Shift’s launch event: Open For Business

It seems like a million years ago since the stress of Shift’s launch and it’s almost as though the whole thing has been and gone in a flash. Thanks to all of you who have sent me messages of encouragement, wished us good luck and congratulated us on the launch’s success, I really appreciate all of your support! And I know I went on and on (and on) about it across various social platforms so I thought it was only right that afterwards I share some of the photos from the Open For Business workshop. As you’ll see from the photos, we took a lot of inspiration for the event’s theme from the giant heart that Shift built as a team for one of their first briefs. We liked the idea of getting the message across that working within the arts relied on you being passionate and caring about what you do and so it formed the inspiration for the motif on our ‘Love What you Do’ t-shirts designed by Mark.

The workshop itself was centred on giving young creatives a brief to create their own pop-up business (very relevant in our current economic climate). They were then taken through the different stages of the workshop from: getting their brief, naming their business, creating a slogan, designing a logo or mascot for the brand, making their logo or brand mascot come to life and finally pitching their idea to our panel of judges, who included the lovely Gabrielle Omar.

After a lot of correspondence over twitter, emails, phone calls and texts, I had arranged for Gabrielle to come up to Newcastle to speak about the benefits of collaboration within the creative industry. And like any relationship that you build within a virtual environment, when it came to the day of the launch I was a little nervous to meet her in real life! As soon as I picked her up from Central station though I was instantly reassured. She’s a very friendly, enthusiastic person and when she came into the workshop itself, she came into her element helping groups work their way through the stages, offering feedback for their ideas, and most valuably (in my opinion), sharing her own thoughts on working with the creative industry and how important it is for disciplines to collaborate. Thank you again Gabrielle, everyone at Studio Precept and Shift can’t wait to have you back up to the North East!

t-shirt: Shift (buy one here), shorts: River Island, boots: Urban Outfitters