Episode 5: Ella Brewster, Elite Rugby Player & Artist

INTRO: Welcome to the Trailblazers Podcast series by Periplum, sharing the experiences of trailblazers living and working in the Tees Valley: the innovators, activists, workers and adventurers as told in their own words. Episode 5 Ella Brewster, Elite Rugby Player & Artist Claire [Interviewer] So I'm Claire and we're in the Darlington Quakers meeting house with Ella. So, Ella, where were you born? Ella [Interviewee] I was born in Darlington Memorial Hospital in Darlington, County Durham, but grew up in Hurworth-on-Tees, which is just outside of Darlington. It was very ‘village life’ where I grew up, so lots of going out on bikes, playing football on every spare piece of grass. Went to school in the same village that I grew up in, so a short walk to school every day and back. It was really lovely and I had an older sister, so we kind of spent as little time indoors as possible, even in winter, just with a coat on. Because we’re northerners [laughs] Claire [Interviewer] And where do you live now? Ella [Interviewee] Um…currently living in Newcastle, so I've got a flat with a couple of my friends. Recently moved up there, so only since kind of August/September time. It's a place called Heaton, so lots of coffee shops and studenty kind of area. Our flat kind of looks like a student flat, even though none of us are students anymore. But it's a really lovely city. Everything's kind of walkable, which works quite well given that I grew up in a village and was very used to…not having to…drive around everywhere all the time. Claire [Interviewer] So can you tell me a bit more about growing up? Ella [Interviewee] Yeah, we had a bit of a weird family compared to some of the other people I went to school with. Both my parents were full time, self-employed artists, so constantly involved in that part of their life. They worked from home and we had a workshop in the garage that was kind of converted. So it was full of machinery and like art equipment and tools because they work with wood. I kind of was taught how to wood carve from the age that I could hold a chisel, But equally my parents, because they're self-employed, they could spend a lot of time with us and we'd go to the Lake District a lot, and we would kind of go camping and a lot of outdoorsy stuff, because their time was so flexible. They did a lot of community work as well, so we would often kind of go along with them to work in the school holidays and stuff. So we kind of were always involved in their jobs our whole childhood, so it kind of felt more like a family business than it did - my parents in one thing and us kind of just being around. It felt like we were involved in it constantly. A lot of the community they worked with as well were children, so it was really easy for me and my sister to get our hands dirty doing all of the stuff that they were doing. They kind of were in our school a lot doing stuff. It was very wholesome. [laughs] When I went to Uni[versity] and stuff people would always ask me what my childhood was like, and they said it sounded like I lived in ‘Gilmore Girls’ [TV series] because everyone was around a lot and they were very present, and we were always kind of part of it. We weren't treated like children, which was really nice, we were kind of always part of the process of their jobs. But yeah, balancing, kind of doing a lot of arts and creative things with being outdoors every second of the day, wherever possible. So it was really, really nice. My parents also started fostering, so we would often have children in the house with us as well. That kind of happened when I was a little bit older, but they do respite fostering, so just every so often there'd be another kid that we would teach how to do arts and we had creative stuff that no-one else knew how to do, like wood carving, which is just a really niche skill that we've got now.But yeah, it was really, really lovely, nice childhood. [laughs] Claire [Interviewer] So what were you like at school? Ella [Interviewee] Boringly, I was really well behaved. [laughs] I was quite good academically as well, not because I really tried. I had a really good memory, which for sitting down in a classroom at school, which is kind of a given way to learn, was really useful, but it was good because it meant I wasn't always sat with books in front of me because I kind of was naturally quite good at learning. So I had a lot of spare time to do loads of other activities. So I was basically part of every extracurricular club that was possibly going at school, whether that was kind of football, rugby, cricket, some of the art stuff. I basically filled every second of my day at school with something. But was kind of set one at secondary school, did pretty well in all of my exams through just sheer luck, I think. Yeah, had a really good group of friends who also were very sporty, which helps because it meant that we were all on the same sports teams together, and after school we would all go to the same clubs and hang out there, and I think that just made us a bit of a tight knit group that couldn't get away from each other. [laughs] Yeah. So in primary school, I joined a swimming club first, so I was part of Darlington Amateur Swimming Club, which was kind of the racing club, I guess you would call it. So we competed swimming. So I used to swim about 12 hours a week from kind of age of 9 or 10. I did that till I was about 14. So that was kind of my main sport for a long time. But alongside that, I also played football for a team called Darlington Spraire Ladies, which was kind of my local club, which I just fell into because I played football with the boys every single break and lunch time. That was kind of just a given that if a teacher needed to find me, I was always on the football field. But I did also two other sports, so I just filled every second of the day. So I, um did street dancing so I can bust some kind of weird moves, which I did once a week in Hurworth, and then I also played rugby, which I started off on the boys’ team for that because there were no women's teams for my age. And then I got to an age where I wasn't allowed to play on the boys’ teams anymore because it turned to contact. So I found D.M.P. which is Darlington Mowden Park, were my kind of local rugby club. My PE teacher said you should go along to that cause you really enjoy it and they're starting a women's team. So kind of the juniors. So I went there when I was around 11, stayed there till I was 18, until I went to University where I kept playing rugby. So I went to Loughborough University, which is number 1 in the world for sport. So I definitely played a lot of rugby there. That really made it less of a hobby and more of a passion that I could not give up. I did a lot of gym sessions. They had a Premier League team at the university that I kind of looked up to, and from there kind of kept with the rugby, because I did a master’s degree at Newcastle University and I played for them. I got scouted while I was there to go down to Mowden Park Sharks, which was the Women's Premier League team. So I played with them for a season until we had all of our funding cut, unfortunately. So I moved to Novacastrians, where I currently play. So rugby has definitely been the hobby that stuck with me from a really tiny age, from playing with the lads to kind of playing professional, er, now kind of play for three different teams because I've got County and North of England in there as well. Yeah. Claire [Interviewer] Were you the only girl playing in the football team, and the boys rugby team? Ella [Interviewee] Mostly yes. Sometimes I could kind of convince one of the girls to come and give it a bit of a go, but I was the most consistently there, kind of every single time I did kind of end up feeling more like one of the lads. But it did mean that when we went to tournaments and stuff, often I was the only girl on the pitch. Sometimes it would mean that the other team would kind of point at me and be like, right, we're going to go after that player. There's always a bit of I had to prove that I belonged there and prove that I should be on that pitch. But yeah, it sometimes felt isolating. But I think more than that, it was like I felt like I was doing a good thing and I was proving that I should have been on that pitch every time I stepped onto it.I think it is good motivation. Yeah. Claire [Interviewer] So clearly your parents had a lot of influence in the arts cause you're also interested in arts. So tell us about your arts journey. Ella [Interviewee] Yeah, it started when I was born. Basically when I was born, I was on some kind of arts journey, I think it would have been much harder for me to have not been doing something in the arts, but I really loved reading as a kid. I felt a little bit like Matilda. I was always sent to the junior school to go get my books when I was quite young, while everyone else was reading kind of really short little books. I was on novels already, so I think that was kind of a bit of in as well, because the reading often influenced some of the stuff that I would make, because I would be reading about characters or I’d be…really immersed in these settings that I would go off, I’d be like I need to make something that is from this book that I've just read. And, it was a big crossover then, my parents really encouraged it. They were really good. We were lucky to have a really good library, cause I had a library card, and I would go there all the time and I really remember there was a little cat on the library card, and they also did like art classes. I remember Liz Million come in once and showing us how she illustrated the books that she wrote, and I was like, oh, it's really interesting to see the crossover of kind of the visual stuff and the writing, but from one person it wasn't kind of two people collaborating. I was like, this is really cool. And I think that had such an influence. So I studied English literature as my undergrad, and while I was there, I got really into creating theatre. So I kind of took a bit of a step away from the visual arts that my parents’ kind of raised me on, of doing sculpture and woodcarving, and I got more into working with people to create live performances. So while I was studying, kind of all of the literature from whenever books started up until now, I joined a society called the Shakespeare Society, where we would put on plays on a shoestring budget. So I was directing and producing, but I was also making all of the props and the costumes and everything else, because a lot of the other people in that were studying geography or sport science, and they didn't really have like the tangible skills to make the other stuff. So I was like, it's fine, I've got it. I'll make it. So it was a big commitment, which I was doing alongside kind of playing rugby at a very high level. So I had like not a second to do anything else, but I really loved it. But then the thing that is really got me is film. I've always been a bit obsessed with film as well, and I think with the English literature tie-in, I go from reading a book to watching a film to like watching how they're adapted. So it kind of went from that theatre side to studying a master's degree in film, which I absolutely loved, did that up at Newcastle, did some filmmaking while I was there as well. So I was kind of behind cameras, in editing suites, learning how to use Adobe cause that was brand new to me, cause I’m normally used to having like pens and paper, and paint and pencils, and that's very collaborative. It wasn't one person sat in a room carving up a bit of wood. It was let's all get together and make a film. So that's always been a hobby that I've taken on, kind of from that age. It's very hard to do anything in film other than watch films when you're 11, because I've kind of had cameras, but you can't do a lot with a camera unless you've got people to be in front of it. So I did a bit of that while I started kind of being fully professional, working at ARC Arts Centre in Stockton. There's quite a few people who are interested in filmmaking, so we got together and did some kind of writing workshops together, that was just completely off our own back. And I recently got accepted onto the Screen Skills Trainee finder. So I’m actively working with them as a production office trainee. So they’re giving me kind of training. I was on the set of ‘The Dumping Ground’, which is a TV show. That's the BBC. I was there yesterday and they train us up how to be production office so that we can kind of close that gap between being amateurs who love film, to working in film and creating film at like high end, loads of budget and working with all professional cast and crew. So a lot of my creative hobbies have turned into professional work that I've taken on alongside playing a ridiculous amount of sport, which is sometimes really hard to balance, but it's really interesting to see how they intersect. Claire [Interviewer] So how do you balance time doing art and sport? Ella [Interviewee] Yep. It takes a lot of organisation and I'm very much a paper calendar kind of person. So it is very much writing down when training is for every single team I'm part of, and then also having what days I'm working. So I'm quite lucky I get to work 30 hours a week in my current job, so I do Monday to Thursday, which gives me an extra day and the full weekend to do creative stuff and sports stuff, which is really good way for me to kind of balance work life. But it takes a lot of balancing. Both of those also make sure I have enough time to see all my friends do other things, not in that headspace, so that I can kind of have a fresh brain every Monday when I go back into kind of my regular jobs. But, yeah, a lot of writing down exactly when everything is well in advance, booking holidays around when sports matches are, and stuff like that, because I like to kind of play as many minutes as possible through the year. Yeah. Claire [Interviewer] So can you talk us through training for rugby? Ella [Interviewee] Yeah, it can be quite intense. So the rugby season kind of runs around September till around May, which involves at least two pitch sessions every single week. You get a break for Christmas. And on top of that, we also have our strength and conditioning sessions, which is gym sessions which you have ‘on and off feet’ for, so ‘on feet’ is normally running or weight training. ‘Off feet’ is stuff like bike and rowing, because you kind of need the balance of strength and fitness, especially for rugby, because so much of it is lifting people, pushing people to the ground. You kind of have to have that balance of being able to run for 80 minutes and also being able to just do a lot with your muscles, I guess. So our pitch sessions are normally around two hours - involves a lot of skills and team building stuff, especially through our pre-season. So our pre-season is when we build all our fitness so that normally starts before the season so that’s through summer. It's a lot of running, which I play front row, which anyone who plays rugby will tell you front rowers are notorious for hating running. So it's a lot of running, a lot of getting your fitness up, conditioning your body so it's ready to play a year of rugby because it is difficult. It takes a lot out of you. If your body isn't prepped for it. You get injured in the first game. So it's a lot of kind of making sure that your muscles are ready and your joints aren't going to pop out, and all of that stuff that is a hazard with rugby. And then kind of throughout the season, just training will take different forms. And sometimes if you have a week off of games, you might do a lot of contact in that week to make sure that you're not kind of missing those key skills of being able to tackle and being to, to run through four people at once. Whereas if you've got kind of a big block of games all in a row, it'll be a bit lighter. So it will be kind of more skills based - make sure your catch pass is up to standard, and making sure you can lift the line out speedy and get anyone up in the air. Yes, so we kind of do Tuesdays and Thursdays for that and then play on a Saturday/Sunday and then you gym around that depending on your own schedule. So sometimes you might gym every day that you're not training. So it can be…yeah it can be quite intense. But it's really fun cause, because it's a team sport. Training is always kind of with your friends. So even though it is quite intense and it's quite an emotional sport because your adrenaline is always so high, your emotions are always at the surface. You've kind of got people on the pitch at any given time that have got your back. Who are kind of happy to pick you up off the floor, if you're getting up a bit slowly one time. So it is, it's a really lovely environment. It's really welcoming and very accepting of people from all kind of walks of life, and all body shapes are welcome at rugby. 'Cause you don't have to look a certain way to play rugby. You can look literally any way, and there's a spot for you on the pitch. So it's a real community feeling and there's very much a community around the club that I'm at as well. We kind of do stuff even when we're not playing. We'll all get together and have dinners together. I'll go to the beach or it's not just a when rugby's on, that's when you see these people. It's kind of a year long commitment to a group of friends that you kind of bond through a bit of hardship because rugby is a difficult game - mentally and physically I think, because there's always adrenaline pumping through you. Your emotions are always heightened for the full 80 minutes. So small things that normally you might be able to just brush off affect you differently on the pitch. But also I think it's really cathartic. It gets a lot out of you that you might not necessarily be able to get out in any other way. I think shoulder charging in someone to the ground is really therapeutic [laughs] but equally it's quite rewarding as well. You learn your own boundaries playing rugby and you learn how to be resilient, and you learn how to get back up every time you hit the ground. So I think there's a lot to be said about that. And it's a really disciplined sport that it's ideals are kind of build on respect, which I really like. It's different at football, where everyone shouts and swears at the referee. Rugby is very much: you respect your opposition; you respect the officials; you respect the people who come out and cheer you on because you all have got that one thing binding you all together. But also, yeah, the physical thing of rugby is challenging. You have to kind of set some the days aside to recover after you've played the game, which I often kind of get asked - does rugby not hurt? And I would say not in the moment, but it does afterwards. I think it's kind of like type B fun, where in the moment you kind of regret all the decisions that you've ever made and then after you are like this is the best I can't wait to play again. I'm hypermobile, which means my joints pop out quite a bit, which is a blessing and a curse with rugby, because it means that that any given moment I'm kind of more prone to certain injuries in other people, but it also means that my body can take a little bit more than a lot of people who play rugby. So if someone lands on my leg, my knee will kind of naturally bend the wrong way anyway, so that means I kind of get broken less than other people do. [laughs] But it takes a lot of making sure that you're strong enough and you've got enough kind of mental resilience to play and pull on a shirt every week, because it is… it's daunting sometimes. I find it quite hard to eat before games. I play every week. I'm used to it, but it's always a little bit of, oh, I'm about to go play rugby and my adrenaline is about to go through the roof. I can't eat now I'll be sick, so I do a lot of eating after the game. I eat a whole lot, because I've gone the whole morning without eating, so you kind of have to balance some of that stuff. We have like nutrition talks quite often throughout the year, where we get specialists in to come and tell us about what are the best foods to eat before or after matches, like what times are best to eat them. It is interesting because it does make you think about your body in a different way. It's not kind of just the thing that you walk around in. It's a bit of a tool. So I kind of see the purpose of what I do and how I look. It's very much like, well, I'm really good at rugby, and it's because I look and do this, and I can lift a person up in the air and I can do a scrum and I can tackle someone. So it makes me feel…I think there's a lot of body positivity from rugby, and especially because, like, I am a front rower, I'm not a skinny little person, but there are skinny little people on my team and we all are playing the same game, we’re on the same pitch, and we all have different uses. So I think sometimes there is that difficulty of being like, oh, is my body prep fit. But also it's very much like my body's got this really good use and I'm really good at doing that. And I do think there's just a lot of positivity comes from that. Claire [Interviewer] Yeah. Can you talk us through a typical match day? Ella [Interviewee] Hm mm. Yes so there's usually quite similar timings on the match day. Kick-off is normally around 2:00 [pm], which does mean you have the whole morning to feel nervous and feel like you're going to be sick and [laughs] all of the rest of it. But we kind of arrive at pitch about an hour and a half to two hours before kick-off so that we can do all of our warm-ups properly, but also to kind of mentally prepare and to sit as a team together, because we're about to go and fight for each other on the same pitch. So the changing rooms are always set up by our coaches, so all of our shirts are prepped for us. They're washed, cleaned and everything. So we walk in, we've got our shirts, we've got snacks put there for us - all of our, like, drinks are done, and we all have different recipes that we like for our drinks because some people like just plain water, some people like Lucozade, some people like hydration tablets and there's kind of a long list on the wall of what everyone likes for their own prep, because everyone kind of preps differently. I'm very much, um, calm before the storm with a rugby game. So I will be in the changing room kind of- I'll always chat and be happy - but I'm very much holding it until the whistle goes. So we'll do about an hour and a half of walking through what our game plan is, doing our team chats, making sure that our bodies prepped with our stretching, doing a bit of running, mobility stuff before the whistle, play the full 80 minutes of the game. And then after the game, we always have dinner with the other team, so you always kind of get your club colours on and you sit with the opposition and you eat dinner in the clubhouse. So whether that's a home or an away game, which is quite nice because I think it means you have to leave whatever's been on the pitch. So if there's any scraps or any kind of little bits of friction that's on the pitch left there, but it's also quite nice to know that you've kind of got a hot meal with all your friends after the game as well, because it really helps with recovery, whether that's mental or physical, especially if maybe you've taken a knock in the game, you know that afterwards you're just going to go and hang out, and you're not left by yourself feeling sorry for yourself. So it's really good. And we always get milkshakes as well after the game, which sounds like it's a treat, but it's actually for the protein. [laughs] So I quite enjoy being like told to have a milkshake because it feels like normally that's like a treat thing that I would like, right, I'm going to get a milkshake. But somebody still will say no, you need to drink your milk, which also feels a little bit like being a child, where I quite like it. [laughs] Yeah, it's a bit different with our away games because we've got a lot of traveling to do. We, we travel literally the length and breadth of the country. Sometimes that can mean really early starts. So this year, the earliest I've got an up for a bus is 4 a.m.. So I've kind of gotten on the bus at 5 [am] in the morning, travelled for maybe 6 hours, played a full game of rugby, eaten dinner and got back on the bus and gotten home at like 1 [am] or 2 [am] in the morning. That's normally okay if it's a Saturday, cause you have the Sunday to recover, but sometimes it's on a Sunday and you have to go to work the next day. [laughs] But kind of we always still have the same process of prepping for the game as a team in the changing room, making sure that our bodies are prepped and always eating a dinner as a team afterwards, regardless of if it's a home or an away game, just means sometimes you’re a bit… Sometimes it's a party bus on the way home, sometimes everyone's sleeping. [laughs] But yeah, really nice experiences that we kind of spend the whole day together doing that. Claire [Interviewer] How important is winning? Ella [Interviewee] A lot of people would say a lot, but I think that most of the time you can lose and still think that that was a good game. Sometimes the score literally means nothing. Sometimes it matters how hard you worked a lot. If you kept your head up and fought through the whole game. I know that there are a couple of times this season where we've ended up losing the game, but we've been in the change rooms absolutely buzzing, and we've been hyping each other up because actually we performed really well. Maybe that other team just got it on the day. So I think, as much as it is a competitive sport and we're all really competitive, it's much more about the experience of playing rather than the result, and especially if there's little wins, like, everyone kind of sets their own aims for every game. So sometimes I might walk into a game and say, I don't want to miss a single tackle today. We might lose that game. But if I hit my own aim often I'll come off the pitch being like, right, well, I did exactly what I wanted to do today in that game so I can kind of tick that box. Sometimes it will be more of a team thing, where we want to score a certain amount of tries, or we want to only concede a certain amount, and sometimes we'll walk off the pitch and if that's done and we've lost, it feels equally as good as winning the game. Claire [Interviewer] Yeah. What does it feel like after a win? Ella [Interviewee] Hm-mm. Yeah, I mean, obviously winning feels better than losing, even if you played well. I think it is different with a home game to an away game. Often if we win a home game, everyone gets on the pints very early. I mean, not all of our team do drink alcohol, so they'll be on the like soft drinks and stuff. But everyone is always involved in that. And because like currently I play in Newcastle, which is renowned as a party city, we’ll often go out afterwards, which even if you feel a little bit beaten up, people kind of make it till 2 [am] or 3 o’clock in the morning because we won, and same with kind of away days. So we'll turn the bus into a party bus, which some bus drivers love. Some people [laughs] tell us to keep it down a bit, so often it’ll involve a stop at a shop on the way back to buy some crates of some kind of alcohol, and we do a Party Bus, um, until we get back. But we also kind of do more wholesome stuff as well. So if we've won one day we might go to the beach tomorrow and do like a barbecue and we'll all celebrate. So yeah, there are highs and lows with it, but the highs are very high because the second you off the pitch, everyone's kind of already together. Like hugging, jumping up and down. If it's a really hard fought win, it's even more emotion. I know that this year we have a big rivalry with Leeds and we managed to beat them in our home and our away game this year, and we've got one of our supporters who's called Mr. Willis. He comes to every single one of our games and he hasn't seen as beat Leeds before and we beat them twice and he was there for both times. So I think our emotions that day were literally through the roof, because he was so excited that it made us more excited because he's such a staunch supporter of our team, that we literally didn't stop bouncing up and down for about an hour after the game. And he was part of it. And this is a man who's about 89, I think he is. And he was jumping up or down as much as we were. So it is really nice that we have that kind of support off of the pitch, because they will kind of lift us up as much as the people on the pitch will. Claire [Interviewer] So how long has women's rugby been professional? Ella [Interviewee] Yes, so very different for different countries. England's professional set up only started a few years ago so it's within kind of the last five years England has gone fully professional for the women's sport. So that means the centralised contracts for the England team, everyone who's selected for the England squad gets a full year of pay, so they can afford to only play rugby for as long as they're contracted. So it's a bit different with some of the other internationals’ set up. So I know that Ireland, Scotland, Wales got theirs a bit later, so theirs is only kind of been within the last three years. It's kind of same with the league system. So I played in a professional league which was the Premier League, which is the highest you could play at, and England has the best women's league in the world currently. So I got paid per match that I played but I also had to balance that with full time employment and as did everyone else on our team. So it was really difficult sometimes because some of the other teams that we would play, their only job was to play rugby every single week, so they were fitter and stronger than us because all they were doing was playing rugby and the rest of us would come to training after doing a full day's work, and we'd have to balance playing matches at the weekend with then having to go to work the next day and some people's work - they would get to have a day of rest because they are rugby players, so it's a really interesting balance. It's like I've played some of the best players in the world. I've played against England players who’ve won World Cups, I’ve played alongside some of the best players in the world, which was an amazing experience but there is a bit of disparity there, especially because I knew that every single man who played the same level as me was getting paid a full wage, and I was playing the highest level that you could play, and was kind of having to balance that with other financial incomes. Claire [Interviewer] Yeh..how do you financially manage? Ella [Interviewee] So that is where my arts and creative stuff comes into play a bit. So since finishing University, I've worked in the creative industries for the last couple of years. So I started off working at ARC, which is a multi-disciplinary arts centre in Stockton, which was amazing because I was just exposed to so much stuff that was happening. It's so specific to the area as well - a lot of the projects are community projects that, that kind of came out of there - the venue - and I was involved with a lot of that, both in my job but also freelance. So I would often freelance out of ARC to work on community projects. That was really interesting to work across stuff, like, I would do theatre and comedy and cinema and visual arts. So I really loved it. It was kind of a bit different every single day, and I wasn't going to work and be like, well, I'm only doing this one thing and that is it. And I kind of did all of that while still playing sport. From there, I got a job at Generator North-East, which is a music development and production company. So working with a lot of grassroots artists, managers, promoters, everyone from bands to everyone who makes sure that bands can play, which has been really interesting. I've not been doing that for too long. I've been there a couple of months, but luckily both of those jobs have been kind of nice enough to allow me to balance all of my rugby commitments alongside doing a day job I guess. I was doing 30 hours at ARC and I was allowed to kind of continue that working pattern at Generator. It is interesting because a lot of the people I work with don't play or necessarily follow along with sport, even watching it. So often, that's kind of my fun fact icebreaker thing, is that I play rugby, 'cause a lot of people in those environments don't, just for whatever reason, whether that's like commitments or they've just been more interested in doing creative stuff. So it's always a bit of a niche. Same way around with rugby. I'm kind of the only person that who works in the creative field at all. There's a lot of teachers, actually, quite a few doctors and surgeons, which I don't know how they balance the amount of time commitment. So yeah, it's nice that I've kind of been able to do what some people would call hobbies. I've been able to do them as professional things for my whole life so far, which has just been absolutely lovely because I love going to work and I love playing rugby, and I've been paid to do them, so it's great. Claire [Interviewer] So rugby is an extreme sport, is it dangerous? Ella [Interviewee] Yes. There's obviously always a risk of injury every time you set foot on a rugby pitch. I've seen some quite gnarly stuff. I've kind of experienced quite a bit as well, like broken bones, torn ligaments. There's always a risk. I know whenever I go to give blood, they always ask if I do extreme sports and they definitely count rugby as that whenever I question whether it counts. But yeah, there is kind of a part of you that has to know that you could come off the pitch on crutches or with a head injury, which is being very focused on at the minute. Concussions are very common. Mostly that's down to technique. I think a lot of the time you can avoid a head injury if your techniques, right, but in the moment, you can't always guarantee that because it's such a high-paced game. I've been on crutches a couple of times. I think about 3 times in my life I've been on crutches because of rugby injuries: broken ribs, broken noses, all sorts of stuff. And I think it's also different for women. We do have a different injury risk than men because of biology, ACL injuries are, I think it's 70% more likely to happen in women than in men, and recovery takes a different amount of time. Equally, some people on our team are mothers, which sometimes that means they might have to miss a game one week because they can't risk being injured the next week because their children need to do something. And I know that we've had a lot of talks with doctors and medical professionals because menstrual cycles actually affect your risk of injury. So there can be certain times of the month where you are more susceptible to being injured because of your menstrual cycle, which I know only affects certain people because not everyone kind of menstruates so they don't have to think about that when they're stepping onto a rugby pitch. So, yeah, there's always some kind of risk of danger, but you kind of go onto the pitch knowing that, and it is very much a mental battle to know that that's kind of a risk every time. Claire [Interviewer] I'm interested in the history of female rugby Ella [Interviewee] Hm mm Claire [Interviewer] It's quite recent. What would you like to see change to enable more people like you to get into women's rugby? Ella [Interviewee] Yeah, I mean, England have won the World Cup with the men, but they've won it more with the women and more recently the women also hold more Six Nations titles and more Grand Slam titles. So in England, the women's team are more successful in terms of what they win and when they've won it. But again, they haven't been playing as long professionally, so it's only kind of been televised recently. People have only been able to watch them in stadiums recently. They used to just play on back pitches before. A lot of the time when I was younger, we would get given the back pitch while the men played in the stadium, or they would get the big changing rooms and we would have the little ones, the pay gap was always different, so there is quite a long way to go. Even now, the last kind of five years has been a big change, and they're starting to make it a bit more equal and a bit more equity. But there is a big way to go. The Women's World Cup is being hosted in England this year, and it's the first time when they've kind of had massive stadiums for people to go and get tickets to watch them, and they're selling out places that a few years ago they wouldn't have even filled one stand. So it's amazing that the final is going to be at Twickenham, which is the home of England rugby, which has only been in the last few years that the women have even been allowed to play there because they were worried they wouldn't sell enough tickets. So I think when it gets to the point where, like it's shown on TV just as much as the men's is, and just as many people are going to watch people identify as women, I think it needs everybody to kind of invest their time and watch it. When we get to that point, I think I'll be happier because it has been a bit of an upward struggle. Our funding got cut when we were in a Premier League team, but the men's funding didn't for the same team and there was always a bit of politics around that. The RFU, which is the England body that oversees all of the rugby that takes place in the country, couldn't do anything about it, whether that was because they refused or whether they physically couldn't, I'm not quite sure. But the men continued to play and continue to get paid. But we had to take a step back and there's now currently no Premier League team north of Manchester, which is a real shame because I think a lot of people in this area, who grew up in the same place as me, now don't have that pathway. They have to move away from the area to play in the top flight of rugby. So I think if we can kind of get an established team back up here, that would be really good. I know we're kind of going our way about it, so I've been playing for a team, which is North of England, which is a select invitational only team, but we don't have a season the whole way through the year and they can't afford to currently pay us to play those games. We play people at Armed forces and the US collegiate set up. But that's the highest level that you can now play in this area without moving to Manchester or further south. I know that London's got 4 or 5 professional women's teams, and other than that, there's a handful that are outside of the capital, which is just a real shame because it means that you can't stay in the area that you grew up in and play rugby. You have to move. And I just... I'd like for that to change, but I don't know how that's going to happen. We're going our way about it, but it's a slow process. Claire [Interviewer] So you're 25. Have you trained other younger players? Ella [Interviewee] Yes. So I did some coaching while I was at secondary school. I coached some of the younger girls’ teams on lunch time and after school, but I also coached football, and I got my Level One coaching award for that and coached 4 to 11 year olds with a team called Wildcats, which was a funded programme. We did it completely voluntary but we had money to put into the team so that the girls could have polo shirts that had their teams on, they could have football kits. They had like certificates to take away each week for when they hit milestones. We were really fortunate. We got recognised for our work on that. There was four of us in total who were a full female coaching set up, but we won the Contribution to the Community Vibe award through Darlington Council, which was really lovely, to kind of recognise the amount of effort that we put in, because we were all college age students who were given a part-time to make sure that the girls in the area had kind of the same opportunity that we did to play sport. Not all of the girls were interested in the fact it was football. A lot of them just wanted to kind of run around. And I think we became kind of role models for those young girls because we would talk about, like, how much we would play, and I think we would always go to training after we'd finish coaching them so they could physically see how much effort we would put in, because we would go straight from coaching them for an hour and a half to running around ourselves, which took a lot of energy. But yeah, it was really lovely because the girls who were on our team just had no other way of being involved in sport, whether that was because their school couldn't offer it or because our sessions were free and other ones weren’t, especially kind of in the area. There's a lot of working class people in Darlington. So it's really nice that we could offer that free opportunity for people to be involved. I think at a glance, a lot of the things that I learnt from the creative industries makes me a better rugby player, whether that's kind of thinking outside the box, having creative problem solving skills. Maybe it's not always a route A kind of problem. I also think it makes me a better team-mate, because I think a lot of the creative stuff that I've done is - you have to be quite empathetic to be good at them- and I think it makes me better at kind of understanding my teammates, knowing if maybe their kind of emotions are doing one thing in one minute. I can help them to deal or manage in some way. That also means that a lot of the time, I can create gifts for people at rugby that they have no idea how I make them, which is really lovely. And for the reverse, I think rugby's made me very resilient. It's made me quite tough, thick skinned. I can take a lot and I know how hard I can push myself. I think that's one of the big ones. I know that I can kind of hit a ceiling and then push through it a lot, and I think it's made me quite good at dealing with stressful situations under pressure. And I think that translates through to some of the work I do with communities as well. Sometimes I'm working with people who have never played rugby before, but there's some kind of common ground there. Yeah, there's a lot of crossover that's kind of unseen, which I like. Claire [Interviewer] Is working in the creative industries stressful? Ella [Interviewee] Yes. It's, it's really rewarding and I love it and it's brilliant. But there are also times when, especially if you're freelancing, you have no idea when your next freelancing job’s going to come. Sometimes you have to balance your own finances very well, and you have to plan ahead and make sure that you've thought about contingencies that might not ever happen, but you have to know that you've prepared for them. I think as well, people think that the creative bit of it is always very lovely and gentle, and sometimes it takes a lot of planning and a lot of thinking ahead, and especially if it's working with community groups, you have to be really sensitive to people's experiences and what projects you're doing with them and how that might impact them, like in the moment or going forward. So I think there's always about 10 different things you're thinking about before you do stuff. I've been quite lucky that I've had fairly solid work with venues and with businesses where I've been able to work most days and always have an income through the creative industries. But I do think sometimes you have to deliver a lot of stuff to people that they think you don't do a lot of work for. That actually, there's about 10 hours of sometimes just you staring at a screen, not knowing how to even start before you even begin the process. So yeah, it can be really stressful, but equally, it can be really rewarding. And I really love the amount of community work I get to do with it. I really love working with people who maybe haven't done any creative stuff that they've recognized as being creative, and kind of showing them how they can do that without me there as well, being able to facilitate them exploring something that they've never done before, and they can take it away and do it at home. Claire [Interviewer] Who are your trailblazers? Ella [Interviewee] I think close to home, my mum has been a real big one for me, which I know is probably an answer that a lot of people can give. But she has started her own business and has successfully done that for my entire life. And alongside my dad, has also kind of raised 2 children and a business and made sure that we always had everything that we needed to have. Maybe not everything we wanted, but everything we needed. She has balanced all of that with also living in very working class area, working class childhood, and I think it was really difficult for her to go to Uni[versity] in the place that she was from, so she managed to go to University kind of against the odds a little bit. She also taught me about role models. I think she showed me people like Emmeline Pankhurst and Rosa Parks and people like that, who, she kind of framed them in a very punk rock kind of way. So yeah, I think she was very influential when I was a kid. I think as well, as I got older, I kind of started discovering my own trailblazers. So very much, Sarah Hunter is a massive one for me, so she is the most capped England player in history, men or women, and she's from Newcastle. So it was like, this is someone from the North East who's done something that I've kind of dreamed about doing my whole life, and she also played for Novacastrians, which is my club. So we've got a massive mural of her on the side of a wall. So I think she's often not recognised as being one of those rugby legends because she was a woman, but she really fought for recognition of the sport, and especially kind of on the international stage because she captained the World Cup winning team and won, like more Grand Slam Six Nations titles than any of the England men's team have, which I just think is absolutely incredible. And I'm pretty sure that she started playing on a men's team as well when she was a kid. So I was like, this is basically like me but 10 years ahead, which was brilliant. I think my sister as well. She works in the charity sector. She took a very different path to me, but I really, really respect what she does. She's a big advocate for unheard voices, and I think that I've always kind of tried to be my sister- because she's older than me and she's always set a good example. I think she set something to live up to, which I try my very best every single day to do. Yeah. Claire [Interviewer] I'm wondering if you wanted to give their names at all? Ella [Interviewee] Yeah, so my mum is Jill Brewster. She was also born in Darlington and grew up here. My sister is Anna Brewster and my dad is Lee Brewster, which I'm sure they don't mind being mentioned and talked about how wonderful they are, and how influential they were to me as a kid growing up and still now. Yeah. Claire [Interviewer] What ambitions do you have for the future? Ella [Interviewee] Rugby is obviously a big one. Rugby definitely is to keep playing at the highest level I can play at, for as long as possible. Sometimes injury prevents that happening, so, as long as I can kind of strive to play as high as I can, for as long as I can, as long as my body can keep going, I won't retire until I have to retire. That's the way I'm thinking about it. In terms of creative industry things, I really want to pursue production office working in the Film & TV industry, which is a very male-dominated industry, which is really interesting I think I rise to a lot of challenges when it comes to kind of gender stuff, but I really want to make film and TV in Britain, and I think I'm kind of on track currently, very early stages, so it will be really interesting to see in a couple of years how far along that journey I am. But really coming off the back of being on a set yesterday and working with the BBC production offices, I'm very much aiming to keep going down that track, creating stuff, but keeping it, keeping it in Britain. Very passionate about that. Claire [Interviewer] So we're coming to the end of the interview. Is there anything else that you would like to add or speak about? Ella [Interviewee] I don't think so, but maybe if you asked me in 50 years, I'll listen back to this and it'll be completely different. We'll see. OUTRO: Thank you for listening to Periplum’s Trailblazers Podcasts, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. To listen to more of the series, and follow our projects visit our website at periplumheritage.com