In this episode of TMN Creative Thinking, TMN creator Pau Bredl-Marti speaks with Teens Media Network founder Pablo Herrera about his experience with TMN and the role young creators play in building a creative community while developing their own skills, relationships and professional experience.

Pau joined TMN after connecting with founder Pablo Herrera on LinkedIn. Nearly a year later, he looks back at covering music festivals and cultural events alongside other young photographers.

He describes arriving at festivals with a press pass and a camera and working alongside professional photographers: “You feel like a professional. You feel like a real photographer.”

For Pau, TMN is also about the people building it. He talks about meeting photographers his own age with similar goals, finding inspiration through those relationships and realizing how much young creators themselves were involved in shaping the network. That combination of contributing, learning and meeting other people was one of the reasons he wanted to become part of TMN.

Young creators contribute to building this community through the work they produce as part of their learning process, within a structure supported by TMN mentors. Rather than following a fixed educational strategy, mentors observe, provide feedback and adapt to each creator and situation, allowing young people to find their own way to learn.

The conversation also explores the international dimension of the community. Pau initially thought TMN existed only in Spain before discovering its presence in New York City and Washington, D.C. He reflects on connecting young creators across different countries and cultures who share similar interests and can learn from one another.

Pau also discusses why young people should be reporting pop culture for audiences of all ages. Using music festivals as an example, he reflects on how young photographers, interviewers and reporters can bring their own perspective to documenting cultural events.

Another part of the conversation focuses on learning in professional environments. Pau contrasts tutorials and practicing at home with attending an actual event with accreditation and a camera, producing work alongside professional photographers. He also discusses how these experiences build confidence, relationships and a professional network.

Pau also reflects on transforming an interview with ACL photographer Patrick Quiring into educational content about music photography, a project that sparked his own interest in education and creating learning resources.

The photography course is available for free at the following link.

Finally, Pau imagines young creators not only covering culture through TMN, but eventually helping create and organize exhibitions, music festivals and other cultural experiences themselves.

The conversation was recorded in Brooklyn, New York, in February 2025.

If you're interested in the future of education, creativity and real-world learning, this episode is for you.

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We create and share these conversations to explore how we learn, create, work together, and find our place in the creative industries. So if something in this episode made you think, helped you see something differently, or simply felt worth sharing — pass it on.

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