On friday night, having rushed back from uni and grabbed a bratwurst from the German Christmas market I took a swift stroll down to Deaf Institute for the third BlabMini.
BlabMini is a monthly meetup where Manchester based creative types can meet up, have a drink and socialise with other artists (organised by Northern Digital). Its a chance to meet face to face with each other rather then via the wonderful world wide web and meet new people, clients and maybe land yourself a place, chance to collaborate or even job. They've also introduced guest speakers to come and talk about a designated topic for give or take 20mins. The £5 entry fee also entitled you to free admission for the 90's dance night upstairs and a free beverage of your choice. I had 2 though.
Anyway, this months theme was "Things I've Seen", where each speaker had to talk about anything the they considered to relevant to them. Altogether there were five speakers consisting of Kate Towey, Simon Griffin, Jeffery Bowman, Katie Moffat and Jake Smith with sponsors of Eskimo Creative, Shillington College and Orchard. As well as this, they were raffles and competitions to win some awesome prizes (£50 of itunes vouchers won by Jordan O'brien) and the best competition was best christmas jumper where Dom came runner up. Sorry Dom. Yours was best the other guy just new more people. Back to the talks. Katie Moffat opened the stage with a short but moving presentation on the 9/11 attacks against the Twin Towers and how a competition was created for architects/designers to come up with ideas for a memorial site. This was followed up with Kate Towey making a clear point how much she disliked brown bananas then Jeffery Bowman's love for hill walking. Jake and Simon tied up the evening with a passion for film/music videos and how being unorganised and unprepared can work in your favour.
The whole vibe of the evening was friendly and festive, and an awesome chance to chat to working designers. What I enjoyed most about the evening was the generous turnout from current/post Stockport College students. It's not often that over the last three years we've met as a group outside of college so it was a great opportunity to socialise in the outside world. A few of us stayed around afterwards for a couple more drinks then moved on to another bar.
The fourth BladMini is to take place again at Deaf in the new year at some point. Overall, a brilliant way to spend a thursday eve with a good crowd.
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