Ben and his friends run the Secret Island festival on Mersea Island in Essex. An independent music festival - previous headliners have been Mike Skinner from The Streets, Orbital, and Faithless. Ben’s Dad was an oysterman, his brother is an oysterman, he’s about as Mersea Island as you can get! Seagull chat. Ben looks about 95% the same as Nick, it’s like looking in a mirror - WEIRD! Big up Ray Keith and all the drum and bass legends. Ben grew up listening to tapes of raves, jungle and then drum and bass, before putting on his own raves. Breaking news: turns out Nick was at Ben’s very first rave in a barn near Tiptree. Then Ben’s crew moved their all-nighter parties to the Youth Camp in East Mersea - all thanks to supportive adult youth club leaders - big up the Powells! Ultrafunkula (their promotions) spread out to Colchester and London. Teaching the next generation how to run events and specific roles - from lighting, infrastructure, management, set-up, sound, logistics, planning. Secret Island started when Ben and his partners started putting on events again after a long break of nothing, and they started selling out and getting bigger from 250 to over 2000 people now. A local farmer had financial ambitions to run an event on their land, so they took on the location. The site is beautiful, overlooking The Strood and the water, the rolling fields, and amazing sunsets. The first event happened 2 weeks after COVID lockdown and the crowd were up for music and partying - the bar was drunk dry by 4pm! Big up Honkus Rompus - best name ever. AJ from Three Wise Monkeys is helping the festival expand and program their live music stage. Big up Frank Turner, big up The Meffs, big up Bridget., big up Monster Florence - so much amazing local talent. The importance of local promoters and their curational tastes. Would the bass from the Valve Soundsystem make oysters more muscular? Bass so big that you can’t roll a rolly. Cocaine shrimp! Running festivals is TOUGH, so many festivals drop off the radar. How do you manage it financially? Making it work on a budget and cutting elements you don’t need. DJ prices! Islands of Essex. How did it feel to warm up the crowd before Mike Skinner? How to get involved with the festival - give Ben a shout or send him a mixtape.

Ben Wass DJ

Secret Island Festival

Are You Creative? recorded by Adam at Lawker Media, Chelmsford, ESSEX
Edited by Nick Hearne
Artwork by Alpaca Antenna

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Algorithmic artist from Chelmsford, Essex. Specilaising in using technology to create art. Previously a radio technology news and features journalist, London news, and politics, Nik knows his way around a microphone. He’s also written a load of books. But he’s talking to us about his art he creates with spreadsheets. I know! Stick with us… All of his art begins with life modelling sessions and photography. Nik’s code script will break this down into squares, measure the brightness, and put the values into a spreadsheet. Nik draws spirals and shapes by hand, and inputs them into the spreadsheet. Stick with us… Then the spreadsheet controls a plotter which will draw the image with a biro as a single line. Trust us, it looks incredible. Biros are unpredictable, and can run out of ink 60 hours into the process … so Nik has to start again! Biros can last for different distances depending on the ball size and the viscosity of the ink. This project came out of lockdown when life drawing moved online, but it came with difficulty of lack of depth and connection with the model, and flat lighting. So Nik started to arrange private sessions to collect reference shots to make art with typewriters, using diffrent keys and different layers for differences in darkness. Each image took 3 months, gave Nik a frozen shoulder and led to 6 months of physio, so he developed a new technique. So he started a new artistic project, experimenting with cyanotype on maps, and eventually tea bags… which because ‘bum bags’ with pictures of bottoms. Nik had one of his artworks at the Voyager 2000 exhibition at FirstSite. He created a self-censoring image format where the image is sliced into squares with the same script he uses for the spreadsheet plotter images. He uses a reductive process of removing squares to reveal more detail. Should artists post-rationalise the meaning of their art? Nik has stopped using the more popular video conferencing softwares, and started using Shutter which gives him remote shutter-release control over the model’s phone, and delivers an uncompressed image straight from the sensor to the remote photographer. Nik likes to build a connection with his models, rather than use sent photos. And sessions can end up with hundreds of images captured. There is a lot of trust between models and artists when you are dealing with nude photography, usage and permissions. Nik uses a Rasberry Pi computer to control his plotter. What is anti-alias? What is a vector? What is a bezier curve? Nik runs his vector file through Inkscape which is graphics editing software. How unique is Nik’s art? Even though the plotter draws the spirals and shapes they are all originally hand drawn by him. Nik loves the subversion of using software intended for business and corporate work to create his NSFW (Not safe for work) imagery. Writing a location jitter into the code to create opportunities to change biros. His process is extremely technical, but it has been a five year iterative process to develop it step by step through different projects. “Art is anything that is done with an artistic intention” Nik Rawlinson, 2025. Learning to love imperfections in your art.

Nik's website

Are You Creative? recorded by Adam at Lawker Media, Chelmsford, ESSEX
Edited by Nick Hearne
Artwork by

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Wildlife photographer Meng was born in Macau, grew up in Hong Kong, now in Romford from 2006 working as a graphic designer. Hong Kong cinema, Jackie Chan, Drunken Master and dubbing voices in different countries. Jaiden is back in the house, bringing vibes and RAGGA JABA PUNCH to the studio. Meng’s incredible photo of green rose-ringed parakeets flying through a rainbow caught Nick’s eye at the Essex Photography Prize - taken in the tropical paradise of Romford. Meng ran to the park with three cameras, three tripods, and took over 200 photos to catch the exact magical moment. It was taken on a long lens which makes the image much closer to the birds in the distance, and makes the slice of the rainbow fill the image. Meng takes photos in the park while his kids play in the playground - and now he knows where the woodpeckers are, the rabbits, the parakeets - the whole ecosystem of Romford wildlife. Nick gets dreamy talking about baby bunnies. The best time for capturing wildlife is sunrise. Meng has run guided photography around his park to show other people how to appreciate and capture the wildlife. Macro lenses are used for super close up details, like Meng’s photo of a spider’s face. Parakeets are raver birds with their bright green feathers and loud calls! Shooting the super moon behind The Shard and St.Paul’s cathedral from Parliament Hill, London. You can use an app to find out the position of the moon, and then pick the perfect photo angle. How did Meng manage to capture the International Space Station crossing over the moon? You need a 600mm lens, a very sturdy tripod to stop movement from the wind, and find out the ISS locations from the internet. There is a lot of luck in taking a good photo. Meng started his photography journey in 2015 taking photos of his new baby son with a fix lens camera. After five years he upgraded to a DSLR camera. With a manual focus long lens, balancing composition and focus together is very hard. Learning all about cameras and photography from YouTube. Meng realised he had a talent for photography when National Geographic shortlisted one of his shots, and now he has won a lot of photography awards including Essex Wildlife Trust Photographer of the Year. Wildlife photography competitions often need to review raw photos now to check images aren’t AI. There was an exhibition in the park where Meng takes most of his photos and an accompanying book called ‘Out There’. The UK felt like slow motion after living in the hectic fast city of Hong Kong. If you want to start out in wildlife photography, experiment and try to copy good photos to learn technique, and then develop your own style.

Meng on Instagram

HUK Shooter website

HUK Shooter on Instragram

HUK Shooter on Facebook

Are You Creative? recorded by Adam at Lawker Media, Chelmsford, ESSEX
Edited by Nick Hearne
Artwork by Alpaca Antenna

Don't forget to like, subscribe, share and all the good stuff.

Follow our Instagram for latest news and behind the scenes photos

Send comments, questions, or suggestions for fascinating creative people in Essex give us a shout on our Instagram

Thanks to NGDA for their support