Exploring Identity Through Design with Lesley-Ann Noel

[00:00:00] Gerry Scullion: Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. My name is Gerry Scullion and today we speak with the one and only Dina Design at OCAD in Toronto, author of the fantastic book which I have here, author of Design Social Change. It's Lesley Ann Noll and this is the precursor to another conversation that we aim to have in the next couple of months.

[00:00:20] Gerry Scullion: But in this episode we speak about Lesley's past growing up in Trinidad and explore the parallels in her own lives. Where we've both dealt with post colonialism and we start to weave together the pieces of Leslie's own experience of working across the world that brought her to where she is today, which is an incredible leader, speaking about the decolonialism of design.

[00:00:41] Gerry Scullion: It's a fantastic conversation. I know you're going to love it. I loved it. So let's jump straight in.

[00:00:55] Gerry Scullion: Leslie Ann, um. I am absolutely thrilled to have you on the podcast. I've been a [00:01:00] long time admirer, and for anyone looking on YouTube, I have Lesley Ann's book, which is a number of years old now, I think. Um. One

[00:01:07] Lesley-Ann Noel: year.

[00:01:08] Gerry Scullion: Two years, isn't it?

[00:01:09] Lesley-Ann Noel: No, it was released in November 2023.

[00:01:12] Gerry Scullion: 23. I thought for a sitzvek when I was 22, but you're right, you know, cause you wrote it.

[00:01:18] Gerry Scullion: It's your book. So who am I to argue by saying is it right or wrong, but look again, I'm delighted to have you here. Um, there's loads of things we're going to talk about. I want to cover off lots of ground with you, but maybe for people who aren't aware of your incredible history and incredible work, um, how do you describe what you do?

[00:01:41] Lesley-Ann Noel: That, that's a really difficult question because I, I mean, I'm going to be like, Oh, philosophical. I think I just, um, right. Um, so when people ask me what I do, I say, I'm a designer. And then if they ask me for a little [00:02:00] bit more description, I might say something like I'm an equity focused designer, but that I think is a new term that I started to use.

[00:02:10] Lesley-Ann Noel: And, um, The, the work people know me for is probably grounded in some level of decoloniality, um, some level of critical theory. And it's about me challen challenging this field that I belong to. And um, challenging it, not in a theoretical way, I challenge it through methods. So, you know, like if I, if I see.

[00:02:43] Lesley-Ann Noel: a gap or a problem, I'm immediately trying to create a method, a tool, a template or something to get us to do things the way that I think is right. Which is very, it sounds very subjective, but it, but it's, it's [00:03:00] also very consciously me thinking about, um, who I am, you know, like me as a person from the Caribbean, as a black person, as a woman, um, you know, what is designed for me.

[00:03:14] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, or what is designed for people from many different groups in the world. So a lot of the work that I do is around that. So that wasn't a quick answer.

[00:03:24] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. So that was great. So you mentioned there, like you're from the Caribbean, um, whereabouts in the Caribbean are you from?

[00:03:32] Lesley-Ann Noel: I'm from Dago Martin, Trinidad and Tobago,

[00:03:36] Gerry Scullion: so the

[00:03:37] Lesley-Ann Noel: southernmost island in the Caribbean.

[00:03:40] Lesley-Ann Noel: What was that, Jerry?

[00:03:41] Gerry Scullion: You've got a great football team, Trinidad and Tobago.

[00:03:44] Lesley-Ann Noel: Yeah, a little while ago.

[00:03:46] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, a little while ago. I think Dwight, you were showing my footballing knowledge here. But, how long have you been outside of Trinidad and Tobago?

[00:03:55] Lesley-Ann Noel: So, officially, actually since [00:04:00] 2015, so that's coming on 10 years.

[00:04:03] Lesley-Ann Noel: Okay. But I've been back and forth and back and forth for most of my adult life. So I studied in Brazil, I lived in Brazil for six years and then in Brazil, um, we had this class about globalization and I kept saying, okay, well, I'm this global citizen and, and, um, I, I kind of just set up my life to be that.

[00:04:29] Lesley-Ann Noel: Right. So I, um, I was, I would be in Trinidad for a while and then I'd maybe find a residency somewhere and go and live somewhere else for a little while, come back. Um, And then go again. So I spent some time in East Africa after, um, in different countries in East Africa, and then I was, um, as a consultant with the Caribbean Export, um, Caribbean Export Development Agency, and that had me traveling like all around the Caribbean.

[00:04:57] Lesley-Ann Noel: So, um, I've always [00:05:00] been back and forth and back and forth, but officially 2015 is when I left.

[00:05:04] Gerry Scullion: So, we were talking earlier because I'm Irish and I'm, you know, from the Republic of Ireland, so we gained our independence from British colonialism in the early 1900s, but we still have a part of our island, which is still kind of co owned and co maintained with the British government and the Irish government called Northern Ireland.

[00:05:27] Gerry Scullion: So I've got my own perspective on colonialism. Um, so that's the lens that I look through when, when I speak to you today about that. Can you tell us a little bit more around the background, um, of what it was like growing up in Trinidad and Tobago in those formative years and how it influenced you as a changemaker and as a designer?

[00:05:48] Lesley-Ann Noel: So I grew up in Trinidad. I'm gonna age myself, um, in the seventies, um, well, seventies and eighties, so that's already post [00:06:00] independence. Okay. And that's actually independence. Independence was 1962. Okay. And then we became a republic in 1976. Right. Um, I mean, I was still very young in 76. I would've been about four.

[00:06:14] Lesley-Ann Noel: Right. Okay. Um, but maybe then we might have had like different weaves. Of post coloniality. Yeah. And, um, I think that the household that I grew up in was very decolonial, um, or post colonial. I don't know which way to use, but we were not nostalgic for colonial days at all. And so I grew up in a house where we were like, just very black, very Trinidadian or.

[00:06:43] Lesley-Ann Noel: Very Caribbean because my mother's not Trinidadian. My mother's from Jamaica. And, um, you know, I think we grew up with a really strong sense of identity. You know, my parents were, um, I think they were among the first graduates of the university of the Westernese. So again, they [00:07:00] had a very kind of pan Caribbean ideas.

[00:07:04] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, and ideas about Caribbean Um, intellectualism and, and all of that. And at the same time, I knew families that were nostalgic for colonial days. So I would hear both conversations at the same time, you know, people talking about, yeah, we are Trinidadians and we can do everything. Yeah. And other, you know, I might visit some friend's house and then they'll be like, Oh, in the good old days.

[00:07:28] Lesley-Ann Noel: I'm like, what? Good old days. Right. So it was, um, an interesting experience. But I am. Happy for the household that I grew up in where I felt that anything was possible. Yeah. Um, and that we can do everything with Caribbean, um, knowledge and identity and, you know, so I grew up like with that kind of

[00:07:53] Gerry Scullion: strength.

[00:07:54] Lesley-Ann Noel: Yeah.

[00:07:55] Gerry Scullion: So identity is a really nice topic to go a little bit closer into. [00:08:00] Um. In terms of identity, Trinidad and Tobago identity, what does that look like for you now, knowing that you've lived in all of these other places? What does it give you as a designer to be able to look through many different lenses?

[00:08:19] Gerry Scullion: and how you were able to reflect back on those days?

[00:08:24] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, well, having lived in more places, and now having maybe a more complex view of the world, um, I'm trying to think what So, my Trinidadian ness Yeah. gave me Both a sense of privilege and maybe a bit of lack of privilege at the same time. But, but, you know, I need to acknowledge that I am from Trinidad.

[00:08:58] Lesley-Ann Noel: Yeah, we, we said this, I said this [00:09:00] jokingly, um, when we were chatting before, you know, I'm from West Trinidad, which is where the oppressor classes are and people in from Western data are kissing me right now, but it is, you know, when you are from the West, you think that that's. All of Trinidad, right? And, and, and notice that I am saying Trinidad and not Trinidad and Tobago.

[00:09:21] Lesley-Ann Noel: And that's another bias, right? That you, you kind of forget, um, a lot of other places in the country. And I'll have to say that a lot of my experience in other places and my experience of otherness. Has made me much more aware of life in other parts of Trinidad and Tobago, right? I would not have been as sensitive to all of these issues.

[00:09:49] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, yeah, it's not just my life in Trinidad and Tobago. It's my life in Trinidad and Tobago on top of my life in Brazil and my life in Tanzania and [00:10:00] Mozambique and the south of the U. S. And, you know, it's all of that that makes me kind of hyper aware. Of difference and otherness and privilege and lack of privilege and, um, yes, all of that.

[00:10:15] Gerry Scullion: When we're designing services or whatever it is we're, we're designing, um, And we, we look for the people that we're going to speak with in the research phase. And we're trying to get access to those people. Identity doesn't really come into it an awful lot of the time. Like a lot of the time for designers, they, they tend to lean, and myself is included, you know, we look for the behaviours behind it.

[00:10:42] Gerry Scullion: It's very hard to sometimes understand and unpack what identity means. What advice do you give to design researchers out there who Really want to include the importance of identity, because I think identity. is a very complex thing [00:11:00] to really unpack for an individual. Is it possible, as a side question as well, for people to hold more than one identity at the same time?

[00:11:10] Lesley-Ann Noel: Yes, definitely people can hold, um, people have many different, um, facets of their identity all the time. You know, we, we have, um, of course it sounds like schizophrenia if I describe it like this, but we, but we do have multiple identities, um, All the time, and we sometimes have to figure out which hat we are wearing in which situation.

[00:11:37] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, I think if I could just go back for a second to your last question about what life in Trinidad has taught me about identity. It is You know, it could be about people's strength or sometimes, you know, the strength of [00:12:00] the opinion that you might get from a place that you don't expect it, right? Like, um, you know, people in, um, in Trinidad and Tobago, in the Caribbean in general, people can be very bold and direct and will tell you what they think.

[00:12:15] Lesley-Ann Noel: And, um, I think when I went to, for example, the United States, I would sometimes find that people didn't expect, um, poor people, I'm saying in quotes, to have an opinion, air quotes, yes, um, or didn't expect or didn't expect. Older people again in air quotes to have an opinion and people in, in, in the Caribbean in a place like Trinidad or in a place like Jamaica, people are very, very strong and forceful about their opinions.

[00:12:53] Lesley-Ann Noel: And I would say then maybe that, um, makes me very aware of needing to [00:13:00] hear people's stories. Um, and listen, so I personally don't enjoy big data as much as I do hearing like, Anecdotal stories. Anecdotal. Yeah. Yeah. People's real stories about, um, something. And, and I know that sometimes we have to use big data, but we have to, for me, when I try to do research, that I'm trying to overlap the two things.

[00:13:26] Lesley-Ann Noel: So that's, yes, I'm trying to humanize the data because people have very human stories that we have to, we have to hear.

[00:13:35] Gerry Scullion: At its core, um, like it's really interesting to hear you speak about Trinidad and your upbringing and stuff. That whole kind of era was very similar to mine. Like, you know, I grew up, I was born in the late 70s.

[00:13:48] Gerry Scullion: Um, you know, one half of my family is Northern Irish and they had to leave Northern Ireland due to the troubles. We owned a post office, it was being held up all the time by, by like the, the Republican [00:14:00] Army in Ireland, but we got out of that and I still think in Ireland we're still dealing with an awful lot of that, that trauma that's, that lives on intergenerationally between, you know, forefathers and stuff.

[00:14:14] Gerry Scullion: What's it like, from your perspective, when you go back to Trinidad, with those multiple lenses that you've garnered from travelling around the world and so forth, how are they dealing with their post colonial past in Trinidad?

[00:14:31] Lesley-Ann Noel: Ah, you know, I think, so I mentioned earlier in our conversation, you know, Some families that are, in fact, nostalgic for,

[00:14:45] Gerry Scullion: you mentioned,

[00:14:46] Lesley-Ann Noel: yeah, and I think that in some places and in some forms of service delivery, I think that, um, it's [00:15:00] sometimes it's almost like they're punishing people.

[00:15:02] Lesley-Ann Noel: I think that that thing of people needing to suffer. Um, as they receive a service, I see that as a form of colonialism manifesting itself, you know, that, that, um, so I, I think for me, I had this discussion with a colleague of mine in Brazil some time ago, and we were, we were talking about service delivery in post colonial societies, how we sometimes felt that there was a tie to Um, like slavery societies and the way services are delivered in some places.

[00:15:39] Lesley-Ann Noel: So I'll give you an example. I'm going to go and renew my passport or my driver's license and I just have to suffer through the whole process. And if I complain about it, um, it's almost like I'm not entitled to anything better. Right. And maybe this is just a, maybe it's the same. I'm [00:16:00] now in another country and I'm seeing that.

[00:16:01] Lesley-Ann Noel: Okay. It's the same problem, maybe everywhere. But when I think about it, when I'm in Trinidad, I think that this is somehow tied to our, um, colonial past and thinking that, Poor people, working class people don't have the right to anything better. Um, again, that could be the same everywhere in the world, but I think of it as, um, tied to that.

[00:16:33] Lesley-Ann Noel: But there's another thing that, um, maybe a little unrelated. But it is an impact, I think, of, or it is a manifestation of post colonialism. Um, remember I said also people are very vocal, right? I think that some of that is also a post colonial thing, right? Where, um, you know, people in Trinidad can be very [00:17:00] irreverent, right?

[00:17:01] Lesley-Ann Noel: And so they'll, they'll say something like, say, um, like, you know, they kind of point a finger at you and say, well, you know, masa day done, right? I'm not, you cannot boss me around. I'm not your slave. I'm not, you know, and, and you get that kind of attitude all over, um, all the time in Trinidad, you know, that strong reaction to, hey, Colonialism and slavery and plantation systems and the plantocracy, all that has ended and you cannot control me because of that, um, even though in the, at the same time, there are a lot of places where people are, in fact, very controlled, but I think that people, um, are open and vocal about telling you, telling everybody that you cannot control me, that those times are over.

[00:17:59] Lesley-Ann Noel: And I have moved [00:18:00] beyond that.

[00:18:01] Gerry Scullion: So the lingering kind of colonial past, there's still behaviors there that people are trying to kind of remove, shed that skin, so to speak, is what I'm hearing. Yeah. I can see that in Ireland as well. And it's funny that you brought this up, this whole kind of, you notice it in culture where people say, Oh, I'm sorry, you bump into somebody in the street.

[00:18:23] Gerry Scullion: I'm sorry. Like, it's this whole kind of like, Constant request for forgiveness, even though it wasn't your fault, like, you know, um, and it's, it's interesting to see the parallels between the both, both postcolonial kind of, uh, the impacts. Can I, can I talk to you a little bit more around when you were educated from a design perspective?

[00:18:47] Gerry Scullion: So I want to understand and unpack that a little bit more around. You're coming from that mindset, that whole kind of, uh, you know, your childhood, your formative years, and now you're being educated as a designer, [00:19:00] what parts of the design process? Were the most contentious for you when you were dealing with and exploring design and you could see its colonial past.

[00:19:11] Lesley-Ann Noel: So I did not see coloniality in the design process during my early design education, right? Um, you know, I started design in school in Trinidad. Um, and, I don't, it didn't seem to be an issue there, the way Um, the way I was, I was taught design and was learning design, doing design in Trinidad, it did not seem to enter, um, the consciousness.

[00:19:46] Lesley-Ann Noel: And in when I, so I did undergrad, um, I did industrial design in Brazil and I was just kind of excited about being in Brazil. Um, there may have been, [00:20:00] not even may have been, somebody will tell you. Yes, there was, but I'll say it like this. There may have been coloniality in the way we approached things, but again, I couldn't see it then.

[00:20:14] Lesley-Ann Noel: And maybe it's me now as an older person and much more confident in my view of the world. Um, it's, it's like in my forties, oh, actually maybe even my thirties, I started to see coloniality in the way. Um, design for development projects would take place. And I actually worked as a consultant with design for development agencies for many years when I was with that, um, Caribbean export, um, that development agency.

[00:20:50] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, so development is a whole colonial idea, right? The idea that you're going to go

[00:20:55] Gerry Scullion: and

[00:20:55] Lesley-Ann Noel: save, yeah, develop people or develop, you know, like. [00:21:00] People in other places, right? And it's, it's all colonial. And then when you add design to that, it can get a lot worse. And so actually I would do these projects where I was hired as a designer to work with crafts, people to work with.

[00:21:19] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, small businesses, manufacturers, all that to help them prepare products for export. Um, but I struggled with that week and then I, and then I had the guilt of being paid for that week. So, you know, I had the intellectual struggle and then the guilt of, okay, yeah, I'm doing this stuff and I'm getting paid.

[00:21:41] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, but that is actually part of what, there were a lot of things that, that drove me to a PhD. Um, and that was part of it as well, you know, trying to rationalize and in the end, my PhD was not about that at all, but it, um, it was me trying to [00:22:00] rationalize the way we as designers were imposing design decisions on, um, on other people.

[00:22:13] Lesley-Ann Noel: And I couldn't decide if this was doing good or if it was doing harm. Um, and if you, you know, even if you speak with me today on some days, I'll say maybe we were doing good on some days. I'll say we were doing, um, um, I would certainly do the work differently today than I did, uh, 15 years ago or 20 years ago.

[00:22:34] Lesley-Ann Noel: Yeah.

[00:22:35] Gerry Scullion: So, so now you're in design education, isn't that correct? Yes. Yes. You're, you're in Toronto. Am I saying I'm

[00:22:42] Lesley-Ann Noel: in Toronto. I'm the Dean of design at, at OCAD University . Yeah. Which is,

[00:22:47] Gerry Scullion: which is absolutely fantastic. Like, you know, as I said, I've been a number of years, I've been following, you know, where you've been and stuff.

[00:22:53] Gerry Scullion: And this is a real relevant, relatively new, um, role in [00:23:00] Toronto. Toronto. Toronto.

[00:23:02] Lesley-Ann Noel: Yeah. We have to say it right. And, and actually there's another, the indigenous pronunciation I have not mastered the indigenous pronunciation of Toronto is I think

[00:23:14] Gerry Scullion: very nice. So before we get on the call, I, I know I'm hopping around from Billy to Jack here a little bit.

[00:23:21] Gerry Scullion: Um, and I was fixing something on my desk here and I. Reading your book at the same time over the last couple of days and like the power of my subconscious, I started to reflect maybe there's something in that as well, you know, when I'm disconnecting, my brain is processing things, but my whole kind of experience with, you know, colonialism, as I said, I had a difficult enough relationship with it and it wasn't until when I was in Australia the very first time or the second time and I was researching with You know, people, uh, in South Sydney in an indigenous [00:24:00] area, and they said that I was okay and they said I was okay because I was Irish.

[00:24:07] Lesley-Ann Noel: And I said,

[00:24:07] Gerry Scullion: Oh, tell me why. And they says, well, we know what you've been through and what we've been through is very similar. And I was like, okay, well, first of all. I haven't been through it. I said my, my, my family's history of being through it. They said, Oh, well, that's one and the same. And now we see it.

[00:24:23] Gerry Scullion: But up until that point, I'd really had a complex perspective of, of, of colonialism and how I saw that. But now I'm starting to see it almost as. As a, in some ways, a blessing that I'm able to look at the world through that lens. Now, we've identified that we've got a similar trajectory in our, in our lives.

[00:24:47] Gerry Scullion: What are you doing in, in regards how you're evolving design education in OCAD when you're bringing those lenses back into the work?

[00:24:57] Lesley-Ann Noel: Yeah, so [00:25:00] I, so before I came to ocad, um, I was, before I became an administrator, I was a researcher, I was a research track professor. Yeah. And my work focused on equity.

[00:25:13] Lesley-Ann Noel: Mm-hmm . And as I mentioned earlier, I would challenge design processes and then try to embed more equity into everything.

[00:25:27] Lesley-Ann Noel: I assume is part of what made OCAD call me, right? Actually, I had a conversation, um, with a senior at OCAD who said, we think that you are nimble and responsive. And, um, that's what we're interested in. Um, and so, so. All of that to say, when I came here, I was impressed, um, by the work that's already happening on the ground.

[00:25:59] Lesley-Ann Noel: [00:26:00] Um, of course I knew, uh, the work that my predecessor had been doing. Um, But that that is that all of that is for me to say, I don't have to do as much as I thought I would have to do because they're already doing it. A lot of people at OCAD are already very reflective, or not, maybe not everybody, but I think that there is a, um, there is an interest.

[00:26:35] Lesley-Ann Noel: Um, there is a mandate. Um, there is a mandate for decolonizing curriculum here.

[00:26:43] Gerry Scullion: Okay, not in Canvas or in OCAD?

[00:26:45] Lesley-Ann Noel: At OCAD. It's part of the strategic plan.

[00:26:48] Gerry Scullion: Okay.

[00:26:48] Lesley-Ann Noel: There, uh, is a mandate to include Indigenous learning outcomes. There is, uh, you know, so there are a lot of things that are happening even before [00:27:00] I I got here.

[00:27:02] Lesley-Ann Noel: So I have to figure out, okay, what do you, what do I do now? But my job now is a support rule. That's what I've been telling people. My job is to support people in making sure they're doing these things. And then because I'm coming from, um, fairly broad design practice, I, um, um, And now, okay, if I put back on my researcher hat a little bit, I'm trying to write a little bit more about what people are doing here, because people here are doing stuff, which might not mean they have time to write about it.

[00:27:38] Lesley-Ann Noel: But I know that in the design education world, people are looking for case studies, they're looking for examples of practice, they're looking. And I've been, I've only been here for two months, and I can see that there are examples that other people around the world would be interested in. For example, you know, like, how do you weave indigenous learning outcomes into [00:28:00] an illustration class?

[00:28:02] Lesley-Ann Noel: And how do you tell me? Oh, gosh, no, don't ask me that yet. I can't answer that yet, but I know that these are the conversations. Actually, there's a type class. Not indigenous learning, um, outcomes. There's a type class that is fascinating by a professor called, um, Diane Mckell. And, um, Diane teaches a multilingual type class that respects the fact that people in the class speak different languages and use different alphabets.

[00:28:34] Lesley-Ann Noel: And so it's not a class that imposes English on people. And there are a few other professors here at OCAD who are, um, doing work like that. Um, Isabel Morales is another one who is again, not imposing English on students. And so people can bring in Their multilingual identities, their multi [00:29:00] alphabetic identities, if that's a word, um, into the classroom.

[00:29:03] Lesley-Ann Noel: And, and so all of these things that are already happening, um, I hadn't seen, or I have not seen in a lot of other places, right? Um, I was in a staff meeting and the industrial design people said, well, okay, how do we do? A decolonial industrial design class. I haven't been in a place where people are asking these kinds of questions

[00:29:24] Gerry Scullion: before.

[00:29:24] Gerry Scullion: That is something that, you know, a lot of people are looking to learn. Um, so I, I know we were probably close enough for time here for Leslie, but like, you're one of the people that has risen and, um, you know, your book design social change starts to tackle some of these things, but how do you respond to those questions?

[00:29:51] Gerry Scullion: When people say, how do you, how do you redesign a class? So an industrial.

[00:29:58] Lesley-Ann Noel: So I, [00:30:00] um, I start off, well, okay, in design social change, one of the big ideas is about building a critical awareness of the world. And I've been toying with a decolonial industrial design class for a long time, um, because that's my discipline.

[00:30:17] Lesley-Ann Noel: Uh, I don't have an answer yet, but I've started to think, well, maybe it is about Talking more intentionally about materials, for example, and where materials come from and the labor that's involved in the material and the people and, you know, like if we're, if we're seeing the real world around the objects that we're making, that could be one way of starting to, um, make the class more critical.

[00:30:41] Lesley-Ann Noel: Right, and make the class less focused in, um, some of the historical precedents. Yeah. Um, which are good and interesting and relevant for some things, but not necessarily for others. You know, so like if we are being [00:31:00] decolonial, we are probably Breaking some of those historical paths and asking some new questions.

[00:31:08] Lesley-Ann Noel: And so for me, one of the questions is about that. Um, seeing the world and the materials and the processes and everything a little bit more critically. Um, in the process and there, there, there are other things I'm going to, I'm going to learn with the people that I'm working with as we move along. Yeah,

[00:31:27] Gerry Scullion: Leslie, it's, it's been a fantastic introduction to speaking with you today.

[00:31:34] Gerry Scullion: Like your book, as you mentioned, it's one year old, by the way, just want to put that out. It's one year old for anyone listening at the start. It is, it was published by the Stanford D school. Is that right? Yes, it was. Yeah, they did. Okay. So you can get it. Um, You can get it most places. I think I ended up getting this on Amazon.

[00:31:51] Gerry Scullion: Um, unfortunately, uh, it was the, it was the, the only option that I could get in Ireland at the moment, but please, true, if you're near an independent bookstore, try and go and [00:32:00] go independent if you can, folks. I heard on the grapevine, um, that the CEO of Amazon is doing very well for himself and doesn't need anyone.

[00:32:09] Lesley-Ann Noel: So there are lots. of independent bookstores. And, you know, I recommend people find an independent bookstore and see if they'll ship it to you.

[00:32:16] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, people, uh, can find out more about you on LinkedIn, which we'll put a link to your LinkedIn in there as well. Is there any other places that you usually direct people to, to find out more about your work, Leslie?

[00:32:32] Lesley-Ann Noel: Really, LinkedIn and Instagram are the easiest places to find me. Um, I should be findable via OCAD's website now. But yeah, yeah, LinkedIn and Instagram are great places to find me. And, and I continue conversations. I mean, people can really reach out and, and chat and I respond. Yeah,

[00:32:52] Gerry Scullion: absolutely. Listen, thank you so much for your time, uh, Lesley Ann.

[00:32:56] Gerry Scullion: It was absolutely brilliant, uh, getting to know you a bit better today. Thanks so much. [00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Lesley-Ann Noel: Thank you so much.