Celebrating 10 years of Collaboration
Looking back over the last ten years of Beep Studio, it’s hard not to feel grateful to everyone who has supported the Studio along the way: The clients, colleagues and collaborators without whom there would be no projects, and the friends, family, and local communities who have helped in countless ways.
In any other year we’d be throwing a mixer party to get these people rubbing shoulders, wagging chins, and tapping feet together. Instead, we’re celebrating online, and over the coming days we’ll be celebrating some of the people who have made an impact on the Studio - colleagues and collaborators, consultants and clients. We’ve been lucky to work with an interesting bunch, and we want to sing their praises.
There are too many of you to thank everyone individually, so let’s introduce a representative sample of the people we’ve been lucky enough to spend time with.
Paul: Gardener, Promoter, Developer
Paul McGann is the deeply lovely man behind ‘Grow London’. The Studio has worked (and played) with Paul for many years now, from community garden / night spot Grow Tottenham to the Avalon Cafe. In between, we’ve collaborated on proposals for gardens across the capital, and have been impressed by the flexibility and resilience of Paul’s Grow concept.
Paul’s ‘welly boots on the ground’ approach places him at the fore of community engagement, actively reaching out to locals and creating spaces where events can take root, social bonds can be nurtured, and culture can flourish.
Nichole & Matthew: Arts Community Builders
Tenacity, grit, persistence, sticktoitiveness… whatever you call it, to get stuff done in this world, you need it, and Nichole and Matthew have it in spades. We’ve not only seen the duo behind Second Floor Studios & Arts take on mammoth challenges in their quest to make low cost artists studios, we’ve seen the force of will it’s taken for them to push through to the other side. We’ve seen them hold steady in calmer times, fostering long term relationships with studio members and laying down the foundations for new opportunities. We’ve worked with N&M on a number of projects including our previous space in Deptford, and with luck - and more of that famous persistence - there’ll be more in the pipeline.
Colin working at ‘The Beast’.
Colin: Artist, Maker, Inventor
Havelock Walk was the Studio’s first home, and the buzzing heart of this creative community is the workshop headed by Colin Allen. Having Colin’s brain and workshop on our doorstep led to natural cross-pollination and collaboration, whether as mutual sounding boards for design ideas, helping with practical problems of making, or collaborating on building projects. These began with the studio fit-out, including our famous sleeping deck, and extended to collaborations on large scale artworks like the Wildhomes for Wildlife.
Colin’s workshop is also the social hub of the street, and the focus of celebrations at Open Studios - especially when he fires up his famous home made grill ‘The Beast’.
The Unit 137 Collective: Cultural Mavens
A maven is “a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass timely and relevant knowledge on to others” - a title which suits this trio to a T.
The Unit 137 crew combine creative talent, musical knowledge, engineering skills, construction expertise, and a reflective philosophical approach. Our first collaboration with the group took us to ‘Boomtown’ festival, where we set up the tranquil and atmospheric ‘Tangled Roots’ stage together, and we’ve been in close contact since.
Emily: Arts Leader
We first met Emily Gottlieb back in 2013, and were lucky enough to be taken on a backstage tour of the Royal Opera House, where she was Stage Manager.
Following a move to the National Opera Studio, Emily became a client, engaging the studio to complete the refurbishment of the Conservatoire’s offices. Emily’s combination of the necessary strength of character with a pleasant, uplifting style is unusual, and is reflected in the friendly team and wider organisation that surrounds her.
Our Students: Greenwich, Kent, and beyond
A slight cheat here, since no one person can stand in for all the students we’ve worked with. We can say the relationship between student and tutor is vital in Architecture school, where we encourage individuals to invest hundreds of hours of drawing time on work which inevitably confronts the risk of failure. The financial and mental stresses on students is significant, so taking the journey with them is a serious responsibility, and we’re grateful for the trust they invested in us. As well as the obvious high flying successes, there are quieter successes, where floundering students get on top of their work, find new reserves of self confidence, and progress to solid careers - these are the stories that give us most satisfaction.
