Last Thursday saw a bunch of utterly lovely and slightly exciteable Branding Masterclass students join us for our very first meetup. I was so blown away by the community that they had created online that I invited the February class down to the studio for lunch and a meetup to get to know each other in person and also make sure that they continued to move their brands forwards!
We had a really lovely group and in no particular order they included Tracy Stonard, Magenta Cakes, Gabriella Buckingham, MooBaaCluck; Zoe Grant of Zoe and Drew; Juliette Dyke, freelance copywriter; Louise Sutherland, Seedpod Creative; James McBrearty, Taxhelpuk; Chrissie Slade, Gorgeous Guineas (Chrissie’s website with the gorgeous new branding is going live very soon!) Elaine Palmer, Hanging Space and Mark Mercer of MaST.
We had a great day. Lots of questions were asked, actions committed to and business cards swapped. It was great to meet in person with some of those I’ve only spoken with online, and so lovely to see some familiar faces again too. James, Louise and Elaine joined us for our weekly creative meeting which was a lot of fun. I personally loved the fact that we had James (a confirmed accountant and non creative!) brainstorming with us as well as giving some of our more creative guests the chance to see behind the scenes and join in.
We sent each guest away with a goody bag packed with homemade brownies as well as some other lovely things like our Flourish notebooks which went down a storm!
We also shared a delicious lunch (you can see the raspberry and almond roulade above) and made sure there was time to get outside and walk along the river and chat. I’d decided not to organise a formal workshop agenda because this was much more about building relationships and getting everyone together, but we did cover a fair amount of ground and I think many of them have gone home with a longer to do list than when they arrived!
I’ll certainly be putting on one of these meetups for the May class – I’d imagine around October/ November time once you’ve all had a chance to implement some of the things you’ve learned from the class. And if you’d like to join us for the next class in September we have a growing and lovely list of students already signed up – would be great for you to join us. Full details on the Branding Masterclass website.
Thank you all of you who joined us for making the effort to clear your diaries and travel down to the studio, I really enjoyed spending time with you all x
Wow, sounds absolutely fabulous!
Can’t wait to see Chrissie’s new website once it’s up and running. Bet it’s gonna be good!
Thank you. It looks amazing! Such a change from what she has right now …
Thanks for organising this Fiona, it was an excellent day.
I came back inspired to put more work into my blog to start with – as a result I wrote 14 blog posts back to back!
With scheduling set, these are going out over the next couple of weeks rather than all at once.
Really looking forward to reading them James and thank you for throwing yourself into the creative meeting. Was a lot of fun!
A huge thank you Fiona for organising such an amazing day
it was great to meet everyone and see the Flourish Studios. The to-do list has certainly grown and new friendships made.
Thanks
Zoe
x
Delighted to hear it! And thank you to you and Gabs for travelling quite so far for the day. Have a great summer holiday.
I’m stunned at James’ statement of 14 blog posts
– incredible!
Thank you for a lovely informal tips packed day Fiona – and fellow attendees. I found it very helpful to have many pairs of fresh eyes on what I’ve been doing. Full steam ahead. School holidays allowing!
It was so lovely to meet you at long last Gabs. Hope you get some time to have lots of fun in the hols and also move forward with your business. Exciting times.
Hi Fiona, Great idea….looks like fun. So, when is the Blogging Workshop reunion
Denise x
Good question! I wanted to do a masterclass meetup because they’d only met virtually before – you’ll have to join us in September I guess!