CMUA: What’s your earliest memory of creativity?
Lucy: I remember being at kindergarten, and I had really bad eyesight. That was how they figured out that I basically couldn't see. So the kindergarten teacher said to mum, “she's really good at writing, and she writes all the time, but she can't quite grasp reading.”
"Then I got glasses, and fell in love with reading as well"
I'm from a small town in New Zealand, and when you don't have that much going on, your imagination is all you've got. You’ve got to go crazy in your imagination and be really creative.
CMUA: Journalism and creativity could be viewed as polar opposites. Do you think that's true?
Lucy: Not true. It was true until I came along. I'd been studying international relations and the media for three years, and I was thinking “this is so boring. I've been studying this for three years. I know I'm not dumb but I've paid so much money, I should be understanding the world around me, I’ve been trying so hard.”
I realised it was because it was all in black and white, and there was all this language that I didn't understand, and it wasn't keeping my attention. So I texted my two best friends and said we should start something called Shit You Should Care About, where we can make the news interesting, let people care about lots of things, and add colour and boy bands and fun.
It didn't really feel revolutionary at the time but I think we were one of the first Instagram accounts trying to make the news fun, and also putting words on a platform that was meant for images. So I find that journalism and the way you present it, not only can it be fun, it has to be fun, because you're fighting to help people understand.
CMUA: On that, can you explain the creative link between Harry Styles fandom and packaging the news?
Lucy: Harry Styles and the news are the most natural combo to me, because I think as people, we can care about multiple things at once. You’re not gonna have a good time on this planet if you only care about all the bad, scary, hard stuff that's going on.
When I was younger, I ran a One Direction fan account, I think I was about 14. I ran this fan account on Twitter that had about 60,000 followers, and I learned how to watch the interviews and find the best bits and package them up, and find quotes that I thought might go viral, and Photoshop pictures.
I was reading heaps of fan fiction that was so poorly written, that I was editing it as I was reading. “Where's the full stop? There should be a comma.” So I went to the University of One Direction and learned all those skills when I was 15. Then I put that down, grew out of that, and I started caring about the news. I just transferred all those skills over - knowing how to do the internet, knowing how to be on the internet.
Mixing light and dark, pop culture and news, really didn't sit well with people, but it always sat very well with me, and now people know us for that.
CMUA: Can you define a creative moment that made Aotearoa?
Lucy: Yes. Lorde. Royals, or The Love Club EP. Honestly, having someone like that to look up to. Because I'm such a pop girly, I'm just so proud every time I think about how one of the best artists of all time is from New Zealand, and she's still so cool, and I'm so proud. There's my girl.
"Because I'm such a pop girly, I'm just so proud"
CMUA: Can you define a creative moment that made you?
Lucy: Me and my three brothers, we grew up making home movies, like James Bond movies or homemade documentaries.
My older brother was obsessed with technology, and he would teach me how to use every single new piece of technology that came out, whether it was GarageBand or the camera or iPhone or whatever. Without the knowledge of how to do all of that, I would not be able to do any of this.
CMUA: What’s a lesson the country could learn from Gen Z on being creative?
Lucy: Kill the part of you that cringes, not the part that's cringe.
If you want to be more creative, you really can't think it's that deep. I know so many of my favourite singers and artists who are honestly my friends, and they won't put things out there or release them because they don't think they're perfect, or they don't think they're done. That's something that I've never had.
Half of it's the creating, and the other half is the sharing. It's like a full 50/50, but so many wonderful creative people are just so protective over their art. I think alleviating yourself of that will really change your life.
CMUA: What about people that wouldn't define themselves as being creative? How would you encourage them to step into that world?
Lucy: If you don't think you're creative, you're probably wrong.
I think we have kind of a strict notion of what creativity is. But in reality, I never thought that doing the news could also be a creative thing. Turns out it is. So I think just going easy on yourself, and realising that even if your job or your lifestyle seem not that creative, find little ways that make them so.