Kate Campbell - Writer & Director of The Charles Causley Trust

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Being pregnant (I did not thrive!) giving birth (my son did not ‘pop’ out!) and then surviving the onslaught of views, opinions & expectations of other people and society in general surrounding motherhood and parenting (WTF!) but it was all worth it because I now have an amazing, thoughtful, opinionated, stubborn, determined, confident, kind teenager and I am so incredibly proud I could literally cry just writing this!

What motivates you to do what you do?

My enduring love of the arts in all of its many wonderful and evolving forms. My need to be always learning something new and creating stuff. My never ending curiosity and desire to understand the world around me. Conversations with other people. My expenditure versus income imbalance!

Seriously, I’d go mad if I wasn’t being mentally stimulated. I need to be engaged creatively inside of my working life and outside of it. I write, I read, I make, I create, I learn.

What do you owe your mother?

My creative genes. My argumentative nature. My compassion and empathy for other living things. My mum became a vegetarian in the 1970’s and she was, and still is, ahead of her time in her progressive attitudes about lots of things. She encouraged us to question things and to come to our own conclusions rather than follow the crowd. It wasn’t always easy advice to follow but now I’m glad and grateful.

Which women inspire you and why?

Any woman struggling up the road with a screaming toddler or trying to feed a crying baby amidst a sea of public disapproval. Every woman who has sacrificed (willingly or otherwise) her wants and needs for those of her children and/or her co-parent. Any woman with a child anywhere in the world who doesn’t get to pursue her hopes and dreams but still carries on nurturing and loving her children and making the world a better place. Any woman who speaks truth to power knowing it may be turned against her but she does it anyway. All the young women I meet who are grabbing the world with both hands and challenging the status quo because they see they have just as much right as their male counterparts (I’m a little bit jealous if you want the truth).

If I have to name names then it would be someone like American Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Just a brilliant, confident woman owning her own space.

What are you reading?

I had a lovely bunch of books for Christmas so I’m working my way through them. I’ve just finished Lemn Sissay’s autobiography My Name Is Why and it is a heartbreaking but life affirming and inspiring book. I first encountered Lemn when I was at University.  He came and gave a talk to us because he knew my lecturer and afterwards we all went out as a group to eat and talk. He was quite young then but now I realise, only a few years older than me, but he was such a life force. He seemed to literally crackle with energy and was completely mesmerising. He and his work had a big impact on me and kick started my love of performance poetry. I have followed his career ever since, seeing him perform all over the country. I knew about his difficult childhood because he has always talked about it from day one and it feeds his work but this book and it’s raw honesty made me weep for the boy he was. But it also made me whoop for the man he is.

I’m now reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardino Evarista. I had avoided reading it because I’m always a little wary of the hype around prize winning books but I’m so glad someone knew better and gave it to me anyway because it is really rather excellent. It lives up to its Booker prize winning status and I would thoroughly recommend it. It is beautifully observed and completely absorbing.

And in the spirit of speaking the truth, I must confess that I was also given Wham! George & Me by Andrew Ridgeley and devoured it from cover to cover! I completely own my 1980’s Wham! fan status!

What gender barriers have you had to hurdle?

None, or so I thought. And then I became pregnant and the world was shown to me anew! I was working as a journalist when I became pregnant and a male colleague who had interviewed me told me that I almost hadn’t got the job because a woman on the panel had suggested they bypass me because  “I would only go off and get pregnant at some point in the future”. At the time I remember being outraged and angry with this woman. Now I feel sad that she felt that was the only way to survive in a man’s world - to sell out other women. 

#MeToo was also an incredibly important and timely movement that has enabled women to reassess their experiences and reframe them for what they really were rather than what they were told they were. We have been able to see how, as women, we have been gaslighted and brainwashed into normalising our experiences and that includes me. It is an important time to be alive and I feel a great deal of hope for future generations of women. We have a long way to go but we’ve started being brave and challenging things, putting our heads above the parapets and having the courage of our convictions. 

How can the world be made a better place for women?

There are so many ways but a good start would be for society to not automatically assign all the drudgery of parenting to women. Attitudes need to change about women being seen as the carers and cleaners and men as the breadwinners. Women don’t have a genetic disposition that makes them better at it or makes them enjoy it more but we don't’ get much choice because it suits society and it suits a lot of men. We need to break these stereotypes that have been oppressing women for centuries and make it the norm for men and women to share care and domestic duties equally. More flexibility and support in the work place for parents of any gender. Better, more flexible support for men who want to stay at home looking after their children. More opportunities for women to be able to have children and have a career so equal paternity allowance. Society needs a massive overhaul basically. Unless we start changing the way we bring up boys and girls and the gender norms that we, as a society, are subconsciously enforcing, then we can change all the laws we want and it won’t change a thing in the long term. We really need to look at how gender expectations are set in childhood and then get reinforced throughout life. Don’t get me started on the whole media/social media pressure on young women to look a certain way or on how we need to have more open discussions about things like periods and the menopause. We have a long way to go but we’ve started important conversations so I have hope.

Describe your perfect day?

Getting up to discover that you are actually still a size 12 and do still fit into all of the clothes in your wardrobe and you had just been having a horrible nightmare about losing your waist to your middle years and only being able to wear things with elasticated waists!

Mooching around a museum or gallery, lunch with my family, who have been enjoying the mooching around bit as much as me (you did say my perfect day!). Some people watching. A bit of guilt-free reading followed by front row tickets for a theatre show then home to watch the Michael McIntyre Waitrose shopping sketch on YouTube with my son who never tires of it (it is very funny) before falling into bed knowing that you don’t have to set the alarm because it is Sunday the next day...heaven.

We've noticed there really aren't many (if any) statues of women around Cornwall - who would you see remembered?

Dawn French.

Give us a tip?

Trust your instincts.

About Kate: Kate Campbell did a degree in English before going on to study journalism at The London School of Printing and subsequently working as a journalist. After becoming a mum, she worked as a Creative Writing teacher and freelance writer before moving into writing and directing for theatre and managing literature/arts projects. She was the Writer in Residence at Plymouth City Museum in 2012. In 2016 she undertook an MA in Theatre Directing and has big plans to write and direct her own play in the not too distant future. She is currently the Director of The Charles Causley Trust.