By Sabrina Theodoro
On February the 6th, Brookes Creative hosted a Creatives Meetup Event that took place in the Richard Hamilton Building from 6pm to 7:30pm. The purpose of the event was to bring creatives together and create the opportunity for networking and collaborations on artistic projects.
The BC team organised it together, delegating specific tasks for each person. The idea arose from Jamie Evans in early December and, after the whole team agreed to go forward with the idea, key aspects that needed to be thought of for the event such as location, dates, times and marketing for the event began to be discussed weekly.
Illustrator and graphic designer, Farzaneh Heidari, was responsible for the making of the poster as well as designing the Instagram posts, for advertising of the event.
The publicity for the event was aimed for all creative students, of all areas and interests, and suggested a chance for collaboration in projects where one might be needing an extra hand in, or might be needing any specific person for.
Instagram post published on the January 30th on @_brookescreative_
Jamie Evans and Sabrina Theodoro organised the event on the day, setting up the location, moving chairs, putting colourful lights around and playing music in order to create a relaxed and comforting ambiance for the creatives’ arrival.
At 6:00pm, students began to arrive. The numbers were bigger than expected, considering there was an ‘Event Registration Form’ that had been available for students to fill out before attending the event in order to prepare us for approximately how many people to expect.
At around 6:15pm, Jamie and Sabrina asked for everyone’s attention since they had an icebreaker activity prepared. The icebreaker consisted of the students getting into pairs, finding another pair who they had never met before and talking for around 4 minutes. Every 4 minutes, Jamie would announce time was up, and each pair would need to find a new pair to network with.
Photos taken by Farzaneh Heidari.
After about half an hour of networking and icebreaking, Sabrina and Jamie asked for everyone’s attention once more to announce the start of the pitching session.
A microphone was available for anyone who raised their hands and came forward to pitch a project and/or hoping to find any artistic collaboration.
Photos by Farzaneh Heidari.
So many incredible creative students came forward and pitched a wide variety of artistic projects, talents and ideas!
Film students were pitching short films they were making, hoping for any actors, runners, set designers, music composers, and more. Drama students pitched their drama showcase, in search of production designers. A Digital Media Production major pitched he wanted to open a photography society at the Union, and asked if anyone wanted to help him with that, being vice-president, or the marketing manager. A voice actor came forward and offered his services to anyone that might be interested in maybe having him do a voiceover in their films.
After everyone finished pitching, students were able to go after the creatives who pitched projects and let them know of their interest in collaboration and offer their skills.
It was a tremendously positive and enriching event, where students were able to share their interests, meet other creatives and expand their projects!
Photo by Farzaneh Heidari.
Here are some of the students thoughts on the day:
Video interviews by Emily Harvey.
It is safe to say this event was a huge success and we are proud to announce we are currently planning to organise another one very soon! So if you are a creative student, make sure to stay tuned to our Instagram page @_brookescreative_ and keep an eye out for any Brookes Creative posters around the University!
We hope to see you in our next event!