- katgeorghiou
- Mar 31
- 6 min read
Three years ago today, I took a massive leap of faith. It was my last day working at London Business School. The last day at a place that believed in me and promoted me three times in the seven years I worked there. It was the last day of a 15-year career in higher education.
After that day ended, I was officially a full-time freelance creative. And, boy, what a ride it has been.
I would be lying if I said it’s been plain sailing.
In May 2023, the Writers Guild of America went on strike. A few months later, they were joined by the SAG-AFTRA actors, and their strike officially lasted from July to November, but it rippled through the industry for far longer. An industry that was just recovering from Covid. The industry I had just joined on a full-time basis. Everything ground to a halt.
Auditions dried up. The series I am a regular in, The Inside Man, didn’t film that year. Things were tight. And, at times, I wondered if I had made a giant mistake. If biting the bullet and finally doing the things I had trained to do, and longed to do since I was at school, was perhaps a dream too far.
The lack of paid work ate up my savings but allowed me to look at myself.
My job at London Business School (LBS) demanded my time and attention, and all my annual leave was used for acting work. I had very little time for the other creative areas I wanted to pursue. But now that I had nothing but time, what did I really want?
I found my old ‘Record of Achievement’ from my graduating year at secondary school, written when I was just 16 years old. On the first page, my Personal Statement, I wrote, “I want to become an actor, a director, or a drama teacher”. 16-year-old me knew what she wanted so clearly. Middle-aged me needed to give her dreams a go.
With that, I dived headfirst into pre-production on a short film I had written and planned to direct. The film was called Changing Tides.
I listened to every podcast, audiobook, masterclass and YouTube I could find on filmmaking and directing actors. I thought long and hard about what I liked, didn’t like, and needed from a director when I was on set as an actor. I talked with my actor friends about their good and bad experiences with directors. I thought back to my time working in higher education where I had managed teams of people and complex projects, what worked well? What got the best out of people? What did we need for collective success?
Then I thought about the audience. What do they need to see and hear so they feel the way I want them to? I wanted the film to move them, so I devoured films that were similar in style and tone to what I wanted to achieve, analysing what they do cinematically to convey the message of the story.
But to get it made I needed money.
My last role at LBS was project managing the launch of the £200 million Forever Forward campaign, and when I was there I heard from expert fundraisers how they approach fundraising. I applied this, plus my years as an engagement specialist, to Changing Tides and managed to raise £11k for filming. This meant everyone was paid, trains and accommodation were covered by production, filming locations and their permits were secured, the on-set food was delicious and nutritious, and we had money for film festival submissions and marketing.
It’s funny because all my years working in higher education helped enormously with pre and post-production.
I originally joined LBS because I knew a university scheduling programme, CMIS, inside and out and they were implementing it for the first time. This meant doing the stripboard and production schedules was like second nature. Without even knowing it, I was a producer too.
Changing Tides has since won four awards: three Best First-Time Filmmaker Awards and one Best Drama Award at international film festivals.
I also wrote, filmed and starred in another short film three weeks after wrapping on Changing Tides. It’s called Prefer To Sip Tea, whose title is a play on PTSD and the fact that drinking something whilst having a PTSD episode helps ground you and lets you know if the flashback is real. That film won seven awards: six Best Actress Awards for my role as Ellie, and one Best International Filmmaker Award.
I learnt so much from making these films and having the time and space to fully immerse myself in them. Would I have done some things differently, absolutely, but I couldn’t be prouder of what we achieved from my first two films.
When they were out on the film festival circuit they opened doors that I could never have imagined.
For the last two years, I have been a judge at the Lytham International Film Festival, and this year I will also be a Grand Jury judge at the Film Festival Emeak in France.
From attending film festivals, I have a growing network of filmmakers who I am collaborating with on my new films and a whole group of people I can go to for advice, guidance and support.
Thankfully, the acting side of things started to pick up too. In the last three years I have returned to my role as Fiona in The Inside Man for season six and the soon-to-be-released season seven, had parts in Casualty and Coronation Street, played an MI5 Agent in Cat Cat Mouse and the Sheriff of Nottingham in Hood, voiced all the characters in an award-winning animation called The Boy Prince and the Bear, played Rasheen in the award-winning audio drama The Dex Legacy, voiced two characters in a soon-to-be-released computer game, launched a horror anthology audio drama series called Terror Tapes, and voiced audiobooks and audio plays.
On the writing and directing front, my most recent short film script, 'Sweet', made it to the semi-finals of the Slick Film Fund and I am actively looking for funding to make the film. I was commissioned to write a short film based on the life of John Taylor, the author of Alcohol Stole My Mum, and I will direct and act in this film when we have completed our fundraising. I am in early stage development of a feature length documentary and also have a full length five person play in development. I also launched a podcast that helps listeners find creative stories from the world around them, it’s called Where Writers Go.
Three years ago, the ‘industry’ seemed like a distant dream that I wasn’t really sure if I could ever be a part of. Now I have a network of peers, new projects in development and a growing passion to keep learning, developing and pushing myself to even bigger and better things.
But why am I writing this?
I want to remind myself how far I have come.
As I said at the start, it’s not been easy. Money has been extremely tight. Self-doubt has swirled my brain and rung in my ears more times than I care to mention. But I have never been so creatively free and fulfilled.
It’s so easy to plan for tomorrow, next week, next year, without looking back and taking stock of everything you’ve achieved along the way. My years working in leadership roles in higher education taught me the importance of continual improvement, which can only be achieved if we note our lessons learned and celebrate our wins. That’s what I am doing here.
If you have read this far, thank you.
Now a task for you.
Think back to your 16-year-old self. What were your dreams? How near or far are you from them now? If you did one small thing your 16-year-old self wanted to achieve, what would it be? You don’t have to quit your job to do it, but you could make a hobby out of it. Painting, drawing, writing, singing, dancing, sewing, visiting museums, listening to podcasts, anything. As adults we get so bogged down with ‘life’ we sometimes forget to live. What’s the one small change you can make so you feel creatively free and fulfilled?
Let me know in the comments.