Spark

My name's Ade Adepitan.

I kind of see myself as the kid who never gave up.

Until the age of three, I lived in Lagos, Nigeria,

and I contracted polio at six months.

And polio affected me in a way that it meant

I was unable to walk without the use of callipers,

which were like iron rods which

the doctors put on my leg and connected to my shoe.

And on my first day of school,

I remember walking into the playground

and seeing a group of kids playing football and wanting to join in.

And I know when they looked at me and they saw me

walking in on my calliper,

and I was sort of, like, limping and I looked weird,

I had this crazy shirt that my mum made we wear.

The guys looked at me and they thought,

"There's no way he could play sport!"

And I moaned and nagged at them all day,

and in the final playtime, they allowed me to play football

and they told me to go in goal.

And I remember within the first couple of minutes,

the best footballer in our school blasted this ball,

and I managed to jump to one side and save what was going to be a goal.

And the playground went quiet after I saved it, and I went from

this crazy-looking, weird kind of kid

to this sporting hero in one afternoon just because of that save.

And that moment changed my life.

'The Britons are in the right place there.'

Inspirational people are really important in your life.

When I first watched the Olympic Games,

I wanted to be like them so much that I would be

on my sofa in my living room,

and when the 100m would start for the Olympic Games,

I'd have my eyes shut and I'd start pumping my arms,

imagining that I was there as part of the Games.

My mum would look through the door, thinking I was crazy,

but it was by seeing these people who were achieving great things,

it inspired me.

And I think it's so important that you have those type of people.

I got into wheelchair basketball by total luck.

I saw some guys from the Great Britain Wheelchair Basketball Team,

and they were training and they were amazing.

They totally changed my ideas, my perceptions,

because they were in these funky, amazing wheelchairs.

The wheels were angled like that, they were doing wheelies,

they were spinning round, they were shooting three-point shots,

they had massive muscles and they were doing things

that my friends at school would only dream of doing.

And that moment is when I looked at them and I thought,

"This is what I want to do. This is where I want to be."

I trained six days a week

and I trained six hours a day,

and I was shooting up to 800-900 shots a day.

I was pushing about six miles a day

and I was spending two hours in the gym.

And I did this every day,

and when I finally got selected for the team, it was

just one of the best moments of my life.

SCREAMS

Yeeees!

Yeeees! Come on!

My dream started when I was probably about nine years old,

and I didn't make it into the Great Britain wheelchair basketball team

until I was 27.

'Yes! He's got it! He's got it!

And Great Britain are through to the semi-final. 62 to 59.'

What it was like, getting on that rostrum

and having the medal put round my neck and looking at all my other

team-mates and seeing that we'd done it together,

that's also something that's really special.

Winning a medal and winning it for yourself is great,

but knowing that you've gone through all of this

and you've gone through all of that heartache

with another group of people is just special.

It was the best moment!

If you can believe in yourself, if you can go for something,

go for everything, then other people will look at you and think,

"Wow! Look at that person! Look how hard they're trying."

And you will start being an inspiration for other people.

It doesn't matter what you look like.

It doesn't matter whether you have a disability.

If you believe in yourself, anything is possible.

My name is Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock

and I'm a space scientist and a science communicator,

and that means I put things into space.

When I first went to school, I didn't enjoy it very much

cos when you're young, it's all about reading and writing.

And I suffer from dyslexia, which means that my spelling,

and when I try and put words together,

it didn't really work for me.

But I think there was actually a turning point in my life,

and it happened to me when I was eight years old.

I was in the library at school and I saw a book.

And the book had an astronaut on the cover, and I thought, "Wow!"

"That's what I want to do. I want to go into space!"

As a child, I was one of those really annoying kids

that asked "why" all the time. "Why this?" and "Why that?"

And that's what it is to be a scientist, is to be inquisitive.

If you want to be a space scientist,

there are many different ways of getting in there.

For instance, I went to university.

I did a degree in Physics and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering,

so I was at university for seven years.

But you don't have to study that long.

I know many people who leave school and then take up an apprenticeship.

So, they come and work in the space industry straight away

and start building things and putting them into space.

Sometimes, when I meet people for the first time

and tell them I'm a space scientist, they look really surprised

because I'm not quite what they expect

a space scientist to look like.

They expect someone who looks very serious,

and is usually white and male.

And you can tell that that's just not me.

But being a scientist isn't about being white and male

or being serious. It's about

having a passion for something, a passion for understanding.

As a space scientist, I'll specialise my work

into certain areas. Optical instrumentation.

So, that is building machines that look at things

and give us an understanding of things by taking images.

Some of the projects I work on are making a real difference

to us here on Earth.

For instance, I was building a satellite

which told us more about climate change.

Climate change is probably the biggest challenge

we're facing in our lives,

and satellites are really helping us to understand it.

So, space isn't just about out there,

it's also about looking in and understanding our own planet.

If I could travel back in time and go and see little Maggie

growing up, I'd tell her to believe in herself

because when you believe in yourself, you can achieve so much.

And it's worked for me.

So, if I can do that, what can you do?

As a kid, I really loved sailing, and if you really love sailing,

where's the furthest that you can sail?

Well, had to be round the world, didn't it?

I was trying to be the fastest person ever to sail solo

non-stop round the world, and I achieved that,

finishing in 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes

and 33 very important seconds.

I remember like it was yesterday,

the first time that I ever went down to the sea.

And I went down with my grandma and my elder brother,

and we were good to go sailing for four days.

And I remember the excitement that I felt inside as we got closer

to the water.

The most amazing thing was stepping on the boat for the first time,

this tiny little boat that we could only just squeeze onto.

But when we hoisted those sails, it was the greatest sense of freedom

that I could ever imagine.

I returned to Derbyshire where I grew up,

about as far away from the sea as you can possible get.

And I dreamt about sailing,

determined that, one day, I would sail around the world.

One of the big challenges when you want to go sailing is, obviously,

having a boat, and when I was four years old,

I obviously didn't have one. But from the age of eight,

I started saving my Christmas money and birthday money.

I never had pocket money, so when I was aged 11,

at secondary school, I started to have

mashed potato and baked beans every single day, including free gravy.

I got through a lot of free gravy in our school!

And every day, I'd save the pennies.

And when that little pile of pennies reached 100,

I'd drop it into the money box.

And I'd draw a little cross on the 100-square chart

that I'd drawn on a piece of paper behind it.

And once eventually that chart was full with £100,

I'd go along to the building society.

And it was like that that I bought my first, second and then third boat.

At school, I thought if you wanted to be successful in life,

you had to go to university, and I thought my way

to sail around the world would be, one day, to save enough money

to buy a boat to do that. But when I was 17 and doing my exam results,

trying to get into university, I was struck down with glandular fever.

And that changed my mind because I realised there was a different way

to sail around the world through a TV programme

on at three o'clock in the morning

about the Whitbread Round the World Race.

And I remember seeing the images

of these people sailing around the world,

the images of the action, the images of the sea,

the music. And I watched all this,

and I said, in that second, "That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to

"find a sponsor, and I'm going to sail around the world."

I feel really lucky to have known exactly what I was trying to do

when I was a kid, and to know that every single step that I made

in my life was trying to take me closer to that goal. And it was

a massive goal, virtually impossible for a kid

that grew up in Derbyshire to sail around the world.

But I knew exactly where I was going,

and it helped me make all the decisions to get to that point.

Sailing round the world, you see different things every day.

The sea's a different colour, the sky's different,

the wildlife around you's different.

You're basically watching the ocean, but it's ever changing.

When you come round Cape Horn, this tiny gap between

the tip of South America and Antarctica,

you come out and you head north. And the first sunset, generally,

is absolutely stunning with brighter colours than you can ever imagine.

Or deep in the Southern Ocean,

where the waves are 40, 50, 60 foot high,

almost as high as the mast of the boat,

and yet you're sailing down those waves.

And sometimes, when the clouds move, you see the moon. You feel

like you're sailing down these moonlit, sparkling mountains.

It's absolutely beautiful.

I was asked, when I finished sailing around the world,

whether the day I finished in Falmouth was the biggest

day of my life. It was asked by a journalist.

And I turned round to him and I said,

"I'm sure that's still to come, but it's not a bad one."

And I really believe in that.

The biggest thing, the most incredible thing

that will ever happen to you is always in front of you.

And the moment you think it's not, life gets a bit boring.

Once upon a time, a little girl was born

in the belly button of Britain in Birmingham.

But she had a problem. Whenever she opened her mouth,

words did not come out normally

and people couldn't understand her.

And that little girl, that was me.

My name's Katrice.

I had a problem with talking,

and I became very scared to talk,

even though I had gone to speech therapy lessons.

And one of my main ways of dealing

with that was to disappear into the land of story.

I would imagine I was a princess locked in a tower,

I would imagine that somebody was going to rescue me,

and I would imagine a happy ever after for myself.

And I really believe that that helped me survive

a time that was very painful.

So, perhaps that makes me a better storyteller.

Something that could have been very negative

has actually become something that I think is quite positive.

I left school with no qualifications at all,

went on to college and got a couple of qualifications.

And when I was there, I started to work as a volunteer

on the big adventure playground, 200 kids a day.

It was brilliant, absolutely wild.

And while there, I started to tell stories to the children

and I found I had a bit of a knack for it.

They really liked the stories, especially the scary ones.

But it wasn't until I went to live in Ghana

that I saw stories being used in a way

that wasn't just about entertainment.

In Ghana, they used storytelling

to pass on messages about health education.

And I saw that and I thought, "This is it.

"This is what I want to do. This is what I was born to do,

"to combine my passion for people and children

"with my passion for stories and language."

And I haven't looked back since. I really haven't.

I absolutely love my job.

I just love it!

And they fell. Down, down, down,

deeper and deeper and deeper.

They opened their mouths to breathe.

The water filled their lungs and...

I don't know loads of stuff.

But there's one thing I have learnt.

You are your own storyteller.

You need to start to question what people say about you.

And it's only when you start to question

that you find out who you are.

My name is Ryan Neile, and I work as an animal behaviourist.

Good boy!

Feet!

Good boy! Good boy!

An animal behaviourist works closely with animals,

attempting to resolve behaviour problems.

Oz!

CLICKS

Oz! Sit.

Yes!

As a ten or eleven-year-old, I remember being very shy.

I would always be very quiet.

I used to actually pretend that I was a dog! I would crawl around

on all fours, and I would go to sleep under the coffee table.

And I used to really worry my mum

because I think she thought that maybe I wouldn't stop being a dog.

I wasn't learning in the same way as my friends.

I wasn't able to remember things.

I had problems learning in classrooms.

I noticed that I was

slightly different to everybody else.

I think that that had a big knock-on effect

in terms of my confidence and my self-esteem.

As a teenager, I'm feeling pretty useless,

hadn't decided, really, what I wanted to do with my life,

failing miserably at school.

And it was round about then that I was reluctantly sent

on a behaviour course with dogs. Didn't really want to go,

and when I went, I had this most amazing experience.

Suddenly, it was like my brain was lit up like a Christmas tree

because, suddenly, I was able to really learn

and take on this information.

And I recognised that a lot of the qualities that I had,

about being patient and listening,

were a real strength in this particular area.

The best bits about my job

is that I get to spend lots of time with animals.

And animals, in so many ways, are just as interesting as people.

They have their own complex personalities,

they have a sense of humour, and they're just great to be around.

And over the years, I've learnt so much from them.

Did you know that when dogs yawn,

they might not always be tired when they do this?

Sometimes, they will do it when they are feeling stressed

or worried about something.

Hey! What are you doing? What are you doing?

I really wish that when I was younger,

I wasn't compared to everybody else,

because everyone else was doing really well at school,

that I was, in some way, not as clever as them.

The reality was I was just as clever

as all of my friends.

I just learned in a very different way to them.

Everywhere I go, when I open a door,

whether I'm on the train, on the tube, going on holiday,

we're surrounded by smell. And this is what I do for a living.

I'm recreating smells for people to enjoy.

I never set out to become a perfumer.

It all happened just because of this lovely bottle of perfume.

My mother gave it to me when I was 12 years old,

and for me, this was like

a bottle of perfume treasure. It sat on my dressing table.

It looked absolutely wonderful.

It took pride of place in my bedroom.

Shortly afterwards, I said to my mother, you know,

"Could I just collect all the perfume bottles that you've got

"when you've finished with them?" And gradually,

over a number of years, I just had absolutely loads of perfume bottles.

And people used to come in and say, "Wow! This looks amazing!"

"Are you going to become a perfumer?"

And do you know what? I never gave it much thought until that moment

and realising this was something I'd really love to do.

What really got my business going was the chance meeting

with an old friend who remembered all the things I used to make

as a little girl and he said, "You know, Linda,

"do you think you could make a fantastic scented candle

"for my shop?"

And that was the moment that gave me the opportunity

to get my business off the ground.

Most people think perfumes are made from flowers and trees and grasses,

but I can tell you there are some very, very unusual ingredients.

Perhaps the most unusual one is called ambergris,

whale vomit! Now, you might ask yourself, "Whale vomit?!

"That must be crazy! Why would you use such a thing?"

But the whale has one natural enemy, the giant squid.

And when they fight in the water, usually, the whale wins.

And he gobbles up the giant squid. When he swallows the squid,

the whale doesn't feel very well,

and then he vomits it out onto the sea.

And believe it or not, a great big lump of fatty whale vomit

is worth over 1 million!

And there are people in this world

whose sole job is to hunt down the ambergris.

Now, after several years in the perfume industry,

I've been working very, very hard.

I've got a few shops in London,

and people are selling my perfume all over the world.

And it just shows you that if you have a real passion for something,

and you work really, really hard,

and you truly believe you can do this, that's half the battle won.

Even if you don't have a passion at the moment

or any particular focus on any particular hobby, it doesn't matter

because you never know when it's going to happen. It might be now,

it might be when you're a young teenager, or an adult.

Just recognise it when it comes along.

If it really switches you on, then just go for it.

My name's Ho-Yin and I'm an architect and I design buildings.

When I was at school, I found it sometimes a bit of a struggle.

I wasn't really enjoying my lessons

and I was struggling a bit academically.

I never thought that I excelled in anything.

I enjoyed doing art, but I never thought I was the best.

I always thought, looking around,

there were people making better clay models,

drawing better pencil drawings than me,

I never really thought that I was the best at it.

I was given the opportunity to do some work experience

and this really enabled me

to understand what an architect really did.

It was not only drawing that you were doing,

but also the creative thinking behind it as well.

The first thing I did was, quite simply,

just to take a piece of tracing paper

and to actually copy a couple of their drawings they'd done

of this residential apartment block in central London.

They could see I was really enjoying it.

I was learning how to use these special pens they had,

using what they call a slide rule,

moving up and down and drawing all these lines

and I was really enjoying it and being enthusiastic.

I started drawing my own house where we were living

and sort of re-planning my bedroom and things like this.

It completely opened up the world to me.

I saw architecture in a completely different sense.

And when I left, they gave me a present - a set of drawing pens.

This is one of them

and this was, I guess, really to encourage me,

because outside of my parents, no-one had ever really given me a gift.

I used these since I left and I used them through university

and I've still got them now

so these really, I guess, started my career.

Don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid to explore, to explore your passions,

no matter what they might be.

If you're really passionate about them

and you really explore the opportunities,

something will always come because of it.

I'm going to tell you what life is like as an adventurer.

My first big adventure was when I cycled all the way around the world.

I did it on this bike, which I named Beryl.

When I was at school, I wasn't the strongest or the fastest

or the cleverest boy in my class.

I liked games and being out in the woods, I liked riding my bike,

but I wasn't particularly good at any of those.

The only difficult thing that, really, I've ever done

was coming up with these ideas, thinking,

"I want to go do this adventure."

When I got on my bike outside my mum and dad's house on the first day

and I had to say goodbye to all of my friends and my family,

it was one of the most frightening, lonely moments of my life.

And as I pedalled down the road away from my house,

I had no idea then that it was going to take me more than four years

to get all the way around the world

and that I would cycle over 46,000 miles

through 60 countries.

I didn't have very much money for this trip

so everything had to be as cheap as possible, so I slept in my tent.

I'd always make sure to try the foods

in all of the different countries, but there were a few places

where the food was not quite what I was used to -

barbecued guinea pigs in Ecuador,

and boiled mice on a stick.

If you imagine the world,

I set off from my mum and dad's house in the north of England

and then cycled all the way across Europe

and through the Middle East to Africa,

before crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a sailing boat

-and then cycling right from the bottom of South America...

-Whee!

..all the way to Alaska.

Finally, I crossed the Pacific Ocean on a boat

and cycled through China back home to England,

back to my front door and the end of the adventure.

I met so many people along the way

and people helped me out

in all sorts of strange places around the world.

And the further I went,

the more the kindness of strangers became important to me.

Rich people, poor people, all different religions,

different countries.

People would stop their cars, give me food,

invite me to stay in their homes for the night

and it was just amazing how kind people were

and that really helped me around the world

and was definitely one of the best things about the whole experience.

What adventures would interest you?

Why don't you have a think about things you would really love to do

and how you're going to go about starting them,

because adventures can be such a wonderful part of your life

and you'll never know unless you try them.

My name is Akram Khan

and I'm a dancer and choreographer.

And a choreographer, in the most simplest terms,

is someone who captures images of the body

and literally puts it together to create patterns.

STRING MUSIC PLAYS

FAST DRUMMING

I realised that I wanted to move physically

since I was a child, really. When I was in a classroom

and there was a desk, and I really didn't like desks

and I didn't like chairs cos it felt confined, so I couldn't focus at all.

And I was shy because I had a lot of boys my age

that were very good with words.

I realised at a certain point

that my way of talking is through my body,

and I was good at it.

I remember this one moment

where Thriller, Michael Jackson's video...pop video, came on

and that kind of literally changed my life

and I started to immediately imitate.

And so a few years later, in a school competition,

suddenly, overnight, the whole school knew me.

MUSIC: "Thriller" by Michael Jackson

And they knew me by name.

So it wasn't this little skinny Bengali boy,

suddenly it was, "Little skinny Bengali boy called Akram Khan."

And that was quite a revelation for me.

# It's close to midnight

# And something evil's lurking in the dark... #

The thing that sparked the body was music.

MUSIC FROM "SACRED MONSTERS"

Everything around us has a rhythm

and that means it has life.

And so, in a sense, whenever the rhythm came on in the music,

my body would rhythmically respond to that.

If I was talking to the child version of me...

"Trust what you like,

"don't fear it, no matter what anybody says."

"If you somehow naturally believe

"or just feel good doing what you do,

"then usually, that's the right thing."

'My name is Ayishat Akanbi and I work as a freelance stylist.'

MUSIC: "Express Yourself" by Labrinth

# I say the same thing twice I'm awkward when I speak

# Ain't got the perfect smile Don't turn heads on my street... #

Fashion and styling were something that I always kind of had in me.

Even since I was a kid,

I always kind of wanted my own way of doing things.

My mum stopped choosing what clothes I wore when I was about five.

I just had an opinion from then.

I was like, "Nah, I don't feel that, Mummy. Nah, I'm not wearing that."

I just got talking to a lot of people

and started telling people I wanted to be a stylist and stuff like that

and people seemed to really believe in me,

even before I'd fully believed in myself.

People were like, "Yeah, you can do it,"

and giving me little opportunities here and there.

I've always had my own sort of style,

I never really looked like most people

and I spent so long when I was young trying to fit in

and then realising, "I don't think that's going to work, it's not me."

And when I tried to dress how other people dressed,

I just felt really silly

and I just felt, it just wasn't comfortable.

Then I thought, "You know what? I'm just going to be totally who I am."

Hello, you all right?

Yeah, how are you?

Yeah, not too bad.

A stylist is in control of the overall image of an artist

or even a regular person.

'So I basically, I tell them what to wear, basically.'

With celebrities, generally speaking,

when you see them on TV, in magazines, in papers,

they have been styled by someone,

which is something I never knew until I got into it.

# Labrinth. Come in. #

MUSIC: "Earthquake" by Labrinth

So in case you don't know,

Labrinth is a super-talented singer-songwriter-producer.

He's got a few gigs coming up, so I'm going to get him some pieces.

What we're doing at the moment,

I've got my lovely work experience girl Nicole

helping me out with the mood board. She's kind of referencing the images

of what we need to go out and get today.

It's just basically cuttings out from magazines, catalogues,

could be pieces of fabric.

And then this is what I use to show to the person I'm styling

and as a reference point for myself

just to refer back to every now and then

and make sure everything's consistent.

So now we're off to the West End, we're going to Oxford Street

where we're going to hit a high street store, one of my favourites,

for Labrinth, and see what they've got today.

The great thing about fashion is that it's all around us,

so you can learn from people, so whenever I saw an outfit I liked,

I would question myself as to why I liked it. "What was it?

"What's drawn you to this?"

'And then I would kind of note that down in my head'

and start applying the same principles

to the way I dressed myself.

So yeah, this is definitely a Labrinth-esque piece.

So now we're heading back to the office, where

I'm going to try it on a friend of mine, James.

Yeah, thank you again for standing in, for being my Labrinth.

You can put this on.

And these shoes. See you in a sec.

I get to try on clothes on him

and just make sure everything's working, as they're a similar build.

SHE LAUGHS

MUSIC: "Ooh Wee" by Ghostface Killah, Nate Dogg and Mark Ronson

This is something that Labrinth would wear,

like, at a festival, on stage.

It's kind of got that sort of Woodstock vibe about it,

you know, looks a little earthy,

which is good for festivals.

My favourite piece is definitely the shoes.

I love the white gum sole, the colour,

I think it just really...

The green, sort of bottle green and burgundy really work nicely together

and they kind of pull in what's going on here.

I have an idea for something.

'This would be a good outfit for festivals'

in terms of colour.

Keeping it quite casual, like a lounge sort of suit, you know?

And shorts, you know, deck shoes.

# Oo-ooh wee... #

Now that this has kind of worked out for me,

'it was a dream that I had, I wanted to style,

'and it's worked out.

'Now, I feel like there's nothing I can't do if I put my mind to it.'

I think if your will is strong enough

and you stay motivated,

even when you have setbacks, even when you fail sometimes,

you fail again and you fail better

and you will eventually get to your goal, I think.

'I'm Fraser Doherty and I run a jam company called SuperJam.

'I guess some people would imagine

'running your own business means you go into a big office

'and wear a suit and sit behind a desk

'and you're answering the phone all day.'

But for me, running my own business is a lifestyle

that allows me to work from home

and I can spend my time doing things that I enjoy,

as well as working really hard on trying to grow my business.

Today, I'm going to be working on some new flavours of jam -

some strawberry jam and some raspberry jam

and I want to try and come up with

some recipes that particularly appeal to kids

'and it's going to be called SuperJam Junior.'

Thank you.

I've got some strawberries, I'm going to chop them up

and then boil them up and then add grape juice.

That's all that goes in it.

So it's all just 100% fruit,

there's no sugar or any additives or anything like that.

You have to make sure your idea is something people want to buy

and when I asked people at farmer's markets what they wanted,

they told me they wanted jam without sugar,

so I knew I was onto a good idea.

One afternoon when I was 14, I was visiting my grandmother

and she was making jam in her kitchen

just in the same way as she had for as long as I can remember

and I got really excited about it

and asked her to teach me how to make jam.

Soon, I was making my own jars

and selling them at farmers' markets and little shops.

I was making 1,000 jars of jam a week in my parents' kitchen,

which was about as much as was possible.

When you start a business, there will be moments where things don't work.

At one point, Waitrose said no to my idea

and although I was sad that they said no,

I was grateful that they gave me honest advice

and looking back, I'm glad that we changed the labels

and I'm glad that we moved to a different factory.

Now we make more than a million jars in a year.

We run hundreds of tea parties for elderly people all over the country.

Today, I'm meeting a few people

'who can hopefully help us start having big tea parties in London.'

This place would be great for a tea party. Hopefully, they're up for it.

-Hi!

-Hey, how are you?

'When I was about 16, I had my first big meeting.

'I went along wearing my dad's suit.

'It was probably two sizes too big for me

'and I was pretty frightened at this meeting because it was something new,

'there was a lot of pressure and I really wanted it to work.

'But now, when I meet people, I don't feel frightened by it.

'I've learned that people are usually more than happy to help you

'and, in fact, there's nothing to be scared of.'

Thanks very much, everyone.

'Today, I'm going to take along recipes

'to a taste test this afternoon with some kids.'

The kids might like it, they might not like it,

and if they don't,

it will be really useful to know what they would do to change it.

Try and find out how we can make the product

even better than it already is.

'Sometimes it's difficult, because

'I might come up with a kind of jam that I think tastes great

'and we put it on the shelves, and people don't necessarily buy it.

'We tried launching rhubarb and ginger jam, which was delicious

'but unfortunately, didn't fly off the shelves

'and we had to stop selling it.'

Hi, my name's Fraser

and I've made some very special jams for you today to try

and I'd love to hear what you think. Help yourselves!

-Mmm! Lovely.

-Great.

-Yeah.

Which one do you think's got the best label?

The teddy bear.

I like the one without seeds

because it's sweeter.

-What do you think? Which one's your favourite?

-The one with seeds

-because it's sweeter.

-Put your hands up if you think

-jam for kids without any seeds in is a good idea.

-It's a great idea.

Well, thanks so much for taking part in my taste test.

I'm really happy that you all liked the idea

for making jam for kids without any seeds

I think it's kind of amazing that you can come up with an idea

and with a bit of hard work, it can change your life.

It doesn't have to take a lot of money -

I didn't have access to any money when I was 14.

It just takes love, imagination and a lot of work.

'My name is Vicky Jewson and I'm a film director.'

We're here today at Hinton Skydiving Centre

to film our stunt woman falling out of a plane 10,000 feet,

which is a part of the film where she skydives secretly

into the Middle East undercover, like a spy would.

-Sorry, Fran, do you mind?

-No, no, that's fine.

Then we know we're definitely going to get that shot.

I'm the stunt double, so I'm not actually an actress

but I'm standing in for an actress,

so I'm pretending to be her.

'Fran is one of my friends'

and we started making films together when I was about 12 years old.

SWING MUSIC PLAYS

You've got to hide me! I look dreadful!

Billy can't see me like this, he just can't!

Nice to see you, too, Nancy.

Whoa!

I met her at big school on the first day

'and Fran and I went on to make about eight films together

'while I was at school'

and that kind of lit the torch under my passion for filmmaking.

So, yeah. Big.

'A big part of directing,

'which a lot of people don't realise or understand -

'it's not just being on set with the actors

'and picking where your camera's going to go.

'The real success of a director is when you get into the edit suite.

If all those shots that you've done

cut together to create a good story and to create a film,

then that's really satisfying.

With the right sound effect, that's going to be perfect.

This is maybe one of the more wacky things I've done

-in my time.

-In your time.

There is a lot of tricks to make you believe it's real.

As you can see, she's looking at her arm there

and we want to feel like we're now her,

so we go to this angle where we feel we're looking down at her arm,

which helps us believe that this bit of fake arm is actually an arm

and not a bit of fakeness, because you feel connected to it

because you feel you're her.

Legs in, arms in,

zip goes up the front,

not up the back.

-How do you feel, Fran?

-Nervous.

-Oh, sorry, Fran!

-It's all right!

Yeah, we need the camera, Malte!

LAUGHTER

Positive mental thinking now.

I am excited about the shots we might get from the aircraft.

It could be a really good link in the film. It's also quite risky.

The shot's so important, you've got one chance to get it.

Yeah, they're jumping. See them?

There goes the other one, there's Fran.

I can't wait to see the footage.

There's Malte, that's Malte up there.

-How do you know?

-Because he's got red.

Oh, we won't know until the plane lands if we've got our shot or not.

-Is that one person?

-Yeah.

FRAN SHRIEKS

Sorry, Fran!

Wow.

Shall we go greet them?

I'm on the ground!

-Awesome.

-Yeah?

That was actually quite fun.

Oh, my God.

Just...

Ah, amazing. Ah, yes! That's awesome.

-Great.

-Gets it all quicker.

It just gives you the feeling of being on top of the world

when the shot that you've imagined for years finally comes out.

If I was to go back and tell my nine or eleven-year-old self what to do,

I think I would just say,

"Never give up, and believe in yourself

"because if you keep going and pursuing what you love,

"it will work out for you."

And doing it with people you care about,

and to be able to do that for a job is amazing

and to be reminded of that, sometimes, is really good.

I usually cycle into work

and when I'm getting nearer to the office,

I'm kind of, in my mind, imagining what I have to do today

and how I'm going to manage the time that I need to do it in.

This is the office where we make games.

We make football management games,

which are games where, rather than controlling the action on the pitch,

you're controlling everything off the pitch

and the tactics and the transfers.

It's effectively a role-playing game

that allows you to be a football manager.

I first started drawing when I was around five

and the only reason I started drawing

was cos my brother was really good at it

and he got loads of attention from it

and I wanted to be better than him, cos he was my brother.

In school, I was...I was fairly quiet

and I was always daydreaming

and had my head in the clouds.

I spent a lot of time as a child playing computer games.

Way too much time.

The only other times I didn't spend on it, I was playing football.

It feels good now working in the video games industry,

cos it was something that used to get me in trouble quite a lot.

It's really easy to end up the person that's playing the games

rather than making the games,

because you're going to come across a lot of obstacles

and it's really easy to get discouraged by those obstacles,

but you have to just keep trying

and keep thinking that the next time round, you'll get it.

So I'm actually now just taking pictures of players in their kits.

I'm just going to use it as reference

for basically, the creases on their shirts and making textures.

And then later on, we'll take the pictures back to the office

and create the player models.

The strangest part of my job

is that I go around taking pictures of random things

and no-one other than me knows why.

So I could look like I'm taking a picture of a brick wall

or a piece of dirt and it just looks strange to other people

but to me, it's really useful.

The games look real because of observation.

Things like light and shade and contrast are really important,

because they give you an idea of the time of day

and they also make the characters stick out

or fade into the background if they need to be.

If you're going to be an artist, you really need the natural flair

of being able to look at things in the real world

and work out how you can then computerise those

so that it either looks realistic,

if you're making a photo-realistic game,

or it just fits in with the character inside the game

and the characters of the world.

Ronnie is incredibly laidback,

which is an important thing, because you need to be incredibly patient,

because you need every single pixel to be perfect.

I never expected to have the job I've got - like, never.

'I didn't think it was possible for, like, a young black kid'

to be able to make it into the games industry.

Just cos I always thought that the games industry was for

kind of, like, geeky white nerds, basically.

It's only just a perception, and you just basically have to work for it

and you'll get there if you keep putting the work in.

My name's Charlotte Harbottle and I'm a butcher.

-Thanks so much.

-Thank you.

'I used to enjoy visiting the butcher's shop when I was little'

and it was fun, I enjoyed it, but

when you see this big rosy man behind the counter,

you don't, as a little girl,

imagine, "You know what? Some day I want to be like that." So...

but then when I went to university, I ran out of money.

You fall into a job and you fall in love with it,

and that's how it works.

'Safety is so important. It's very boring

'but it's something that you have to take into account.

You've got to make sure that your hair's tied back.

'Wearing chainmail is something I didn't really anticipate

'I'd have to wear. On top of everything else,

'it weighs about the same as two house bricks.'

It's kind of lots of little circles.

It means the knife point can't actually touch your skin.

'One of the biggest challenges for me with working with meat

'is trying to remember everything,

'because I'm the sort of person who can't learn by watching,

'I need to learn by doing it, I need to get stuck in.'

-You want to have a go?

-Yeah, sure.

So... OK, just so that I'm...

-Cos I don't want to cut it, then...

-No, no, listen, cut it.

Get onto that bone.

That's it, now go round. That's it.

Beef is probably the hardest part to learn in butchery.

They always say that if you perfect beef, you can do anything.

Her first attempt at doing a top bit of beef today,

which she's doing really well.

What it's doing is giving her knife skills,

because she's having to move her knife, find the bone, find seams,

it's not easy.

-Put your fingers in there cos that's going to fall.

-It'll fall, I know.

Just keep your knife to the bone, yeah?

That's it, brilliant, well done.

That'll keep me going for about a week.

That is really good.

That is really good.

-Yeah.

-You ain't going to get cleaner than that.

It is a lot of money.

That piece of beef would have cost over a couple of grand, easily.

Anybody who eats meat,

I don't really think they can be squeamish about it,

because it has to have come from somewhere.

You need to make sure that the product you get

is as good as it can be

and the way that it can be as good as it can be -

basically, by ensuring it's happy

and it's well fed while it's alive

and just generally has a lot of fresh air.

I could work in an office, I know I could work in an office,

'but my mates couldn't come in here and do what I do,

'even to this stage. And I'm still so...

'I've got so much more to learn still.'

'If you don't listen, you won't learn.

'You've got to always be trying to get better.'

When I started butchery, I started writing a blog

'just to record different teaching and different methods of butchery.'

'As a result, I am writing for different magazines,

'writing for all sorts of different people.'

You have to write your ideas down or else you forget. I certainly forget.

But it's so important to kind of, you know,

write down different things that I want to learn

and different ways for me to remember.

Many of my friends do more glamorous jobs,

they work in an office, they get to wear nice clothes to work.

'But I get so much more pleasure from doing my job

'and I'm lucky at the moment,

'because I'm given the opportunity to learn

'in one of the best butcheries in the country.'

If I was to go back to my younger self,

I would probably say, just pursue

and enjoy the things that I like doing.

So no matter what it is, even if none of your friends are into it

or it's not fashionable,

or not cool or whatever, I think that you should just do it anyway.

I didn't know what I wanted to do at school.

I was quite good at maths

and you need a certain amount of geometry skills to be a stonemason,

understanding numbers.

And it was in my last year at school,

'I did work experience as a stonemason

'so I did a whole week as a stonemason,'

then they offered me a job at the end of it,

'saying that I might have had some sort of natural skill,

'so I finished school,

finished my GCSEs, knuckled down with them and then came up

and I've worked ever since.

We're sat in the quarry of Ham Hill.

These bits here have been pulled out of the floor.

So what you can see there is millions

and millions and millions of years of history.

A stonemason carves stone straight out from the floor

into ornamental shapes,

nice flowery patterns to go into buildings, really.

'When you're doing any sort of trade,

'measurements are key, and you're always taught

'to check, check, check again before you work it

'because once it's worked, it's sort of too late.'

'Today, I'll be carving a base stone,'

which a bronze lion's going to be standing on.

Over here is the old pieces of plinth.

It's about 150 years old

and there were a couple of cracks in it and bits fallen off,

so we're just carving a new one to restore the house.

I'm drawing on a line that I'm going to cut to. It only has to be rough.

They think that the stone we're replacing is 150 years old.

We're hoping that this one will last the same, if not longer.

My next job is to do some letter cutting.

I've got to carve "Orchard End" on this stone here.

We get stone out of the quarry.

The large saw tends to cut two sides of the stone

and then they can pass it on to the smaller saws,

which will then cut it into a six-sided block,

depending on the shape and size of what we need to carve it into.

'It'll then come to the stonemason to be finished.'

'I've just spun the stone

'to get rid of any whip marks left from the saw when they cut it

'and I've just washed it off to get rid of the dust.'

'I'm quite laid back, which helps, being a stonemason,'

to be laid back and relaxed about things.

When I did work experience,

I didn't really appreciate the patience and the work load in it

but it didn't take long before I did.

'Yeah, just be patient with it

'and it will all come into its own in time.'

My brother was always a lot better than me at everything we did

so that always kind of put me off,

but I found something that I was quite good at.

Once you've finished cutting all the letters,

you can just rub the surface of your stone

with a diamond-encrusted hand rubbing pad.

And that'll just take any more sort of whips out of the surface

that you don't want, and then that's the job done.

There's always something for everybody.

You've got to be able to put in a bit of effort to find it,

it won't always find you.

And when you do find it, you've got to really go for it

and don't let the opportunity go.

Everyone gets opportunities in life

but it's just whether they take them or not.

'I'm Puja Varsani

'and I do Product Design and Robotics at Middlesex University.'

When I was in school, I had, like, big dreams.

I wanted to be a lawyer, I wanted to be an architect,

then I sort of went on this path

cos I was really good at design technology

and I'd found product design and I've not looked back, really.

It's just one of those things that I've just sort of fallen into

and I've just loved from day one.

What I love about robotics is the fact that you can make something

and you can give it life and you can give it movement.

Straightaway, you can see the achievements you've made.

In the future,

there's the possibility of having a lot more robots in the household

and they could be doing a number of things,

from just being a companion

to washing dishes

or cleaning your room.

But you'd want to be comfortable with it and you'd want to trust it

to be able to live with it in your house

and that's what my research is based on.

'You have to be very practical, hands-on,

'you want to want to get your hands dirty

'and want to go into the workshop and create all these crazy things.'

Even if it doesn't work just for fun,

just go in there and just have fun, basically.

Depending on what project I do,

'I'd start off sketching.'

As long as you've got the basics, the raw basics of sketching

and you have the ability to quickly sketch out your idea

so someone else can understand it.

And then I begin to design it on the computer.

So, first what you need to do

is make sure that you know roughly what size you're working to

and then the shapes that you need as well,

and then put it all together,

and then you get to see what exactly it'll look like as a whole.

'Once I've done that,

'I'd go into the workshops and start manufacturing it.'

I'm going to hit play and it will cut out my template for me.

And then assembling.

You sit here and look at it for a good ten seconds

before you figure out if it's this way or if it's this way.

And it's this way.

I got told by my mum that when I was a kid,

I used to love playing with Lego

and just making things with Lego and stuff like that.

And I used to want to take things apart.

Like, I used to take torches apart just to see what was inside it.

I wouldn't take apart anything expensive,

like a toaster or anything.

'Tomorrow is the first day of my degree show

'and that's a big thing,

'because that's what we've been focused towards,

'that's what we've been working towards.

This is very cool. It's not what I expected it to be.

I expected it to be like this, like as grand as this

but just in a smaller scale.

'It's a good chance to sort of mingle with industry people as well,

'cos we can invite them to see what skills we have.

'And it just showcases our work.'

I'm a bit apprehensive about the show

cos it's a very big space we have

and loads of people are going to come see it.

The feedback of people's reactions has been quite good.

They're really engaging and talking to me

and understanding exactly how I started off with my robots.

So, yeah, it's positive feedback so far.

'Explaining it to other people

'and getting them to have the same passion as I do for what I am doing,

'that's a bit scary.'

So basically, what I'm doing is social robotics.

If you look at how people react

and their body language and stuff like that

and convey it to robot language,

it could be, you know, people could understand it.

It's mind-blowing, thinking about people that are talking to me

could potentially be like, "Oh, yeah, jot down your e-mail address,"

and next week, I might get an e-mail saying, "We want you to do this

"because we saw you at the degree show

"and we found that you had such amazing skills."

So yeah, a bit crazy.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd