Ed Guiney, co-founder and CEO of Element Pictures, has spent his career blending creative instinct with strategic acumen to shape one of Europe’s most influential film and television production companies. From early days making student shorts at Trinity College Dublin to producing globally acclaimed works like Room, The Favourite, and Normal People, Guiney’s journey is rooted in a deep love of storytelling and a clear understanding of how to bring it to market.
In this episode of Arts Matters, Guiney tells Alison Cowzer that he sees intellectual property ownership as the cornerstone of a sustainable industry and is a strong advocate for supporting emerging writers through initiatives like the Story House festival. While others speculate on the impact of AI, Guiney remains confident in the irreplaceable value of human creativity.
Working at the coalface of the office market, Andrew Lynch, the co-founder of co-working business Huckletree, has spent the past 18 months adapting, renegotiating, and trying to refine the Huckletree product. The company has five workspaces in London and Manchester and a 30,000 sq ft Dublin building also.
In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, he talks about navigating the business through the crisis, and why it is primed for expansion in the post Covid-world. He also talks about flexible working, the future of the office and creating curated eco-systems of companies.
After ten years living in the UK, he also talks about why he has just returned to Dublin – and why he expects many more to follow suit.
In this podcast, Dion Fanning talks to Jarrod Kimber, the acclaimed Australian cricket writer, about what the Azeem Rafiq story tells us about English cricket and more broadly professional sport.
As the dust settles on COP26 and the publication of the Government's Climate Action Plan, Thomas Hubert is joined by The Currency's columnists Ed Brophy and Stephen Kinsella and contributing journalist John Reynolds. From a common assessment that both high-profile events fell well short of the level of commitment needed to tackle climate change, they draw lessons for the changes now required of the state, businesses, voters and the foundations of democracy and capitalism underpinning their interactions.
Sean FitzPatrick's death has led many to reflect on his time at Anglo Irish Bank. In this podcast Tom Lyons - whose book with Brian Carey, The FitzPatrick Tapes, details the rise and fall of the bank - talks to Dion Fanning about the Sean FitzPatrick he knew, the generational divide in business between those who feel FitzPatrick deserves more credit for his achievements and those who see those days as history, and how he will be remembered.
Jack Murray has always been fascinated with the art of storytelling. For 20 years, he has advised politicians and business leaders on how to tell their own story, while his company MediaHQ has built software to help people share stories. Now, he has just published a book on the topic called: “The Magic Slice: How to master the art of storytelling for business.”
In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, Murray explains the book's thesis – that companies with great stories get more funding, more customers, and more emotional reaction. He explains what companies need to do in order to hone their story and gives examples of companies who have got the process right – as well as those who have failed. He also talks about the science of storytelling, why he abandoned PowerPoint, and the journey that led to him writing the book.
Ben Southwood is a fellow at Policy Exchange, a UK think tank. Along with his co-author Samuel Hughes, he has an idea: individual streets should control their own planning rules.
Now, Southwood and Hughes' idea is on the UK legislative agenda. Obscure as it may sound, the plan has the potential to deliver tens of thousands of new homes in the places they're needed most. In this podcast, Southwood talks about street votes, along with his diagnosis of what has gone wrong in the housing markets of the English-speaking world.
In this podcast, Roman Imielski, journalist and editor at the largest broadsheet newspaper in Poland Gazeta Wyborcza, explains what is happening in his country and why the stand off with the EU could play into the Polish government's hands as they try to create anti EU feeling in a country which remains supportive of the union.
Sean Smith is a fresh-faced 22-year-old ag-tech entrepreneur who co-founded Micron Agritech, a parasite testing kit for livestock, while at university in TUD. Since its creation in 2019, the business now has 10 employees and an office on Dublin’s Northside. The company has already raised €500,000 through Yield Lab and is looking for a further €1.5 million in funding ahead of its official launch in early 2022. Although parasite testing in livestock is the current focus for Micron Agritech, Smith believes it has the potential for use in human health in the future as well.
"I don't believe we can trust the gambling industry." As his book on corporate culture See-Saw is published, Fintan Drury looks back on his own career and his time on the board of Anglo Irish bank and chair of Paddy Power. It has been an extraordinary career and in this interview with Dion Fanning, he discusses representing Brian Kerr, his early career in journalism and why his career left him with a feeling of angst.
