bumper to bumper,
Joanne Lockwood: are we going to be cramming ourselves in pubs anymore? So I think we've
Joanne Lockwood: kind of got used to having space around us and are we ready to sort
Joanne Lockwood: of give our personal space back and share it again? And I think
Joanne Lockwood: there's there's a whole load of anxieties as you say that are yet to
Joanne Lockwood: come. I think any workplace that isn't starting their
Joanne Lockwood: workplace workforce planning around reintegration,
Joanne Lockwood: 100 of thousands of people have been onboarded into an organization where they've never
Joanne Lockwood: met the people and they've never even been to the physical office. So there's
Joanne Lockwood: a whole load of people out there that we need to bring, make part,
Joanne Lockwood: include, will we have
Joanne Lockwood: screens up still? Yeah. It's yeah. The supermarkets aren't
Joanne Lockwood: gonna suddenly take down all the perspex on the 21st June.
Joanne Lockwood: The banks aren't going to suddenly change this, we're not going to get rid of
Joanne Lockwood: all of those hand sanitising machines everywhere, because there'll
Joanne Lockwood: still be this risk of return. You know, we're not out of the
Joanne Lockwood: woods. We may be in fact stated, but we don't know what's gonna go
Joanne Lockwood: on. They even talk about potential flare up every
Joanne Lockwood: winter and every winter we're going to have to have some level
Joanne Lockwood: of social distancing, mask wearing, sanitization, Joanne space, face,
Joanne Lockwood: whatever we want to call it for the foreseeable until it
Joanne Lockwood: becomes a part of history and it's just eventually just faded
Joanne Lockwood: out. Jo, yeah, I completely I completely get it. Yeah. Workforce
Joanne Lockwood: planning, the work yeah. How we
Joanne Lockwood: transport and and travel, how we socialize, everything is
Joanne Lockwood: changing. Cater with that with the
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. Women account working from home, you know, there's a lot of gender
Joanne Lockwood: inequality in the workplace, working from home, there's a lot
Joanne Lockwood: of social divide around internet have not have internet technology, not have
Joanne Lockwood: technology. There's a whole load of different experiences people have. They're going
Joanne Lockwood: to, as you say, come back and grieve over this year
Joanne Lockwood: year, isn't it? Yeah. And and you imagine I mean,
Tom Morley: one of the things I'm suggesting in a very
Tom Morley: simple kinda movie I'm I'm making,
Tom Morley: is, you know, as a tip, you know, to to get back, which is
Tom Morley: what musicians do and it's what theater groups do.
Tom Morley: At the beginning of the day, you know, every every day,
Tom Morley: actually, if they're working on a show or working on a production, is you get
Tom Morley: in a circle, you make sure the circle is circular for a
Tom Morley: start. And it it this
Tom Morley: is interesting because on Zoom, the
Tom Morley: hierarchy of the company is gone. We're all in the same
Tom Morley: box, you know, in the same size.
Tom Morley: The CEO doesn't have a bigger box on Zoom, a bigger picture.
Tom Morley: So, forming the circle and being in the circle
Tom Morley: is, you know, it will emulate
Tom Morley: that a little bit. And also the whole thing about being on mute
Tom Morley: and not, you know, and unmuting yourself that
Tom Morley: has been going on in circles of performers and artists
Tom Morley: for, probably centuries
Tom Morley: that, you you speak, you have a time
Tom Morley: to speak where which might be, you know,
Tom Morley: time by timekeeper. 1 minute, 2 minute. You share
Tom Morley: how exactly how you're feeling authentically. You don't go, I'm
Tom Morley: fine. You know, COVID's been a bit annoying, but actually,
Tom Morley: I'm fine. You just go, you know, you,
Tom Morley: as much grief can come out or as much positivity or as much
Tom Morley: hope can come out in that time. And then nobody
Tom Morley: says, oh, yeah. I feel like that. Or, you shouldn't feel
Tom Morley: that bad. Oh, let's go for a coffee. Yeah. You you're not allowed to say
Tom Morley: anything like that. You go on to the next person. They speak. They're the great
Tom Morley: time. Next person speaks. Their grandfather died.
Tom Morley: You know, da da da. You go around, but you build this
Tom Morley: kinda circle of trust, and then you go
Tom Morley: on and you live for that day. And then when you come back the
Tom Morley: next day, someone else might have gone down. Someone else might come up,
Tom Morley: but gradually you build this,
Tom Morley: yeah, it it's, kind of circle of vulnerability,
Tom Morley: but,
Tom Morley: support, you know, and, and, and we we're gonna need
Tom Morley: to do those sorts of things because if we just go back and
Tom Morley: go, oh, yeah, anyone Jo to Starbucks? You know,
Tom Morley: it's, other coffees available, but the
Tom Morley: it's just, it's it's gonna be a
Tom Morley: disaster as I I
Tom Morley: know, you know, might as well mention this, but, my mom died
Tom Morley: when I was 13 and, at that point,
Tom Morley: I thought the adults in the world knew everything.
Tom Morley: I I wasn't even told she was dying. I was just told she'd
Tom Morley: she's she died last night. Sorry to have to tell you.
Tom Morley: And nobody knew how to cope with it. Nobody phoned my
Tom Morley: school. Nobody. If a name was spoken, people got
Tom Morley: embarrassed. I mean, it was it
Tom Morley: was like living in this crazy world all of a sudden when
Tom Morley: nobody knew anything that the, the, the
Tom Morley: illusion that adults could run
Tom Morley: things was taken from it. And I think if we try to
Tom Morley: go back to work and we don't acknowledge, like, we didn't
Tom Morley: acknowledge my mom's death. If we don't acknowledge, what COVID
Tom Morley: has done, even to the point of, you
Tom Morley: know, simple things like you're saying, like, not being able to get into higher heels
Tom Morley: anymore because our feet have expanded. That's just the men.
Tom Morley: You know, the there'll be all sorts of things that we
Tom Morley: can't do anymore or don't wanna do anymore. We've got to talk
Tom Morley: about them and we've got to restructure accordingly because
Tom Morley: this is the paradigm shift that extinction rebellion were talking
Tom Morley: about, where everyone said that can't that it don't be
Tom Morley: crazy. We can't stop the planes flying. We can't
Tom Morley: stop commuting. You're mad, dear people.
Tom Morley: Think of Pauline on the checkout. Think of poor Pauline, you know, not
Tom Morley: being able to get to work. Pauline haven't gone to work for a year. The
Tom Morley: the world hadn't ended. You know? So it's been delivered to
Tom Morley: us. We can we can now change. Will we?
Tom Morley: You know? That would be I would love that kind of
Tom Morley: inclusion to go, yeah. Alright. We're all in the same
Tom Morley: boat. You know, the Tories talk talk about it as if we are, but we're
Tom Morley: not we're not in their posh posh boat where there nothing
Tom Morley: changes for them. Now, like I said, completely,
Tom Morley: neutral politically, but they do rather annoy me sometimes.
Tom Morley: So let's all be in the same boat, and let's say, yeah, this
Tom Morley: is an opportunity. We didn't see it coming. Let's
Tom Morley: try I mean, they're already taken apart all the jumbo jets,
Tom Morley: so we can't go back to that kind of,
Tom Morley: flying around the world all the time because we're scared of
Tom Morley: hitting the wrong button on Zoom. So we'd rather go to a meeting.
Tom Morley: We've been trained. We're returning to a completely
Tom Morley: different world and we have to acknowledge that, and
Tom Morley: we have to work with the advantages of it.
Joanne Lockwood: Oh, certainly. Oh, yeah. I'm when I talk to a lot of my my clients
Joanne Lockwood: and customers there, there's a lot more emphasis on storytelling,
Joanne Lockwood: lived experience, understanding people, people being
Joanne Lockwood: vulnerable and it's accepted that people can be
Joanne Lockwood: vulnerable now because as you say, we've all lived through the same
Joanne Lockwood: storm. Our boats, some of us have engines, some of us the
Joanne Lockwood: sails are broken, etcetera. So we're different boats. But we we we have got
Joanne Lockwood: this kind of shared experience where we
Joanne Lockwood: know that what what's going on in someone's mind. We we can we can very
Joanne Lockwood: easily say when we meet someone online or wherever that
Joanne Lockwood: how's it going for you? How's Lockwood been? So we've got this common
Joanne Lockwood: theme other than the weather to talk about for the first time
Joanne Lockwood: in British history or the war.
Joanne Lockwood: So I think it is. I think it's really important as you say to keep
Joanne Lockwood: telling these stories, not let the dead die in
Joanne Lockwood: vain, not let the people who have suffered suffer in vain. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Not understanding the social inequities, you know, the
Joanne Lockwood: impact of, social low social immigrant
Joanne Lockwood: groups and their susceptibility to dying of COVID because of the environment
Joanne Lockwood: they're living in. We're gonna unpack this, we gotta put it on the table and
Joanne Lockwood: say what this now we shall not propagate this, we've gotta learn from this.
Joanne Lockwood: And that's I I hoping that the population, the
Joanne Lockwood: people will tell these stories, and we won't let,
Joanne Lockwood: if you like, the the ruling class, the government, the privileged
Joanne Lockwood: try and revert us back and to where we were and just tell
Joanne Lockwood: it, oh, forget about it. We'll just carry on. Here's some cash. Get on with
Joanne Lockwood: it. I hope we do put those taken away and say, no, we're not going
Joanne Lockwood: back. Let's keep what we've learned.
Joanne Lockwood: Tell those stories. Because if we don't,
Joanne Lockwood: all we've done is people died for nothing. Yeah. Absolutely.
Tom Morley: And and we can tell those stories in different ways. I recently saw
Tom Morley: admittedly on social media, it was just a
Tom Morley: meme, But it had,
Tom Morley: had the the the nations who'd done
Tom Morley: best in, in COVID times, you know,
Tom Morley: as far as protecting the population and the nations that have done
Tom Morley: worst. And you can imagine, gender wise,
Tom Morley: all the nations who'd done best were run by women.
Tom Morley: All the nations who did worst were run by men. I
Tom Morley: mean, it's that simple. So what does that tell us?
Tom Morley: I wonder whether, given that we've
Tom Morley: been ruled by men for a long time now
Tom Morley: claiming they knew what they were doing. They didn't. You know? The
Tom Morley: women knew. Why don't we just say, okay, boys.
Tom Morley: You've had your time. We're just gonna give it to the
Tom Morley: women for the next 10 years. I mean, really, if I if I was head
Tom Morley: of the United Nations and I had any power, that's what I would
Tom Morley: do. I'd say, you know, maybe they'll make some mistakes,
Tom Morley: but crikey, they can't make any worse mistakes than the men
Tom Morley: who just, you know, cronyism has run
Tom Morley: rife. I mean, they've, it's been
Tom Morley: embarrassing the way the world has responded, really.
Tom Morley: Especially the men. I I feel I I
Tom Morley: often feel ashamed of
Tom Morley: my gender and the way they behave, you know, and they just assume
Tom Morley: power. It's, I mean, they're idiots and
Tom Morley: and women know how to handle crisis, you know, but if I wanna
Tom Morley: be general about it.
Joanne Lockwood: Oh, for sure. I completely agree that what we need to do is start
Joanne Lockwood: valuing different personality attributes in different
Joanne Lockwood: ways. So when we think about empathy, emotional
Joanne Lockwood: connections, I'm not saying we stereotype women
Joanne Lockwood: and saying all they have is empathy and emotional connections or saying there are
Joanne Lockwood: fem what we would consider feminine traits or what we consider masculine traits and
Joanne Lockwood: we always seem to value masculine traits and
Joanne Lockwood: big, loud, boisterous, overly confident tends to
Joanne Lockwood: rule the world. And what we need to look is look at the meritocracy. Look
Joanne Lockwood: at what makes up the meritocracy, look at what makes someone valuable
Joanne Lockwood: and start to value different attributes and skills
Joanne Lockwood: that many men have, but they're they're they're they're
Joanne Lockwood: often, submerged because they hide them, they cover them
Joanne Lockwood: in order to fit in with the with their colleagues. And there are
Joanne Lockwood: skills that women have that are valuable. And sometimes they
Joanne Lockwood: they they mask them in order to fit into the male world. So I think
Joanne Lockwood: by looking at the different elements of meritocracy, looking at different personalities
Joanne Lockwood: people have, they're really analyzing what skills
Joanne Lockwood: and we need in the roles of business leaders, politicians, world leaders,
Joanne Lockwood: or whatever that may be. Mhmm. And we we don't try and make this gender
Joanne Lockwood: bias balance saying, well, men had it men tried and got it wrong, therefore
Joanne Lockwood: women have a go. What we need to look at is what are the best
Joanne Lockwood: attributes of the leaders that we want to see and
Joanne Lockwood: encourage those behaviors in our in our in our children. We
Joanne Lockwood: nurture that through schools. We create that environment where we're
Joanne Lockwood: breeding better or rounded human beings that aren't necessarily categorized
Joanne Lockwood: by gender or by race or by color or whatever that may be. And that's
Joanne Lockwood: that's the challenge of building this equitable society with the social justice,
Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? I'm being too, black and white in in talking
Tom Morley: about it in gender terms. Yeah. But, I
Tom Morley: sometimes have to play the devil's advocate to to get the conversation done. But
Tom Morley: the but you're right. But it's so if we take Jacinda
Tom Morley: Ardern, you know, on one kind of,
Tom Morley: end of the spectrum about how the govern where she
Tom Morley: says, well, GDP isn't, the
Tom Morley: main thing, of New Zealand. That's not what
Tom Morley: we're going for. We're not gonna go for continuous growth, which is
Tom Morley: the basis of capitalism. She says, we're
Tom Morley: we're gonna go for the the emotional well-being and the health
Tom Morley: of the whole population. You know, That is seen
Tom Morley: as revolutionary. Well, it's not really, is it, if you were to run a
Tom Morley: tribe? And then on the other side, you have these
Tom Morley: pantomime dames, you know, Boris and,
Tom Morley: what's his name? Trump. You know? He he could not
Tom Morley: be, more exaggerated,
Tom Morley: examples of stupidity, greed, vanity,
Tom Morley: and absolute kind of desolation as far as emotional
Tom Morley: intelligence goes. So we have these examples now. And,
Tom Morley: yeah, and you're right. They're not male and female. They're just,
Tom Morley: attitudes really to to getting things done. I mean, that's all
Tom Morley: politicians do. Yes. We give them their money. They get things done or they
Tom Morley: don't get them done. So, so I
Tom Morley: think you're right, but let's look around and let's not go,
Tom Morley: let's draw a line in the sand. COVID's gone. Hooray. Let's all have
Tom Morley: a party. Let's have a, you know, history or what what was it they
Tom Morley: talking about? Festival of Brexit. Yeah. Let's get street party,
Joanne Lockwood: put put the big tables out, get our flags out, and Yeah. Sing
Joanne Lockwood: Britannia because that's Yeah. And let's And let's stop being
Tom Morley: negative and mentioning COVID and, you know, the 100 of
Tom Morley: 1,000 that died, you know, through mismanagement.
Tom Morley: I mean, it's it's it it will happen, you know,
Tom Morley: will happen. They'll try, but but we must
Tom Morley: resist. Yeah, we must
Joanne Lockwood: resist. Joanne I put you on the spot? I mean
Joanne Lockwood: when I've listened to some of your gigs and been part of your gigs, I
Joanne Lockwood: love the simplicity that you say to people about how anyone
Joanne Lockwood: can play a tune and you say this little phrase and
Joanne Lockwood: with the phrase you tap the rhythm out of the bait
Joanne Lockwood: bean can with a couple of chopsticks. Do you have your chopsticks and the bait
Joanne Lockwood: bean can handy and just tell the audience I love and don't you
Joanne Lockwood: forget it and how to bring that tune to life. Well,
Tom Morley: yeah, given that you can edit this, I can do it.
Tom Morley: Let me see. Alright. So is this is this a pause?
Joanne Lockwood: Tumbleweed. Yeah. The studio is now being wrecked as
Joanne Lockwood: Tom bends over and knocks over the the guitar on the keyboard.
Tom Morley: I'm looking for a cab. I might have to do it on a calendar.
Joanne Lockwood: Let me let me see if it works. A calendar's good. I mean,
Joanne Lockwood: as far as the as far as the audience concerned, they're on audio only. They
Joanne Lockwood: can't see you. So I don't think whether it's a can or a a colander,
Joanne Lockwood: it doesn't matter. You can imagine. I did put you on the spot here, and
Joanne Lockwood: I do appreciate that, I'm trying myself in the north, so I think Don't
Joanne Lockwood: destroy the myth that Tom's always got a can and
Joanne Lockwood: a pair of chopsticks in his pocket. Let me see if he'll work on me.
Tom Morley: Yeah. We're just about welcoming.
Tom Morley: Yeah, I can do that. I can do that.
Tom Morley: Do you want me to still pretend it's a can or shall I say it's
Tom Morley: a colander? No Joanne no. I mean we
Joanne Lockwood: I might even not cut this but just leave it rolling. So this is,
Joanne Lockwood: tell the story. This is a calendar on the floor.
Tom Morley: That, when I studied,
Tom Morley: Latin American percussion, I mean, you've got you've got the basic
Tom Morley: I'm just play this on, but, yeah, on a remote control
Tom Morley: and it wouldn't be, other end of a wooden spoon. So you got clave,
Tom Morley: which
Tom Morley: is
Tom Morley: which is the basis of a lot of, carnival music. And then
Tom Morley: I say, to people, if you find yourself in the carnival and you
Tom Morley: feel a bit excluded because, you, you
Tom Morley: know, you feel a bit white and tourist, just pick up
Tom Morley: anything on the ground. It could be a tin can. I've actually got a colander
Tom Morley: here, which, is on my studio floor at all
Tom Morley: times, and I'm gonna play it with a wooden spoon. Jo and the
Tom Morley: rhythm is I love you, and don't you forget it? So,
Tom Morley: even if you you know, so you don't have to remember the rhythm. You just
Tom Morley: think, I love you, and don't you forget it. You can't even say it a
Tom Morley: different way than, the way of of the
Tom Morley: beat.
Tom Morley: So if you put that with the clave,
Tom Morley: then, you've you've pretty much got a carnival. You just need
Tom Morley: a bass drum.
Tom Morley: I've got 100 of people playing that, 1,000 over the last year.
Tom Morley: And, and I've also got, you know, with parents
Tom Morley: playing out, I've got their kids watching. And I say to
Tom Morley: the kids, you know, kids were when they're when your parents say they're gonna
Tom Morley: work, they're doing serious stuff, this is what they're doing really.
Tom Morley: I love that. And then I just get the kids joining in
Tom Morley: to playing buckets. And, and the other
Tom Morley: day, I said again, it is is a, you know, corporate team
Tom Morley: building gig. Everyone was standing up because I get them
Tom Morley: standing up. Listen. Do you know what we're all missing going on holiday?
Tom Morley: Bring something to the screen that reminds you of holiday. So they bring
Tom Morley: goggles and masks and snorkels. And then the the
Tom Morley: the kids always end up sort of crowding in. They can't resist it.
Tom Morley: So one of the the this little girl, she must have been about 7 years
Tom Morley: old. She started doing the crawl. She put these goggles on and she was doing
Tom Morley: the crawl in the air. And, her dad,
Tom Morley: who's this big guy, he picked her up. So she was
Tom Morley: kinda horizontal in the air doing the crawl, but doing it
Tom Morley: really well. I mean, she was a dancer, this girl, obviously a natural
Tom Morley: dancer. So I just said to all 30 of them, you know, the board and
Tom Morley: everybody, I said, okay, buddy, let's do the crawl. You know?
Tom Morley: So Jo they're all swimming in
Tom Morley: the air and they were bringing things like suntan
Tom Morley: lotion and, you know, hats and, you know, all
Tom Morley: sorts. I said to them, see how many pairs of sunglasses you can jam on
Tom Morley: your head. Jo some people were wearing 5 pairs of sunglasses, you
Tom Morley: know, and that began with, them just
Tom Morley: me saying, why don't you play this rhythm? And
Tom Morley: it turns into a circus of
Tom Morley: creativity. And I know you see the, the thing
Tom Morley: is I've been doing this so long. I know that's not far
Tom Morley: from the surface in anybody. It's dying to
Tom Morley: come out and it's, it seems especially dying to come out
Tom Morley: in lockdown. So, I've just had a whale of a
Tom Morley: time this year. And and, to to be honest, I'm quite
Tom Morley: concerned about going back on stage because I I can't even if I see someone
Tom Morley: in the back row, it takes a you know, who really is a good
Tom Morley: dancer, takes quite a lot of kerfuffle to get them on stage.
Tom Morley: On Zoom, I can just spotlight them in a second, or if I'm
Tom Morley: working with a spotlight, then I just go spotlight that guy. You know?
Tom Morley: Damn. Let's bring him. Oh, I didn't I don't even whisper it. I think because
Tom Morley: I can see their name. Bring Jo to the stage. You know, Jo and his
Tom Morley: daughter. And, they become stars instantly. And what
Tom Morley: does that do to a team who are used
Tom Morley: to going on away days and having gala dinners
Tom Morley: and getting indigestion and staying up too late and pretending they haven't got
Tom Morley: hangover because they're tough. All that is gone.
Tom Morley: They're, they're at home and they're just having a whale of a
Tom Morley: time. And the feedback as it comes in, you know, the chat
Tom Morley: is, this is incredible or go, Jo, or
Tom Morley: go, Julie, or, you know, it's, I
Tom Morley: mean, it's amazing what we've done. And I'm
Tom Morley: kinda concerned that, because the government say Jo back to your offices
Tom Morley: because we wanna keep Starbucks and put our open.
Tom Morley: You know, it's it's nothing in comparison to what
Tom Morley: they're doing now. You know? Pret Pratt and Starbucks can work out a
Tom Morley: different business model. I don't want them to fail, but the you know,
Tom Morley: let's not go, you know, and return
Tom Morley: to the old thing just to keep the old structures going. We've we've we've
Tom Morley: built this glorious world of kind of
Tom Morley: interaction and color and kids being involved rather than being left
Tom Morley: crying because their dad's at a conference for 3 days and all he's
Tom Morley: doing is getting a hangover.
Tom Morley: Like I say, I'm neutral about the whole thing. Amazing. I mean, Tom.
Joanne Lockwood: Tom, absolutely amazing. Amazing. I've sat through
Joanne Lockwood: while being part of many of your Voxstar Activator sessions,
Joanne Lockwood: both as a a spotlight for you or sitting working on your production behind
Joanne Lockwood: the camera. And I'm always in awe of you think
Joanne Lockwood: it's, you know, you think it's a one off, you know, how can anybody do
Joanne Lockwood: that again? The next time they're producing bass guitar drum
Joanne Lockwood: kits out of nowhere, then this sort of,
Joanne Lockwood: African drum comes out and then you've got this sort of like this Japanese
Joanne Lockwood: thing pops up and everyone's everyone's got these instruments in their homes and
Joanne Lockwood: they just bring them out, suddenly they're on camera and everyone is dancing, everyone's
Joanne Lockwood: engaging. The the whole families are involved, not just the people, you
Joanne Lockwood: know, the corporate business people. Yeah. It's all those all the children suddenly become part
Joanne Lockwood: of it. And and then mom and dad and the children or dad and dad
Joanne Lockwood: and the children and mama mama and the children are all joining in together.
Joanne Lockwood: Making this a family event, aren't they? Yeah. Absolutely.
Tom Morley: I mean, talk about inclusion. You you if you know, I've
Tom Morley: done, you know, pre COVID. I've I've helped out on Family Days
Tom Morley: companies. It takes them 4 months to
Tom Morley: organize those family days and they they might get
Tom Morley: a big top or something. They might get a clown in, but it's nothing
Tom Morley: like what we do online. And, and it, it doesn't take any
Tom Morley: organizing at all, except clicking the zoom link. And,
Tom Morley: if on those family days, those on-site ones, I'd say,
Tom Morley: okay, I'm gonna email you a list, Bring some sunglasses. Bring a
Tom Morley: hat. Bring some bring that half the people turn out. Yeah. I
Tom Morley: never read the email. Whereas if I, if I do it on
Tom Morley: zoom, now I know all that stuff is in the house. There's no way.
Tom Morley: If I say right, everyone get a colander and a wooden spoon, they've
Tom Morley: all got a colander and a wooden spoon, you know, Jo, and they've all got
Tom Morley: hats and they've all got, as you say, they've all got these surprise
Tom Morley: instruments. If, you know, if I say, all right, there's, mime,
Tom Morley: guitar, just with a, you know, wooden spoon
Tom Morley: or or or mime with a clipboard or something, The
Tom Morley: screen will fill with guitars
Tom Morley: and, banjos and, all
Tom Morley: sorts tennis rackets. You know, it it's phenomenal.
Tom Morley: Absolutely phenomenal what people have got at home. Mhmm.
Tom Morley: It is. Yeah. And the power of your
Joanne Lockwood: your Voxter activator sort of show really because it really does.
Joanne Lockwood: Everybody feels part of it, don't they? Everybody feels like they wanna take part and
Joanne Lockwood: they'll it brings out their inner sort of show off almost because they Yeah. Feel
Joanne Lockwood: safe in their own home, don't they? They don't feel like they're being embarrassed because
Joanne Lockwood: all they can see is you and them. So they can say Yeah. It's a
Joanne Lockwood: very safe space, isn't it? Yeah. And, I I mean, I've got guitars
Tom Morley: and drums and all sorts here, but very often I say, okay, let's
Tom Morley: play guitar and I just play a wooden spoon or,
Tom Morley: so it's, you know, so I'm not the king of the show.
Tom Morley: You know, and people bring pillow. You know, they play. They just grab
Tom Morley: cushions and they play them like kind of real rock
Tom Morley: stars. It's amazing. They believe it, the
Tom Morley: and because it's, yeah, screens full of their colleagues
Tom Morley: doing the same, as you said, they kind of build,
Tom Morley: the energy themselves. Oh, if Pam's doing that, I
Tom Morley: can do this. You know, if Jo's doing this, it's you know?
Tom Morley: So it's, They're trying to outdo each other and outshine and
Joanne Lockwood: out out guitar each other, aren't they? It's it's rivalry and everything is going
Joanne Lockwood: on. I just I don't think it's that competitive. I think it's,
Tom Morley: okay. So it's more like permission. Oh, I see we're
Tom Morley: allowed to do this. I don't think they're trying to, I don't get the
Tom Morley: sense they're trying to beat each other. It's like, ah, okay then.
Tom Morley: I I get it. It's cloak time. It's, it's
Tom Morley: kinda that whole thing about the shades I just discovered.
Tom Morley: Yeah. Well, you've seen her 2 pairs of shades. Why don't you get them both
Tom Morley: on? And then I if I put 5 pairs of shades on, they'll yeah.
Tom Morley: Alright. It's kind of insect time. It's,
Tom Morley: it's it's just outrageous what happens.
Tom Morley: You couldn't you couldn't you couldn't do it in a creativity workshop if
Tom Morley: you planned it. It's just play them. You know, play the
Tom Morley: music, play it out. The their systems are good or they're wearing
Tom Morley: headphones or and they just get really excited. It's like being
Tom Morley: at a gig. It's amazing.
Joanne Lockwood: Fantastic. So how can people get in touch with you if they wanna find out
Joanne Lockwood: more about you, your Voxstar Activator program, or or just
Joanne Lockwood: generally saying hi. How do they get a hold of you? Well, my name
Tom Morley: is Tom Morley, tommoreley.
Tom Morley: So I'm at Tom morley.com. I'm
Tom Morley: all over the Internet as well. If you were to put in Tom Morley drums
Tom Morley: into a search or Tom Morley rock star, you'd find me. But
Tom Morley: if you come to the website, then you can find everything, all
Tom Morley: all the tags or and you can email me from there. And,
Tom Morley: also, that email will also go to my manager. So if you're
Tom Morley: thinking, yeah, this guy sounds a bit weird, but he's organized.
Tom Morley: The the if you email me, it'll go straight to them.
Tom Morley: And if you say, yeah. Well, I just need a price to
Tom Morley: take to a meeting, you'll get it within an hour. I mean, you don't have
Tom Morley: to say in that voice. You'd say, I need a price to take to a
Tom Morley: meeting. So we cater for everybody.
Tom Morley: And, so there's a whole structure behind me. Luckily, there didn't used
Tom Morley: to be, but there is now last year, which is
Tom Morley: great because all I have to do is worry or concern
Tom Morley: myself with the creativity, and they they do all the contracts and
Tom Morley: all that. They just send me some money every now and then.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. You you do rhythm and groove. Somebody else does invoice and finance.
Joanne Lockwood: That's the way it should be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they do it really well.
Tom Morley: I mean, it's it's a great formula. I wish I'd learned it
Tom Morley: 40 years ago. There you go.
Joanne Lockwood: Well, a huge thank you. It's been an absolute honor
Joanne Lockwood: and privilege to spend another hour and a bit's company with you.
Joanne Lockwood: I know we get on and we we talk often but this has been inspirational.
Joanne Lockwood: I've learned some stuff about that I never knew before and I'm a huge thank
Joanne Lockwood: you to you, the listener for tuning in and keeping up this far.
Joanne Lockwood: Please do subscribe to keep updated on future episodes of the Inclusion
Joanne Lockwood: Bites podcast, that's B-I-T-E-S. Tell your friends, tell your
Joanne Lockwood: colleagues. And I've got a number of well, I say
Joanne Lockwood: more exciting guests. I'm not sure if we can get more exciting than the guests
Joanne Lockwood: we've had already on on the show. But I've got loads more guests lined up,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm sure you're gonna be inspired by over the next weeks months.
Joanne Lockwood: Of course, why don't you come on the show? I'm sure you can be
Joanne Lockwood: inspirational and I'm sure you can bring some some insight into your own
Joanne Lockwood: world. So please do let me know, welcome your feedback or
Joanne Lockwood: suggestions how we can improve the show. So email me at jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: That will come to me. I won't be passing that onto my manager or anyone
Joanne Lockwood: like that. You'll get me with that email address, guaranteed. So my
Joanne Lockwood: name is Joanne Lockwood. It's been an absolute honor and a
Joanne Lockwood: pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next time.
Joanne Lockwood: Bye.