Aesthetically pleasing skid marks

So, my idea got stolen..

..Not really, but kind of..

..And it's completely OK.

I've been making my way to Swansea once a week over the last few weeks, finally seeing real life people in an actual real life art school. It genuinely feels like a rebellion against the digital world.. anyone else feel that now were able to get out of the house and off the screen?

Anyway, during my visits that usually have purposefully no rhyme or reason to them I've ended up visiting a now good friend of mine called Sophie who collaborated with me on the Fine Art Bargain Store project at the start of the year. Throughout her time on the MA Sophie has been painstakingly hand painting her little office/studio in the heart of Swansea.

An awkward selfie with Sophie and Deano caught off guard in the background definitely doesn't do this space justice, but gives a bit of an idea atleast, for the full effect visit @papur.studio on Instagram!

Click here: https://www.instagram.com/papur.artist/

So on one of these adventures to this crazy creative space we got sharing some ideas and I mentioned the Creative Laboratories and loosely described what my plan was, but in context to what I was actually talking about at the time, so I was vague.

The next week as I'm leaving the house to head towards Swansea I get an image sent through from Sophie..

If you can't tell, Sophie is an illustrator currently working in marketing.

This photo was sent along side this message.. "I branded this before I realised I'd hive minded with you. I was thinking about making the "agency" all science themed and we could wear lab coats."

This is fantastic! Sophie stole my idea subconsciously, designed a logo and started a business plan, and even started thinking about how the 'staff' would look, wearing the lab coats etc.. All this before realising that I'd told her the week before about my ideas for the creative laboratories. The best part is that I didn't even explain what the creative laboratories were properly, and definitely didn't mention that my characters would be wearing lab coats etc.. Hive mind is the right word.

I went back to Papur studio that day and we started brainstorming ways for both our ideas to meet in the middle to see if these two ideas could work together as one business, and this is where things get interesting..

My original ideas for the creative laboratories were to start the project in line with my Faketrix universe, taking characters from the Sculpt Factory such as Dai and CEO, picking up an already established plot with STM's, which is Synthetic Thought Manipulation, which is a government spread virus that basically wipes peoples capacity to be creative.. The idea would be that it would tie things together, and the Creative Laboratories would begin it's life as this fictional company, a rehabilitation unit for the creatively disabled, ie, Dai and CEO who would be subjected to an STM attack, and then sign up to rehab at the Creative Laboratories, over time a loose narrative would develop throughout their residency and eventually they would leave the creative labs, making room for other people, the idea would be to begin with friends, which would then turn into paying customers.. and the fictional company would turn into a semi fictional company, and eventually into a fully fledged real world company running residencies for creatives, artists, scientists, business people etc with the aim of the 'residencies' which would be one day work shops, would be to show the clients new and interesting ways to develop their creative thinking through a series of experiments and play.

The fictional stuff would introduce it as something new and interesting, and having the already established characters would be a natural progression from one project to the next, and in doing that with the established characters, I would introduce new characters and sets, setting up and introducing the ethos and ideas behind the business way before it's ever a business. And this sat right with me because it's a creative way of running a business, if I was to ever run a business, which I do want to, it would have to be on my terms, and it's hypocritical to run a business teaching creativity, if the company itself is not in some way creative within it's strategy/plan/marketing etc.. And this felt like a good way to handle that.

And as a business as a whole, the idea would be to run online video workshops/lectures etc. Posting to social media for shorter experiment ideas, and sharing parts of longer workshops on YouTube, and directing people to the rest of the video, or the rest of the series which would be hosted on something like Skillshare or on my personal website with a pay for view setting or something along those lines.

The idea would be to then market myself as a creative consultant, offering my creative services to school, colleges, businesses etc, setting up a system where by I go to these places and run creative workshops, looking at businesses and sharing ideas on how things could be made to encourage more creativity from staff/ students etc..

This rough idea was a three way income provider, none would be strong enough to be the sole income provider, but together there's a chance that it could make a bit of money down the line..

Along with this there's also digital download options for workshops to do in your own time, work sheets, and all sorts of template stuff we could offer for smaller fees, or free to download, but the session it's attached to costs or something along those lines.

So this is the basic business plan at an incredibly rough stage, the interesting thing is that Sophies idea are more creative marketing based, and building a hub for creative exploration and workshops. Which is also great, were currently testing a kind of YouTube workshop series, trying out characters and a format that encourages creative thinking.

So what we've got is the clean, stylish aesthetics of a sleek marketing agency combined with the frantic imagination of a fat man in underpants, this is gonna be great.