Richard Claxton (@MaraidDesign) reviews the Catch-Up Conference in Leeds.
It was the day after the snow had returned to the streets of Leeds and there was uncertainty if I could make it into the city but luckily I managed to make it to the Mexico Project Space for the Catch-Up conference (part 1).
The main draw of this event for me was to see a talk by Rob Lowe aka Supermundane (the illustrator behind Anorak / Fire & Knives magazines). Apart from the knowledge that Rob Lowe was going to be making an appearance I wasn’t entirely sure what exactly was going to happen during the rest of this conference. The website vaguely referred to a ‘panel discussion’ and an ‘exhibition’ but went into no further details about what to expect or what other guests and speakers would be making appearance.
Once through the door I realised, even though this was a sold out event, they had kept it a small intimate audience (around 30 people) and there weren’t any stands from corporate sponsors. Rather curiously they hadn’t used this opportunity to raise money and this definitely had a beneficial effect on the atmosphere. People were chatting away whilst helping themselves to the coffee and looking through their goodie bags. I’ve not received that many goodie bags in my life, but they usually feel like the remnants from bottom of an office drawer. This one contained a myriad of brilliant items including a Rob Lowe CD, an original print, and a lovely button badge.
When Rob Lowe started his talk he was engaging and amusing while taking us through his career as an illustrator/designer but interestingly he didn’t use a power point presentation to illustrate his journey but instead used large prints that are displayed directly on the walls and forms the exhibition. Once again a unique small touch, which subtly changed the feel of this conference. After a lovely free lunch the other guests for the panel discussion are introduced and turned out to a range of brilliant illustrators that include Matthew Hodson, Nick Deakin, Lord Whitney, Nicolas Burrows and Jason Cover. Along with Rob Lowe they spent an hour chatting informally about the ups and downs of the modern illustrator’s life which members of the audience freely joined in with, that just wouldn’t have happened if the audience had been much larger. To finish off the day the Catch-Up team provided a bar and the chance to see the various illustrators performing musical numbers to conclude the quirkiest conference I had ever been to.
An intimate conference, great speakers, goodies and free food. Amazingly tickets were only £5. How do they do it? That was the question I kept asking myself throughout the day.
I wanted to speak to Ollie, who was involved putting this whole day together, to find out how they did put the day together while keeping costs so low. He reveals that they got some financial help from Leeds Inspired, the Leeds City Council initiative to promote culture in the city, but they also managed to do a lot of the work themselves, including all the design and screen printing. He also informs me that Rob kindly also donated some stuff, but the main reason I believe, they managed to organise such a good day was because the people behind Catch-Up gave up so much of their own time to produce something that in the end was a labour of love, and this really came through in all aspects of the day. Ollie described their aspiration to ‘create an event where people could be let into the more personal aspects of certain practitioners. Having a fairly informal chat about the work made this an easy way for people to feel comfortable getting involved in discussions’. It certainly worked and luckily this is just the first part of the conference, so you if you missed out you can still catch a little bit of Catch-Up.
The second part is happening on April 6th and is examining the work of graphic designers, with the main guest being the German based Alexander Lis.
Check out the Catch-Up website to see if tickets are available for April 6th and let’s hope that they once again have the time and energy to bring the Catch-Up conference to the city of Leeds.