Hana Walker-Brown, Creative Producer / Storyteller / Sound Artist
💭 Thoughts on collective & community care, Circle sportswear, and how there’s no age limit for trying new things.
Hana Walker-Brown is a multi-award winning and critically acclaimed storyteller and sound artist working across film, radio and podcasting and narrative non-fiction. She is also an associate lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London and teaches storytelling and audio production within Women' Prisons, using creative tools to help participants regain confidence and agency. She has created work for Audible, the BBC, Spotify, Sony and Warner Bros and has been honoured by Amnesty International, The British Podcast Awards, the prestigious Peabody Awards, Rose D’or and The Webby Awards. Lead by curiosity, her work strikes a balance between investigative and intimate, taking the big world stuff and making it human.
In 2023/2024 she was named as a “Trailblazer” and one of the Top 50 Inspirational Neurodivergent Women by Women Beyond the Box. She created the multi-award winning Audible Original and New York Times Bestselling Audio Book "The Beautiful Brain" and she is also the author of the critically acclaimed, Sunday Times Award Honoured, bestselling narrative non-fiction book “A Delicate Game: Brain Injury, Sport and Sacrifice." She is passionate about exploring the edges of vulnerability and courage, in authenticity and the art of holding space. Her experience of neurodivergence combined with a love of the outdoors led her to create “Out of Our Minds” a neuro-nature collective curating outdoor gatherings for the neurodivergent community. As an agent of change, underpinning all of her work, across all mediums, is the drive to tell stories and share experiences that empower.
Hana gets excited about cold water swimming and surfing, countercultural movements, collaboration, playing the drums, full circle moments and filthy basslines.
🎯 Current focus
I’m just finishing up a BBC Radio 4 documentary/crafted sound feature about my personal experience of recovery from severe burnout. I think the thing about Burnout that is often overlooked that I really need to reconcile is that you cannot go back. Not being able to do the things you did before with ease, the things that were second nature to you, that made you a “success” while simultaneously being weighed down with the uncertainty of whether you’ll ever do anything like that again is like having to watch the house you have built burn down. Even if it had become an unsafe space to inhibit. All you want to do is claw it all back, to rebuild who you were before everything shattered, but better, stronger, to prove you’re not a failure. But the pieces don’t fit into a version of the past. Recovery is messy, nonlinear, and unpredictable but it’s also deeply creative— standing in the wreckage, wading through the fragments, the scattered pieces of a life upended, you’re left with the daunting but ultimately liberating task of reimagining what comes next and creating a future that is more aligned with who you are now, instead.
I really wanted to alchemise the pain and mystery of that experience into something that might be useful for others. I think burnout is still very misunderstood - certainly its severity on a psychological level and how intensely shameful it feels. Shame and stigma are such isolating little bastards, but when I plucked up the courage to start to speak about it, it turned the shame into something softer; something shared. And I think whenever we share our stories, especially the sticky ones or the difficult parts of ourselves, we ultimately create a space where someone else can say, “me too.” We remind each other that no one is ever really alone.
It’s scary to put something so vulnerable out into the world but there’s a quote I keep coming back to by the author Emily Pine “I’m afraid but I’m doing it anyway!” Because I know at the most fundamental level, even when shrouded in fear or uncertainty, every breath I take and every move I make, outside of being the lyrics to a classic 80’s banger, are simply ways of telling myself that I matter. I hope in me making it, you realise that you matter too.
It’s also been a good opportunity for me to rehabilitate and flex the creative muscles I like the most; working solidly in sound. I’ve done all the original scoring and sound design too so you are really getting a big old piece of my soul here. It’s called “In Pieces” and will be broadcast on January 12th 2025 as part of the Illuminated Strand on BBC Radio 4.
I also wrote a substack article on the subject here.
🐟 Caboose
Asking what’s on my mind right now is a dangerous question for someone with ADHD… my mind is a labyrinth of thoughts and ideas, but I’m never not thinking about a Fish Cutter from Caboose in Speightstown, Barbados. Especially with the Bajan hot pepper sauce which I’ll put on anything and everything. Its hands down the best thing i’ve ever put in my mouth. I spent the first part of 2024 there with very good friends who are from the Island; playing countless rounds of Shithead with rum punch and starting to recover from said burnout. My friend Liv bought me a framed illustration of the Caboose stand for my birthday when she came over from Barbados in the summer - the love for that place is deep!
📚 Barbarian Days - A Surfing Life
I’m reading Barbarian Days - A Surfing Life by William Finnegan. It was a recommendation from a friend and it’s just such a beautifully and generously written, evocative book about Finnegan’s lifetime of surfing - not as a sport but as a path. I love surfing but we’re a little limited on waves in London so I’m getting a fix from his journey until I go again. Although, I've had to start rationing pages because I’m really going to miss being part of his world when it’s over!
🫂 Collective & community care
There's a quote that's been rolling around in my mind for a while by Shannon Mullen O’Keefe for On Being said “Our future beckons us to reimagine things. It encourages us to turn our faces away from the usual and toward each other.” I’m ever curious about collective and community care; how we can create spaces and opportunities to come together and show up for each other in real life. I feel like we’re in this really murky moment of increased individualism, and while I’ll always advocate and champion for self expression, diversity and personal development, I think we’ve really lost sight of our interconnectedness. I notice it most of all through social media; connections and interactions are just becoming more and more transactional and self-serving and by default less and less human. However, I always think the solution is in the problem - if what’s lacking is a space for genuine connection - create one. I’ve been collaborating with Nathalie Limon who is the co-founder of Waking Dreams studio in London on a few things recently that bring people into IRL held and safe spaces that encourage open dialogue, especially around neurodivergence and what it means to be well.
🛟 Building something that will help save others’ lives
Lily Baldwin is an incredibly courageous performer and artist. We collaborated on a genre bending series together inspired by the uncensored testimony of stalking victims, each story unfolds through a marriage of investigative journalism, radio play and immersive sound design and music composed by yours truly. Season One provides an incredible insight into Lily’s personal experience of being stalked over a staggering 13-year period. She recounts her journey of legal challenges, survival techniques, and physical and mental health issues when a stranger, turned stalker, doubles down on a fantasy that they are a couple, destined for marriage. More than just a hopeful suitor, his delusion expands to encompass multiple identities, even multiple languages. Lily also shares the stark realization that the stalking still has not ceased, sharing the steps she’s taken in order to even go public with her story. She created the non profit STOP STALKING US off the back of this - I just have the utmost respect and admiration for anyone who can take the worst thing that’s ever happened/is still happening to them and not only share it to break the cycles of isolation, shame and fear but build something from it that is ultimately going to save people’s lives.
Also let me shout out my friend Saf Suleyman, I would say he’s an anthropologist straddling a lot of creative disciplines and the living epitome of community spirit. He’ll casually whip up a six course feast for all of us one weekend and be single handedly fundraising over £28k for Medical aid for Palestine or Choose Love the next. He’s recently started a new event series called “Matters” for dance, hope and community. Keep your eyes peeled!
🥁 How there’s no age limit for trying new things
In the immediate future, I am looking forward to my weekly drum lesson. It’s really important for me, especially having ADHD, to have outlets that engage my brain and let my energy and creativity just roam free.
When I was kid I had music and dance as daily outlets but through adulthood those things tapered away, one became an income stream, the other saved exclusively for festival fields and kitchen tables. Over the years I’ve found that cold water swimming, surfing, running, hiking and yoga all help - I’d do any and all of them 24 hours a day if I could but apparently that’s neither realistic nor conducive to me having a functioning life so when my friend Zoe sat me down in front of her electric drum kit in the summer and a light came on, I realised I’d found something special. It was as if my whole body exhaled “YES! Finally! What took you so long?!”
Learning proper technique (including reading music again, I've played piano from childhood) is challenging enough that I can be intentional with my focus while creating something awesome. I’m relishing being a beginner again and it’s liberating not to be bound by outcome or achievement. There’s no pressure, only passion and pleasure (though the pyramid stage at glasto isn’t not possible you know?!)
Also a good reminder that there is no age limit for picking up new hobbies. I have a friend who went for her first run at 45 and subsequently completed the London marathon… twice! I know a guy who found the courage to change careers at 50, an ex-colleague who took their first solo trip around the world aged 65. I sat next to a couple on a flight this year who were both in their late seventies and had just started dating and were so fun and playful with each other. “We’re just enjoying each other!” they told me. What a revelation! Honestly, fuck “too late” as a concept. It’s never too late!
They’re an incredible sustainable brand from Paris that recently launched in London with the world’s first running shoe made from 75% recycled materials, entirely made in Europe and the shoes even have an end of life plan once you’ve worn them out so they can be returned and recycled. I mean, THAT’S what’s up! My friend Solene is the creative director and co-founder and she’s just achingly cool because she really, really cares. Circle’s impact report is definitely worth reading!
🖼️ Guts Gallery
Guts Gallery in Dalston where I live is the best. Ellie Pennick is frankly iconic. She founded Guts to showcase art by underrepresented artists and to address diversity and inclusivity issues in the art world by offering opportunities and exposure to those facing systemic barriers, creating space and connections for those who have previously been denied it. Honestly, here’s to the people that really do give a fuck - protect them at all costs.
It’s a bit of a running joke with my friends that because I walk so fast (and I walk EVERYWHERE) I burn through socks really quickly. My step-sister gave me some LB socks for christmas and let me tell you - gamechanger. Le bonne are based out of Los Angeles and just make really well made, slow produced products that last. There’s a great boutique in Shoreditch called The Mercantile that stocks them. Thank me later.
🗣️ Voicenotes
I really do love voicenotes, which I know can be a bit divisive especially the long “nobody asked for your podcast” ones, but honestly, send them my way! I think there is something inherently tender about sharing parts of yourself with someone else in this way. Saying things out loud in the safety of your own space then having them received by someone else - especially those who love the bones of you - it’s very powerful- being listened to, really listened to and held in that way. I love the intimacy of it and I really connect to people through voice - I think it’s why I wanted to work with sound in the first place. Also on a practical level, I have a lot of friends in different time zones and it feels like they are much closer when I can hear their voice regularly, even the mundane stuff, especially the mundane stuff actually - like, tell me about the deal you got on tomatoes at the market or your bus ride home. I love it.
Follow Hana on Instagram & Linkedin and check out her Substack here.
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