Edge Forum

After dropping out of education at 16, Sean Kirkegaard spent several years working in the catering industry, before launching himself in a direction that inspired him. He now works for the BBC. From his many experiences he has learnt that you don’t have to ‘get it right’ straight away, and his advice to young people is: “don’t be afraid to mess up early on.”

Could you start off by telling us who you are and what you do?

My name’s Sean Kirkegaard, and I’m the development executive for BBC Learning Campaigns. We’re a department within the BBC that funds programmes and produces campaigns.  We have a pot of money which we use to fund programming on BBC1, BBC2 and BBC3.  In addition, we fund programmes which we think have a social purpose, then we amplify that social purpose by building a multimedia and outreach campaign based on the spirit of that show.

Can you give us an example?

To give you a recent example, we worked with Gardener’s World to create a campaign called Dig In, which encourages the country, post-credit crunch, to be a bit more self-sufficient and grow your own veg.

To launch the campaign, Gardener’s World promoted a free seed giveaway on its website, and I’m pleased to say that we had 200,000 packets of seeds given away within a fortnight. The demand was so strong that the phone lines broke, the website crashed - we had to take the whole thing down. Just for seeds. Free packets of seeds!

Can you tell us about your education?

So, I was a kid in High School in Australia. I think a lot was expected of me. I was head of the student council, all this kind of stuff. Got good grades. Then I hit what we call matriculation, which is pretty much A-levels, and went off the rails a bit. I dropped out of High School, and turned my back on that whole life.

How did your parents react?

I initially thought I’d just kind of doss at my parents’ house, but they weren’t having any of that, so they said, ‘Find your own way!’ So I got out of the house, and then realised, ‘maybe I’m gonna have to earn some money to live’…so I started washing dishes. Because my mum worked in catering the one thing I did know how to do was cook. I worked my way up to kitchen hand, did some waiting…finally I got to a point where I was like a junior cook. Then I thought ‘I’ve gotta get out of here’. I grew up in a town called Adelaide, which is a small town at the bottom of Australia…you know, when you’re 18 and you’re living in a small town, you kind of want to get the hell out.

That’s something a lot of young people would agree with!

The weird thing is, now that I’ve had kids, actually all I really wanna do is go back to where I grew up! But that’s another story.

And then you left Australia for the UK?

Yes. And by the time I’d reached 21, I was Head Chef of a restaurant in Kensington. But that’s quite quick, and I only got there through a series of accidents. Basically the Head Chef who’d employed me suddenly left. I rocked up to work, and the manager and owner said, ‘Oh. Yeah. Your boss has left. You’re Head Chef.’ And so for six months, at 21 years old, I was a Head Chef. Which was great, except it was a Polish restaurant…I don’t speak any Polish. I can swear in Polish…So I just had to kind of take it and run with it.

That must have been quite daunting.

Yeah, but you know how it is, at that time I just thought, ‘aah, whatever. It’s all just a jolly; I’ll just run with it.’

How did that lead to the BBC?

Eventually I reached a turning point, and it came about through my friends at the time. We were living in a dingy little flat in Acton, and one day we got into a conversation and they convinced me I needed to sort my life out. Because, even having achieved a degree of success in being a chef, I was still drifting along pretty aimlessly. They convinced me to sign up to A-levels, which led to film school, and that was the major catalyst that pushed me towards where I am today, working for the BBC.

What challenges did you face?

Well, I’m not going to lie to you; I certainly didn’t come from what I’d consider to be an underprivileged background. I went to a good state school; I got a great education for which I’m now very thankful. But I was also arrogant, and I just thought that the world was waiting for me to graduate, and then it was gonna be paved with gold, and off I’d go. I guess the challenges were actually watching all of my mates go to university, and having all this fun stuff, while suddenly ‘the real world’ had entered my life.

So to answer your question it was a challenge to watch all the people I went to High School with become really successful. Suddenly I got a taste of thinking, ‘maybe you’re not a winner’.

 What would success mean to you, then and now?

I think then, I just thought I’d made the biggest mistake of my life, and I didn’t think that I was ever gonna be able to right it. What I realise now is that that was probably the best thing that happened to me. Cause I just would have been this slightly middle-class no-hoper, who never got anywhere, just drifting through life. In fact, by messing up early on, it was a wake up call.

Now, ultimately success to me would be being the Creative Director of my own production company.

What is it that drives you?

My family is very important to me, so I’d have to say my kids and wife. That, and wanting to be the best at what I do, to push it as far as possible.