Wishing I could have known this earlier (as I could have stayed in London with Pete or my cousins, who are both due to leave at the end of this week and save myself 6 hours of travel) I set about making arrangements for my trip. I guess, in the end, it wasn’t that bad heading back down to London seeing as I had some great opportunities on my mid-week trip to touch base with 2 designers in London, have dinner with Wendy, hang out with Pete, find Sydney-coffee and also do a spot of shopping in Covent Garden.
London really has a vibrant design scene. There always seems to be something on in the city that has to do with design, and I have begun to meet lots of designers who’s studios are based in London. One being radarstation. I met Toke, co-founder of radastation, at Said Business School, Oxford University the other week. We had some good chats there and exchanged contact details, so we arragned to meet when I got to London. From Pete's, I took a walk through the busy streets of London’s business district.
Radarstation are located on the fringe of the urban jungle. Here things got quieter, the buildings got smaller and older, and little pubs, cafes and independent design stores began to emerge.
I reached the radarstation studio to meet Ré, the other founder of the company just as he was setting off to where I had just come from to do a workshop with the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.
Toke took me to a nearby pub/café and we had a drink and long chat about what we have both been doing in the design and business worlds. Toke studied Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA). His CV includes work with Lego and developing concepts for Lego toys (yes, how fun!) and a year-long research engagement with Ré at the RCA on building a framework to help embed innovation into organisations. The resulting product was a neat little book called, Food for Thought.
After this research engagement, Toke and Ré set up radarstation, a design firm that works with organizations to develop future opportunities and directions in services, systems and strategy.
Our one hour went by really quickly I had to rush off and meet Mary, part-time PhD student at University of East London, and co-founder of Uscreates. Uscreates offices are just a 15 min walk down the road near the Spitalfield Markets and we popped into a nearby café for peppermint tea and Belgium hot chocolate. The weather in London was great, so we sat outside.
Mary and I chatted about the progress of our PhD’s. I see that we will be great sounding boards and support friends to each other during out PhD journey! Only she has the added job of setting up and running Uscreates (ambitious and busy girl no doubt).
Seeing as I walked from Pete’s to Spitalfields, I decided to walk back through the peak hour pedestrian traffic of London. The plan for the night was for Pete, Wendy and myself to catch up over dinner. Seeing as it was Pete’s last week and he had a lot to tie up, Wendy and I ended up enjoying a great catch up over a pasta and pizza at the nearby Italian restaurant Strada.
It has felt like ages since we last caught up one-on-one so it was a bit of reminiscing on life back at home and talking about how we were both finding life in the UK.
Thursday morning was drizzly and I accompanied Pete on his way to the Deloitte office as I had a morning of shopping at the nearby Covent Garden planned.
In great need of a coffee I chose a crisp-looking, white and green organic café called Org-e. It must have been my lucky day because I have finally found decent coffee in the UK (too bad it’s a 3 hour train trip from where I live)! It was authentic Sydney-coffee, because it wasn’t weak, nor burnt and was made by Mischa, a born and bred Sydney-sider, who has been travelling and working throughout Europe and the UK for many years now, even doing a stint in Newcastle!
Mishca and I enjoyed a good chat over my coffee and banana bread. It was great to make a new friend in this new country and feel like I was at a café in Sydney. The other great thing is that Org-e is located straight down the road from the Design Council office (I can see where I will be heading for lunch and coffee when I am doing my weeks at the Design Council office). So, for all you Aussies who think the coffee in the UK sucks, try Org-e next time you’re in London. Might catch you there ;)
After my time at Org-e I had a bit of time to shop at Covent Garden picking up a pair of black Zara shoes. At around lunch time, I headed to the Business Design Centre, where I was to meet Andrea and Bob.
The Business Design Centre is located close to Angel station and is a buzzing place this time of year with students, academics and industry as it is the location where all the design universities and colleges display the graduate degree show work at a big event called New Designers. What a great concept- to have one place where one can view the diverse and vast talents of the year’s design graduates. But I was not there to see the shows, rather spent the afternoon of chatting about my PhD in the lounge of the neighbouring Hilton Hotel with Bob and Andrea. It was a good chat and also good to get to know Andrea better as the last time I met her at the Design Council, everything was a bit of a whirlwind.
In the late afternoon, I had to pop back to Pete’s and catch my train back to Newcastle. I must be getting used to the 3 hour train trip as today I am not feeling as tired as I usually am. Lucky thing as I have an interview at the Dott office and am moving flats today and tomorrow!
