Makerhood review of 2013

I know, I know, we’re already half way through January and 2013 is so, well, last year! But in our preparations for last week’s Makers’ Club we put together a little photographic review of Makerhood’s year and we thought you might like to see it. So here it is, the events, moments and (some of) the people who made 2013 a great year for Makerhood. We couldn’t do it without you!

January

Makerhood Norwood product surgery with Jane Doxey at the Portico Gallery, West Norwood

February

Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner is one of the experts giving feedback to budding food entrpreneurs at Makerhood Norwood’s Tasting and Testing event

March

Makerhood Norwood website launches (yes, we did all the events above without having a website!). To celebrate, we commissioned a new title banner illustration for our blog, specially made for us by Kaylene Alder – thanks Kaylene!

April

The amazing Making Uncovered attended by over 600 people learning about art and craft practices and taking part in demos and workshops on woodworking, willow weaving, painting, felting, letterpress, textile art and much more! Not to mention the cafe, talks and music…

May

Makerhood Norwood runs a workshop on, er, how to run workshops, by Carol Grantham and Gillian Elam of Crafty Pint

June

Makerhood stall at Crystal Palace Overground Festival, with Makerhoodies Ray Stanbrook, Kaylene Alder, Kim Winter of Flextiles and first-time stallholder Christine Goodrich of 11 O’Clock Jewellery

July

Makerhood 3rd birthday picnic in Brockwell Park

August

Makerhood took part in the Southbank Village Fair on the Southbank with workshops on applique (by Maggie), needlefelt (by Carol) and making bath soaks (by Chloe).

September

Anita from Diverse Gifts and Sinead from Crafty Fox spoke at our third Makers’ Club meeting ‘Preparing for Christmas’

October

Makerhoodies taking part in Lambeth Open, where artists and artisans open their studios to the public, included Carol Grantham and Kim Winter of Flextiles, as part of the group Women of the Cloth

November

Makerhood Norwood first birthday party, with amazing chocolate and strawberry cake made by Brixton Bake Off winner Dumisani Nyathi, aka The Vegan Tart!

December

Make your own Christmas at the Dogstar, Brixton where Rachel, Elena and Fiona helped visitors make their own Christmas cards using letterpress, drawing or sewing and Kaylene guided them through making snowflake and paper pompom decorations – all while listening to fabulous music and improvised comedy!

Makers’ Club January 2014: Looking back, going forward

Happy new year everyone! So here we are with 2014 stretched out in front of us like a snowy field, all pristine, unmarked and ready for us to play in. It seems natural at this time of year to look back at the year just past and to plan for the new one ahead. And indeed, this was the theme of our first Makers’ Club meeting of 2014 that was held at the Dogstar in Brixton last Wednesday 8th January. We were thrilled that Andry Anastasiou agreed to help makers make 2014 their most inspiring year yet. Andry is a maker and a coach and we knew she’d be the perfect person to guide makers through an evening of creative review and reflective planning.

To begin, we looked back. Before the meeting we collected together photographs of Makerhood events from the past year. These were printed out and hung around the room like bunting and we invited makers to contribute by adding notes of their significant events and moments from the past year. The result was a collage of overlapping photographs and notes that reminded us of everything we’d done together and individually throughout the year. And what an amazing year it was!

Thinking about what we’d done last year, what had gone well, what we’d learnt from events that didn’t go so well as we hoped, and what had happened that we could build on this year, set the scene for Andry to lead us through planning our themes and actions for the year ahead. But first, hot chocolate!

Andry told us that hot chocolate helps set a relaxed, comfortable and indulgent atmosphere for her annual creative review. And it certainly seemed to work its magic at Makers’ Club where making tea and hot chocolate gave makers a chance to chat and work together to come up with the perfect ratio of chocolate and milk to create the necessary liquid inspiration.

Hot chocolate in hand, we then settled down for Andry to talk us through the two review activities she’d prepared. The first was an individual activity centred around writing, the second activity was carried out in pairs and focused on conversation. In both activities, Andry encouraged us to think about moments when we felt at our best during the last twelve months and to consider what contributed to these moments, what we did to make them happen – and how we might enjoy many more similar moments in the year to come!

In the short discussion at the end makers said they found reflecting on the past year both challenging and inspiring. We’re certainly looking forward to see where this inspiration takes them – and us – in 2014!

Makers’ Club meetings are held on the first Wednesday of every month. They are free for Makers’ Club members and £4 for everyone else. To become a member of Makers’ Club we ask for an annual contribution of £25 that goes towards the cost of running Makerhood. If you live in Lambeth and are interested in becoming a member of Makers’ Club then you can sign up here: http://www.makerhood.com/join-makers-club

Makerhood at Diverse Gifts, Brixton

Anita Thorpe of Diverse Gifts, Brixton, has certainly had a stressful few weeks.

Why? Well, she’s been working with Makerhood on the second annual Christmas promotion of local makers – but of course, that has all gone very smoothly. 😉

No – the main reason is because she’s moved shop. It may be just around the corner (from Atlantic Road to 390 Coldharbour Lane), but late-running building work caused several delays. And even now there’s still work to be done – Anita says she may have to come in over the holidays to oversee a new parquet floor being laid.

Despite this, the shop is looking good – larger, lighter and brighter than the old one, and with a tempting range of work by local makers, including Makerhood.

In fact, Makerhoodies have their own special section of the shop, with lovely work for sale including:

bags and leather accessories by Opian
art and cards by Gabriela Szulman
jewellery by Caddee
photographic prints and jewellery by Runny Custard
illustrations and books by Dreamy Me
skincare products by Fresh & Pure
jewellery by Elena Hall
cushions and knitted/felted accessories by Prillywear
illustrations, wrapping paper and cards by Kaylene Alder
indigo-dyed shibori scarves by Flextiles
cards by Prickle Press
artwork by Papillon.

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So if you’re looking for locally made Christmas presents, pop along to Diverse Gifts, 390 Coldharbour Lane, Brixton SW9 8LF. The shop is open Mon-Sat 10am-7pm, Sun 11am-5pm.

Make Your Own Christmas: meet the makers (part 2)

In the last of our blog posts about our Make Your Own Christmas party this Sunday, we speak to two of our makers who will be helping you get into the season spirit.

Elena Blanco, artist and illustrator

Why did you get involved with the Christmas party and what activity are you doing?
I love the Makerhood Christmas Party. This party really brings out what Makerhood is about: sharing, learning new skills, having a good time and of course making! All these elements are really important to us and having a good time is too, so we always have amazing performances and a real party feeling. It is also an opportunity to meet new people in our community, to network and to catch up with old friends.

What are you looking forward to on the day?
To everything really, but mainly to meeting people and catching up with old friends. It’s such a lovely, relaxed atmosphere. At the event I will be making cards, mainly using recycled materials so it is really the opposite to the consumeristic Christmas idea. I hope I will be able to inspire people into creating amazing things!

Fiona Douglas, seamstress, teacher and founder, Oh Sew Brixton

Why did you get involved with the Christmas party and what activity are you doing?
I have lots of scraps of beautiful fabrics leftover from my sewing classes and this a great chance to get people to use their creativity and recycle them into cards. I will have machines for a bit of machine embroidery, needles and thread for hand embroidery (but no glue because that’s cheating…)

What are you looking forward to on the day
I’ve been to one of the Makerhood Christmas dos before and the improvised panto was hilarious! Hopefully being in charge of a workshop means I get out of actually participating…

If you’d like to join us for a few hours of making, live music and improv on Sunday, please register on Eventbrite: http://makeyourchristmas.eventbrite.co.uk/

Below: some of our team making decorations earlier this week to make the Dogstar pretty on Sunday

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Make Your Own Christmas: meet the impresario (and find out the line up)

Musician Andrew Clarke is Makerhood’s sometime impresario and was the brains behind the amazing entertainment programme at our Making Uncovered event last April. We’ve twisted his arm again to choose the musicians and performers who’ll be getting us into the party mood at Make Your Own Christmas. We caught up with Andrew to find out what to expect.

Why are you involved with Makerhood’s Christmas event?

I have been involved with Makerhood from the beginning. I helped to run origami workshops for children at the Lambeth County Fair in 2011 – the weekend Makerhood was launched. We all support a community in the best ways we can, and these things are different for all of us. I am terrible at making, but I can help organise events and I can perform at them, and I am very happy to support the amazing makers of Makerhood as often as I can.

What is the line-up and what are you looking forward to on the day?

The Pop-Up choir filled the huge space of the Brixton East gallery at Making Uncovered earlier this year, and they will be kicking off the entertainments at our Christmas party in similar style. It is a wonderful thing to have so many voices sing for you in a space, unfiltered by distance or by crackly sound systems. This will be a real treat.

Jane Ruby is also playing. Jane is a bit of a Brixton legend and, when she played at Making Uncovered with just her guitar, her voice and her stories of local life, she was the only person who could have followed the 20-piece Pop Up Choir and still won the crowd over. She’s marvellous, and we’re super-happy that she is playing for us again.

Next up are the Yada Yada Allstars, with Alex Fradera and four of the fabulous C3467X team – Carleen Macdermid, John Agapiou, Juliet Stephens and Shem Pennant. There is a special electricity in the air with improv comedy that comes from both the audience and the performers having no idea what is going to happen next. This means everyone in the room is together and in the moment in the same way. This makes every discovery, and extreme silliness, that happens all the funnier. I can’t wait.

Finally, we’ve got Gaia Marcus and A P Clarke. OK, this is me… I will excuse myself from commenting on my own abilities, but Gaia is a wonderfully soulful blues and folk singer who has been honing her craft around the London scene for the past few years and she’ll be singing a few standards and a few seasonal songs as the sun sets behind us. It should be an excellent afternoon!

You can book your free ticket here: http://makeyourchristmas.eventbrite.co.uk/

Images of Jane Ruby, Gaia Marcus and Andrew Clarke are by Andy Broomfield

Image of Julia and Alex are by Luke & Michael

Announcing our survey winner…. It’s überbaby Zoë!

You may remember that we run a survey a few weeks ago. It came with a prize draw… and we’re very happy to announce the lucky winner! It is Zoë Chan – a graphic designer from Clapham. Zoë won a hamper full of delicious locally-made food from Brixton Cornercopia, worth £50! We caught up with Zoë at Brixton Cornercopia, where she received the hamper from Anne Fairbrother, the local food venture’s co-founder.

photo (3) — Zoë and Anne in the Brixton Cornercopia shop

What do you make?

“I’m actually a graphic designer that specialises in vintage design (www.uberbabygraphic.co.uk), but right now I’m in the planning stages of side-stepping into creating designs for the gift market, typically artwork for prints, cards, and other items upon which I can display my work. Again it’ll typically incorporate vintage typography and lettering. I hope it all works out!”

How did you first hear about Makerhood?
“I was looking for info and advice in moving into the designer-maker area and stumbled across Makerhood through Twitter! And I’m very glad I did, it’s such a lovely group with lots of valuable and interesting talks and support.”

What’s your favourite bit of the hamper you won?
“I have a special penchant for the Brixton beer 😉 – but also love the Brixton Market Chutney and the Bad Boys Bakery yummies equally! Thanks Cornercopia!”

Here’s a picture of the hamper with many tasty things, including three types of Brixton-made beer, Lucy’s lemon zest dressing made in Clapham, Ossie’s ginger beer, coffee roasted by a man called Jack in Camberwell, Brixton Market Chutney (made from plantains bought at the market), orange cumin pepper jelly made in Streatham, cakes from the Bad Boys Bakery in Brixton Prizon and more!

If you’d like your own local food hamper for Christmas, you can order it in Cornercopia’s online shop. These make lovely presents, too!

Make Your Own Christmas: meet the makers (Part 1)

As with all our events, the spirit of this year’s Make Your Own Christmas Party will be all about the people who participate and share their skills. We talk to two of our makers about why they’re involved, what they’ll be doing on the day and what they’re most looking forward to.

Rachel Stanners runs the letterpress company Prickle Press that makes beautiful, unique cards and prints.

Why did you get involved with the Christmas party and what activity are you doing?

I got involved because I wanted to help run a community event that celebrated making and creating your own Christmas rather than the commercial “buy your own Christmas” idea. I’m bringing along my letterpress and offering the chance for people to hand print a motif or festive saying on their handmade cards.

What are you looking forward to on the day?

The atmosphere – Makerhood events are always filled with such a variety of people and there’s always lots of laughter, chatter and enjoyment. I love being in a creative, sharing environment like this.

Kaylene Alder is a brilliant Brixton illustrator and artist whose work is often inspired by the local area.

Why did you get involved with the Christmas party and what activity are you doing?

I got involved with the Makerhood Christmas party because I had such a great day at the Making Uncovered event in April. It was a brilliant event and I made some great connections. I’ll be making paper snowflakes with anyone who fancies a bit of chilling!

What are you looking forward to on the day?

I’m looking forward to crafting up a storm and making a mountain of flakes with fellow south Londoners!

To join the party, please register below.

To be continued…

The snowflakes image is by miheco, and the card is one of Prickle Press’ Christmas cards.

Free on 1 December? Help us make a great Christmas!

Hello lovely people! Many of you enjoyed our last year’s Christmas Card making event, and hopefully even more of you will this year! It’s on 1 December, 3-7pm, more info coming soon – watch this space.

If you have 1-2 hours on 1 December and want to help, we’d really love it. We need help welcoming people on the door and with set-up and clear-up (you’d just be doing one of those things for 1-2 hours max). We’re all volunteering to put the event on.

Please let us know if you can help via the contact form or by emailing hello@makerhood.com. Thank you!

Here is a short video from last year that shows what it’s all about 🙂

Thanks!

The Makerhood Team.

Makerhood Lambeth goes live

We’re delighted to announce the fantastic news that the Makerhood Lambeth site is now live. This means that local residents can find makers, markets and creative workshops right across the borough. And makers who live in areas of Lambeth not previously covered by Makerhood can join the Makers’ Club and get benefits including online promotion, exclusive selling opportunities, networking meetings and discounts from local businesses.

Kristina Glushkova, co-founder of Makerhood, said: “This is an exciting time for Makerhood as we roll out the project to help people all over Lambeth find their local makers while helping makers promote their work and grow their businesses. The support from the local community, makers and volunteers so far has been fantastic – we hope this continues as we develop.”

Buy local, support creative businesses

Makerhood’s recent survey showed that the vast majority of people were interested in buying locally-made goods (89%). However, 61% felt that they did not currently buy as much as they wanted or even not at all, with many citing lack of supply or information about local goods as a barrier. Makerhood hopes to help close that gap.

The project is supported by Lambeth Council, which is helping Makerhood cover the start-up cost of rolling out across the borough. Cllr Jackie Meldrum, Deputy Leader of the Council, said: “We’ve worked hard at backing Makerhood’s efforts in West Norwood, and seen the great help they have provided to local creative businesses. On this basis the council has decided to support their bid to extend the project and help Makerhood with its aim of becoming self-sustainable in the next three years.”

Structure and site design

It’s still early days. Our Advisory Group has discussed the responses to our survey (thank you to everyone who responded!) and what Makerhood Lambeth structure might look like. We’ll be discussing this further with members to get their input before we finalise this.

At the same time, during November and December, we will be working on a new website design for Makerhood Lambeth, reflecting the agreed structure. Our great new designer – a big welcome to Jo Conlon! – and our developer Andy Broomfield will be leading on this, so wish them luck! And many thanks to our previous designer Carolina Vallejo, who has been with us from the beginning and provided us with such a strong brand. Sadly she’s moving away from the area, but we hope she will stay in touch. 🙂

The new design will go live in early 2014. We’ll keep you updated with how this develops, and will be asking for volunteers to give feedback and help test it.

Spread the word

In the meantime, help spread the word about Makerhood Lambeth:

If you’re a maker who lives or works in Lambeth, join our Makers’ Club to benefit from the wealth of information and support from other makers, as well as selling opportunities and discounts.
If you’d like to support our work and keep up with what we’re doing, you can sign up to our newsletter (on the right-hand side of this blog) and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
If you’re a local business who would like to collaborate with us – for example, by sponsoring an event or becoming a partner, email us on hello@makerhood.com.

Meet the Makers: Kaylene Alder

Kaylene Alder is a Brixton-based illustrator. Here she tells us how she came to create the banner for the Makerhood West Norwood website, and how you could share an aspect of Brixton with other local people and win one of her prints at the same time.

1. What kind of creative work do you do?
I’m a freelance illustrator. I work on magazines, books and also personal work such as cards, screen prints, and special occasion work such as wedding stationery.

2. What inspired you to get into this?
Initially I did a degree in fine art, but at that time I found the fine art world in Montreal, where I studied, very exclusive and almost deliberately convoluted and obscure. I found I took much more easily to illustration, as a medium which communicates strongly and allows room for a sense of humour.

I have been working as a teacher, but I realised how important making and creating are to me and wanted to get it more prominent in my life, so I began to take up freelance work. I now teach part-time so that I can pursue this.

3. What brought you to Brixton, and what kept you here?
Desire to travel! I came here first in 2001 and then travelled for nine months in south-east Asia, and worked in South Korea for a time, but teacher training brought me back here.

4. Are you still teaching?
Yes, I work part-time as a primary teacher, both as a general class teacher and as an art teacher. I am hoping to be involved in an interesting project soon, integrating arts subjects such as art, music and drama, with other learning such as maths and science. Most kids have a lot of energy and find it hard to sit still, so having something physical to do will help to keep their brains engaged!

5. I hear you designed the banner for the Makerhood West Norwood website – tell us more about how you got involved with Makerhood?
I saw the website by chance, and did one of the Christmas stalls outside Studio 73 – from there it just snowballed. I volunteered at the ‘Making Uncovered’ event, which was a great day, very positive.

It was thanks to contacts I made through these events and sharing a Makerhood stall at the Urban Art fair that I came to do the banner. After Mark, my partner, gave me an old map of Brixton as a gift, I was inspired to use maps in my illustrative work – I really like working over them, they provide such rich backgrounds. As a result I’d done some work for the ‘new cartography’ project at The New Wolf, looking at four areas of London which included some work in the West Norwood area that provided a basis for the banner.

6. So Makerhood has helped you?
Absolutely! Making Uncovered (I got a commission there, too!), the stalls at Studio 73, Urban Art etc, making friends and contacts, the Etsy mentorship project, and the Diverse ‘Makers in the Hood’ opportunity, it’s all been really helpful.

7. Now we know what brought you to Brixton, what keeps you here?
London’s so big and still so small, everywhere has a community, you just have to seek it out, but Brixton feels like a proper community. I like its hustle, the fact that it is close to central London but has so much available locally – the park, the Ritzy, Brixton Village, the windmill – I love that it has a windmill, it is just so weird and amazing!

8. What’s your hot tip for a hidden pleasure or treasure in Brixton?
Prima Donna (a Brazilian restaurant in Market Row) is one of our favourite places, they have an amazing sticky date pudding!

Also, community initiatives such as the Brixton Blog and the free Brixton Bugle paper. I am in awe of the people who run admirable projects such as these and Makerhood – they have boundless energy and enthusiasm for generating a community spirit in Brixton – so I help to distribute The Brixton Bugle on Friday mornings and do a monthly illustration for it. To involve local people in this, I invite them to tweet in their ideas for the subject of the next illustration. If their idea is selected, I send them one of the resulting prints!

If you’d like to see Kaylene’s work, take a look at her website. Many of her illustrations show aspects of Brixton, some of which are available from local shops such as Diverse Gifts, and if you’d like to inspire her with a subject for the next Brixton Bugle illustration and maybe win your own print, pick up a copy on a Friday morning and tweet your suggestions!