Before I sit down to edit photographs for a long stretch of time, I always look for something to engage my mind first. Something that settles me into the work. Something that reminds me why I’m doing it. For me, nothing has done that more consistently than Creative Minds. Creative Minds is a YouTube channel created by Will Cain, built slowly and single-handedly over years. Through interviews, spoken reflection, and carefully constructed narratives drawn from across art, music, writing, and creative life, Will has created something rare: a body of work that doesn’t distract you from your practice, but helps you return to it.
I’ve listened to Creative Minds while editing for hours, building bodies of work, and committing to projects long before there was any external validation. When nobody was checking in, and nobody was saying well done or keep going, it was Will’s videos that quietly reminded me that the work itself mattered — and that feeling uncertain or alone was simply part of the process.
I recently travelled to Southampton, where Will is currently based, to meet him, photograph him, and spend time talking together. What struck me immediately was how he carries the same qualities in person that his work does online: calm, attentiveness, and an ability to listen without urgency. Walking through the city together, it became clear that Creative Minds isn’t a performance — it’s an extension of how he moves through the world.
This conversation isn’t about growth strategies or success metrics. It’s about attention, patience, and what it takes to continue making work over a long period of time — especially when the path forward isn’t always clear.
Text and photography by Brynley Odu Davies.
What was the original goal when you started building Creative Minds?
Will: I trained as a writer first, and always had a writing project I was pursuing. Whenever I would take breaks from writing to make a coffee, I would find myself playing interviews with artists, creatives, and writers, which would fuel me up to get back into the work. Alongside all the writing, I’ve always made videos, and found a professional life as a video editor.
One day I thought to build my own documentary on Phillip Glass – a pianist I love. After that, I built one on Skepta, using a pretty unknown Instagram live clip for the audio, and mixing it with other interviews and footage to tell his story. The Skepta video I made was seen by a friend I know in the production industry, and ended up landing me an editing contract.
It was the little signs like this, along with the few comments that came in, that told me I could be on to something. The goal posts of Creative Minds have always shifted, but at its heart, it comes back to the nourishing home I found in listening to other creatives talk about their practice, and resonating with how they viewed their work (and how obsessed they were by it).
How many videos do you think you’ve made now, honestly?
Will: Looking back at the videos on Creative Minds is kind of exhausting. Each one of those projects represents a week of my life where I obsessed about that topic. Each one represents a sense of arrival I felt, when I came across the idea of doing it in my head.
It’s funny looking back at the catalogue – and all those little obsessions of mine with neatly stacked metrics beside them. When people talk to me about Creative Minds, they often reflect back a sense of success or clear narrative arc around the project, but to me it’s honestly just what I do now. And as for work, it’s kind of the only thing I’ve ever found which I can’t imagine wanting to stop.
You’re still based in Southampton where you grew up — what’s it like creating global work from your hometown?
Will: A lot of being a creative these days, is about finding a space in the world where you can afford to do the work you love. I’ve been privileged in my life, and made choices in my life, to be able to afford to put the time into Creative Minds that I do. Living in Southampton is a part of that set of choices for now.
I plan to move back to LDN in the near future, but my priority will always be maintaining that time to do the work I really care about – and I’m very privileged to be in a position to make those choices.
What’s the most difficult thing about working for yourself?
Will: As an independent creator, you have to keep an eye on your blindspots, and watch how your own ego might be effecting the quality of the work. It’s really helped me to think about purpose on this journey with Creative Minds, and trying as much as possible to make decisions based around that sense of purpose (as opposed to what you’re ego or smaller sense of self might be telling you).
I have gratitude towards the platforms that allow me to do the work I do, and distribute it to the audience who get value from it. But most of the feedback from those platforms is based around financially driven metrics, and if I let the smaller parts of my brain latch-onto those metrics and be responsive to them, Creative Minds would lose the real, long-term quality that I’m trying to build here.
Do you understand how much impact your videos have on other people? When did that hit you?
Will: My favourite kind of comment on my videos, is when someone starts to add onto the ideas I’ve presented, or tell their own story which is related to what I’m saying in the piece. That moment of resonance, where someone else is fired up to add their own piece to the puzzle – that’s when you know you’ve really lit someone up.
In terms of impact, a key part of this project is that I intend to be doing this for at least another 20 years time (in some form or another). For me, I’m trying to build a nourishing space, where thoughtfulness and self-compassion is baked into the voice and work, and I want the audience to drift in and out, always knowing that it’s there for them, when they need it on their journey.
What’s the best thing about running the channel?
Will: Nobody tells me what to do.
And what’s the worst thing that’s come from it?
Will: As a pretty obsessive creative, I can dive into my work, when I’m trying to avoid tough things in the rest of my life. At the end of the day, as an artist and creative your work can be important to you. But if it’s effecting people close to you, and you’re avoiding that fact, something needs rebalancing.
Most of your viewers are from America — how does that feel?
Will: My favorite comment I ever got, was when someone said they thought I was American, and only pretending to be from England to get views…
Other than that, I want to visit America soon, and do some meet-ups. And in general, if I can provide any positive link with the ‘special relationship’ across the pond, that’s a good thing.
What do you hope Creative Minds becomes in the next few years?
Will: With Creative Minds, I’ve found something I really love to do, and an engine to build connection with the kind of people whose conversation and thoughts nourish me deeply.
The most grounding part of where Creative Minds lives in my outlook, is that I intend to be doing this for as long as I can, and my vision for the project is 10 or 20 years ahead. This long-term perspective is everything in terms of how I can reflect on the daily, weekly, and monthly ups and downs which Creative Minds takes on.
Maybe I’m being naive to think I can be out here doing this in 20 years. But if you can accept that the project would still be worth it, even if it remained at its current size, or lost attention and got much smaller, then you’re able to hold space for it in a more healthy way.
I often like to suggests artists and creatives hold their work in a kind of parental relationship, as opposed to one based on capitalism or fast business. When you have a child, you don’t always expect the graph of your relationship to be shooting up and to the right, but in the long-term, the act of turning up and being there across so much time, takes on a far more significant value in itself.
What’s the best thing you’ve learnt while researching your videos?
Will: That the obsession, or struggle, or hyper-sensitivity that can make any life feel so heavy sometimes, is probably the same engine beneath the great art and creative work you can bring to forward.
What’s the absolute worst part of creating a YouTube video?
Will: Honestly, if you’re able to build in any kind of real-world perspective to your practice, there’s nothing that’s bad about creating a Youtube video. Maybe there’s been times when a negative comment has thrown me off, but I’ve learnt to give no air or response to anything negative on the channel.
With negative comments my hard and fast rule is – if you play in the mud, you’ll get dirty. So teach yourself to smile, remember what really matters to you in the physical world around you, and move forward.
What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learnt whilst making them?
Will: Whatever your creative passion, try to have at least one small moment of interaction with it, everyday. Beware hyper-positive validation and don’t hold others negativity too tightly either. Don’t buy new things for your practice, to avoid doing some real part of the work that scares you. Think long-term in a short term world. Don’t quit.
You’re now doing in-person interviews. How did that come about?
Will: I interview artists from my community, and sometimes labels will put me in a room with their artist too. Creative practice is just my favourite lens to have a conversation through. So both feel like a massive pleasure and privilege.
Who are your dream people to interview?
Will: At the moment I’m setting up interviews with the people who facilitate art and communities of creatives in real physical spaces. I’m aware that a lot of the hardest and most thankless work in this space is done by these facilitators. And as we push forward into all the noise that AI is bringing to this space, more and more I try to think about being a linkage part, and supporting the linkage parts, of real artists in real physical spaces.
You’re branching into spoken word too. Why is that important for you, and what has it taught you?
Will: If you look at the titles of my episodes on CM, you’ll see a background story of my own journey with creative practice. Whether it’s videos about sobriety, obsession, pushing through your comfort zone, or dealing with struggles through your art – the wave I’m reflecting through CM is the wave I find myself on too.
This year spoken word/music performance and sharing, has been a big part of this story for me. Creative Minds helps me here, because when I’ve just spent a week making a video about stretching your comfort zone, I can’t really justify not doing it myself.
All the drive to connect over creativity and art, comes from my own journey with it too. I genuinely need to eat music, art, writing, through the day, like I need to eat food. I surround myself with this stuff because I need it. And I’m able to work through my life, and bring light to the not so good parts of it, by engaging with my creative practice.
You’re an incredible listener. Is that something you’ve always had, or has YouTube sharpened it?
Will: I appreciate that. One of the main things that underpins what I try to do, is a sense of compassion, and attempt to allow the complexity of the human experience to exist within my work.
A lot of online content can seem to present a mechanised version of the human experience. Things are well-lit, the talent has prepared what they are going to say, and nothing is unexpected. In art and life, I love the moments when you feel like something real has spilled over the boundaries of the page. That’s where the real connection and nourishment is for me.
I’ve spoken about my own mental health struggles through my work on CM, which a lot of people resonate with. And hearing other people talk honestly about themselves and their struggles, that’s often what I need when I’m struggling myself.
If you had a dinner party and could invite five artists (dead or alive), who would they be and why?
Will: I’d use the opportunity to get some members of the Creative Minds community together. As more ‘normal’ artist and creatives, who haven’t been lifted to the heights yet – it’s important to remember the creative greats were people just like us, and the moment of physical time which Shakespeare sat down to pen Hamlet, was just as pregnant with possibility as the time you approach your own creative practice next.
And last question… why do you make YouTube videos? What’s the point of it for you?
Will: It’s all about connection. Oh, and trying not to get a real job 🙂