In conversation with Katie McCrory
About creativity, home, IKEA's Life At Home report, and... tarot!
‘In conversation’ is Playground’s newsletter series, where we invite friends, acquaintances, and individuals we admire to share their creative thoughts and explore the art of playfulness.
Playground readers,
I’m thrilled to introduce you to Katie McCrory! She’s someone whose path has crossed mine many times through mutual connections and shared work circles – yet we've never directly collaborated. Until now, that is!
Katie is a writer, keynote speaker, and strategist based in Copenhagen, currently working as Positioning Leader at IKEA (Ingka Group) in Malmö, just across the bridge. With two decades spent at the captivating crossroads of innovation, purpose, and storytelling, Katie has shaped impactful narratives for numerous organisations and brought the award-winning IKEA Life at Home Report (which I know many Playground readers love – more about that below!) to a global audience.
And here’s something extra exciting: Katie’s debut non-fiction book, Where the Heart Is, will hit shelves early next year (more about that below, too!).
Trust me, this interview is one worth savouring. Brew your favourite coffee, tea, or beverage of choice, settle comfortably, and indulge yourself in Katie’s wisdom and wonderful insights. You might even rethink what home means to you after this one.
What has been taking up the most of your mind lately?
I’ve been deep in the copyedits for my upcoming book, so my mind is full of thousands (quite literally) of track-changes and a growing concern that I may not have actually learned any grammar or spelling at school. That, and preparations for my daughter’s 5th birthday party. She has some very specific requests for the contents of the piñata.
What is one subject you’ve been interested in recently that is completely unrelated to your area of work?
I’ve been getting into tarot. Some strange, almost supernatural, experiences during my last pregnancy made me feel that there might be something Bigger Than Us which I hadn’t been open to before. I went to a tarot workshop as a way to help me navigate this new perspective, and I really resonated with the use of tarot cards as a form of divination through storytelling.
Where would you take us if we asked you to give us a one-day tour of the city you live in?
We’d immediately jump on bikes, because Copenhagen is best enjoyed from the saddle, and it’s a small city so you can cover a huge amount in just a day. There are exceptional places to eat and drink in all four compass points – all of which you can get from a good guide – but for something different, I’d make sure we end the day with some winter bathing on Amagerstrand beach. We’d throw ourselves into the cold, crystal clear sea and then soothe our limbs and minds in the sauna afterwards…. It’s the perfect way to end a perfect day.
Snap a picture of your creative space / work desk right now! No cheating - do not tidy up.
What are the books/films/podcasts/any piece of media that truly influenced how you perceive creative work?
Where do I begin? I’m a sponge, so I soak up all kinds of stimuli and media. If I have to give some examples, then reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert catalysed my creativity when I was feeling adrift a few years ago. The entrepreneur Marie Forleo once said on her podcast that we should ‘create before we consume’ and I repeat that to myself almost daily when I’m at risk of scrolling aimlessly rather than making my own magic. I’m currently working through The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, and I can already feel this much deeper shift taking place within me. But if I go way back, simply watching my parents in their studio in total flow, whilst they wrote and painted for a living when I was growing up, set a precedent for a creative life I’ve always tried to follow.
If you had one extra day in a week - what would you use it on?
Reading books and going for walks. Things which take time and don’t involve a screen. Things which expand the mind and the heart. Things I don’t do enough between the work and the writing and the chores and the kids and the consistent lack of sleep. Then again, maybe I’d sleep…
What is the one fail you made in your career that you would be happy to repeat?
I like to think that failure is just on the path towards succeeding or learning – it’s where you go next with your failure that counts. I once forwarded a relatively sensitive work email to someone outside of my company, after which the contents appeared in the gossip pages of every major newspaper in the UK. I learned a lot about professionalism, decency, crisis management – you name it – but it also pushed me to take a new direction in my career. All those learnings brought me to where I am today.
What are the ways you incorporate play into your daily work?
With two kids, I play every day but it doesn’t always trickle into my work. That said, a good sense of humour is one of the most playful characteristics anyone can have, and I’ve always gravitated towards people who like to laugh. In my line of work – where we are not actually saving lives or curing cancer – even the most dire situations can usually be relieved with a well-timed comedic aside.
Katie, what does ‘home’ mean to you?
I have come to learn, often the hard way, that where we live and where we feel at home can be two or more different places. There is the ‘home’ made of bricks and mortar, and the ‘home’ made of feelings, and far too many people take a lifetime to reconcile those two things. In this season of my life, my sense of home is profoundly shaped by my children, who occupy the whole of my home and my heart – that can be a wild thing to navigate some days.
How has your work on IKEA’s Life at Home movement & report influenced your personal approach to creating a home?
My work for IKEA has transformed the way I approach my life at home, helping me shift my focus from the practical limitations of small-space living with two kids to the way my home reinforces my most essential emotional needs. Now I believe that absolutely nothing has to change about your home for you to feel like it’s an entirely different place. It’s all in the heart and the mind.
What’s an often overlooked ingredient in creating a well-rounded home?
There are actually eight emotional needs which create the feeling of home – comfort, control, security, accomplishment, nurturing, belonging, enjoyment and aspiration – but most people struggle to get them all met where they live. Individually, these needs will present differently for different people at different stages of life, but I’ve noticed that overall a lot of people overlook ‘aspiration’ when it comes to their home life. Maybe it feels too abstract a need, but I believe it’s of profound importance to create a home that supports the dreams you have for yourself.
How do you approach the work around the biggest & most famous report around home ‘Life at Home’ and what’s been the most valuable insights for you?
It’s been a huge team effort over the years, and, thanks to the traction and impact we’ve created, it’ll continue long after I’m involved in it. Back at the beginning, when I first took it on, the starting point quickly became a desire to understand and democratise the ‘feeling of home’ – so it goes that the most valuable insights year-on-year are those which unpack the eight emotional needs. I still get goosebumps when I talk to people about the report and they tell me they’ve used the insights in their work or home life and it’s transformed their outlook.
We absolutely love seeing Life at Home take all these various shapes — a zine, a magazine, a collaboration with Annie Leibovitz — all very physical. Tell us more about the movement beyond the report.
Insights have way more clout if you can share them through a story, so I’ve really pushed for deeper, wider, and more innovative storytelling approaches to underpin a wider movement around life at home. There’s no limit to what you can do with this kind of research – everything connects back to life at home, after all! In the coming years, I hope to see more artistic collaborations, along with some impactful advocacy campaigns that show the profound connection between life at home and equality, sustainability and health and wellbeing.
Congratulations on your personal projects, the Substack & a debut book coming out this year! Can you share more with our readers??
Thank you so much! My debut book, Where the Heart Is, is coming out early next year with the amazing team at Transworld, an imprint at Penguin Random House. It’s an exploration of the emotional landscape of home, told through research, personal memoir and a series of really actionable ‘hands and heart’ solutions. I want readers to feel ready to make their own life at home as good as it can be, no matter where or how they live. My Life at Home Substack is a way of creating a community around this topic, and I’m really enjoying the chance to expand on things that didn’t make it into the book. And having fun with it all, at the same time!
To keep hearing from Katie, connect with her on LinkedIn or subscribe to her Substack below. Learn more about IKEA’s Life at Home Report here.
Read other most recent conversations with our creative network:
We have some incredibly exciting news coming out next week, can you guess what it is? Stay tuned! 👀
So great interview!! Loved it 🤎