Kam­ron Wait­he and D’An­dre Wil­son are two 22-year-old cre­ative minds on a mis­sion to fa­cil­i­tate pro­gres­sive con­ver­sa­tions through their work. D’An­dre re­cent­ly grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean where she stud­ied Psy­chol­o­gy. Her pas­sion for men­tal health, women’s is­sues and the arts is her dri­ving force. She start­ed her own YouTube chan­nel in 2013 and has man­aged to amass a fol­low­ing of over 27,000 peo­ple. In do­ing so, she has strived to cul­ti­vate a space to both share her pas­sions and ed­u­cate her fol­low­ers.

Kam­ron is a cre­ative di­rec­tor and con­tent cre­ator. Along her cre­ative jour­ney she had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­ceive men­tor­ship from and work along­side moguls such as Christophe Pierre of De­sign by Spir­it, Dex­ter Mus­grave and Keron Niles. Her pas­sion for cre­ativ­i­ty and con­nect­ing with peo­ple bleed in­to every­thing she does. There­fore, she ex­press­es her­self through what­ev­er cre­ative medi­um she deems fit at the time; whether it’s song­writ­ing, singing, host­ing her pop-up thrift shop ‘Snatched’, or cre­at­ing and di­rect­ing a Fa­ther’s Day mi­ni-se­ries, “In­toviews”.

To­geth­er, these two young women start­ed ‘Re­cess: Cre­ative Con­vos’; a pod­cast that in­tro­duces their lis­ten­ers to the world of cre­atives across the coun­try and digs in­to the deep­er scope of their ex­pe­ri­ences and lessons thus far. The WE Mag team got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn more about these young pod­cast hosts who are chang­ing the land­scape and con­ver­sa­tions among cre­ative en­tre­pre­neurs.

Here’s what they had to share with us:

What are you all work­ing on at present

and what is keep­ing you ex­cit­ed?

Cur­rent­ly, we are work­ing on wrap­ping up Sea­son 2 of our pod­cast, Re­cess: Cre­ative Con­vos. This sea­son’s theme is ‘Iden­ti­ty and Cul­ture’ and it looks at those things from a cre­ative’s per­spec­tive. We be­lieve that this themed con­ver­sa­tion is so im­por­tant for the cur­rent cli­mate of our cul­ture and it makes us so ea­ger to fin­ish this project and put it out for every­one to hear.

Tell us what we can ex­pect from

the pod­cast this sea­son?

This sea­son’s theme ad­dress­es a deep­er is­sue with­in all of us and it is im­por­tant for us to par­tic­i­pate in the di­a­logue amongst our­selves and in our own nar­ra­tives. Who are we at our core? How has iden­ti­ty and cul­ture been shaped thus far and how has it af­fect­ed us? Sea­son 2 at­tempts to an­swer these ques­tions and pro­voke deep­er thought that we hope can in­spire ac­tive change.

What are some of your trea­sured

mile­stones thus far?

Since start­ing the pod­cast, it has been avail­able on most stream­ing plat­forms. We have been ho­n­oured to see the im­me­di­ate pos­i­tive feed­back on these var­i­ous plat­forms and its im­pact thus far.

We be­lieve that see­ing how we have been able to help peo­ple who are in­ter­est­ed in cre­ative ca­reers, or peo­ple who ap­pre­ci­ate the arts in gen­er­al, has been our biggest mile­stone to date. The main goal for us is al­ways en­sur­ing that we leave a pos­i­tive mes­sage in what­ev­er we cre­ate. The pod­cast is no dif­fer­ent for us and we hope to have the same ef­fect with Sea­son 2.

What is your ul­ti­mate goal or biggest dream

for your fu­ture as a team?

Our ul­ti­mate goal would be to see Re­cess grow in­to a brand that is able to reach across T&T and the re­gion at large. We start­ed this for, and still fo­cus on, Trin­bag­o­ni­ans but we al­so be­lieve that these con­ver­sa­tions can ben­e­fit al­most any­one. Our Caribbean-ness tends to over­lap no mat­ter which is­land you are from and we find our­selves hav­ing very sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences.

This pod­cast is for the Caribbean per­son who wants a safe space to learn from and re­late to peo­ple just like them. We would al­so love to have more vi­su­al con­tent in the fu­ture that ex­plores even deep­er as­pects of cre­ativ­i­ty and the great arte­facts that have come from it.

Why do you do what you do?

We do this pod­cast and con­tribute to this move­ment be­cause at the core, this is who we are. We are cre­ative peo­ple who have de­sired a space where we can ex­press our­selves and spark nec­es­sary con­ver­sa­tions for the cur­rent and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. We start­ed this be­cause we saw a ma­jor gap in the space where there wasn’t a fair amount of di­a­logue about the nu­ances of the cre­ative in­dus­try and we be­lieve very much in cre­at­ing that di­a­logue. It not on­ly ben­e­fits us, but it ben­e­fits those who did not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hear these per­spec­tives in the past.

Do you have any ad­vice you’d like to

share with fel­low cre­atives?

Find a net­work, a sup­port sys­tem in the field, peo­ple that you feel com­fort­able con­nect­ing with and peo­ple who can share in your strength and may have more strength than you - peo­ple you can learn from.

Have men­tors, they can help you to grow, these are the peo­ple that will con­tribute to your progress. Fi­nal­ly, be au­then­tic, don’t rush the process; rather, be pa­tient with your­self so that you are hon­est with who you are and what you do so that your con­tent re­mains au­then­tic.