Creativity always played a huge part in our family. Every Saturday our mum would take my sisters and I to the library where we'd get three books each and 10p for a Mars bar and crisps. The moment we'd get home there was this silence that I'll never forget. The silence of being lost in imagination from the books that we had just read. Our mum would always say 'only boring people get bored.' We always found creative ways to keep busy and in doing so, I developed my passion for playwriting where my dolls became the actors in my plays.

Through this passion for writing at an early age, I've written a plethora of stage plays, screenplays, and commissioned pieces. Whilst I'm a playwright at heart, I've begun transforming my plays into books. Plays are limited by space, parts, budget, and imagination but with book writing, the sky is the imit.

I wrote a trilogy book series called Slave: Escaping the Chains of Freedom which was based on the play called The Contract. Normally, the narrative about the slave trade focuses on the emotional side of the trade. Rarely do they discuss the slave trade through the business lens and why it lasted so long. Black individuals are always told that their ancestors were all slaves and they're made to feel ashamed of them. I wanted to show that there were many successful and rich Black people and that being a slave should be regarded as the upmost demonstration of strength rather than a weakness. We should be proud of our ancestors.

Ironically, whilst I enjoy playwriting, I hate acting. However, I felt that to write a dynamic and emotive script, you must understand the script from the perspective of an actor. A good script must give characters strong decisions and allow them to experience the consequences of those decisions. Often, actors will perform a practice called method acting where they access very real emotions from their own lives and apply it into their character. For example, Lady Gaga in House of Gucci had to access the memory of when she was raped by her music producer when she was 19 so that she could bring out those emotions and pain into the character. Naturally, our bodies will hide these traumatic emotions and bringing back these emotions in acting can lead to very damaging effects on actors Unfortunately, many actors don't receive the follow-up therapy and assistance and one of my biggest goals is to advocate for a process which will ensure actors are protected.

My biggest piece of advice to UEL students is to not lose sight of who you are. It doesn't matter what job you're doing because your path is going to take you down so many different roads. Allow yourself to be taken down these different roads and be fluid in your career. I remember when I started working with TFL and I thought that I had lost my way because it could not have been further from the creative career that I envisioned for myself. I ended up setting up a performing arts board for the staff at TFL and the board was extremely successful. You can always find a way to shine your creativity within any industry and job so don't ever think that the road is finite.