See.Think.Do. with Sam Furness

SEE.

Hey Sam. Whereabouts are you right now?

Hey Days! Comin’ atcha from Holloway Road, North London.

What (if anything) is getting you excited right now?

August is going to be a very special month. I’m going to two friends' weddings (one of which I'm officiating!!), two engagement parties (one of them being my sisters) and it’s me and my girlfriend’s first anniversary.

I’m also going to my first festivals since Summer 2019.

Human nature is healing!

Tell us about your journey with your Channel Twelve and Creative Quests so far? What inspired you to launch this and when did you take that first big / small step?

It’s been a long and personal journey. In 2016 I took on a self initiated challenge to reconnect with my creative self. Despite having had an active creative existence my whole life, mostly in music and theatre, like a lot of people I struggled to keep it all going after university.

Alongside my job managing music artists, I set out to explore a new form of creativity each month for 12 months, in my spare time. As the months passed this challenge started to become a way of life - one that put equal importance on meeting new people/going to new places/learning new things as it did creating and bringing ideas to life. After 12 life changing months I realised I had developed a kind of conscious lifestyle and creative process hybrid.

Channel Twelve was born as a home for all my creative projects - since 2016 I’ve had installations at the London Design Festival, produced events, workshops, films… all sorts!

Creative Quests is Channel Twelve’s new programme that launched in Jan 2021. It’s a monthly club for creative & curious people all around the world that has a different theme each month - all based off my learnings from my own monthly Quests since 2016.

It’s still very early days but it’s been a pretty steep learning curve this year.

What’s been your highlight to date?

Launching Creative Quests this year. Hands down. I had convinced myself it might never happen after 4 years of trying to launch it. When we launched the sign up in December last year, all the places for our pilot in Jan / Feb / Mar filled up in 15 minutes. Since then I’ve got to connect with so many brilliant creative people from all over the world. For years I’ve been doing these monthly Quests on my own, in my spare time… so to now be doing this process with other people makes me feel proud!



THINK.

What have you learnt in the last 12 months, that you could apply to your next challenge/goal?

Keep going. Sometimes good things take time. I thought my time had passed to launch Creative Quests - but really that was just a story I was telling myself.

People: Don’t abandon your idea babies!

What’s been inspiring you recently?

As I’m building a company which is all about creative curiosity, inspiration doesn’t come in short supply… but right now I would say the most inspiring thing I’ve experienced recently is how many young kids are at my local skatepark and how fearless they all are! 

I love skateboarding and I think skateparks are model communities. Diverse ages, races and genders - safe places to fail, supportive environments to express yourself. I still learn a lot about life from skateboarding.