Feature
The
juggling
act
Anthony Goodey, show manager
at Clerkenwell Design Week, on
the challenges of putting on the
multi-venue event
T
here is something comfortable
about working inside an exhibition
hall. My role across the last 11 years in
the industry has taken me to most in the
UK, and each follow a very similar format
with the operation.
You want cleaning to move something?
Just make a call. You need a Wi-Fi boost?
Just call IT. You have someone stuck in a
traffic queue? Well…good luck with that.
Our Clerkenwell Design Week (CDW)
features none of the above. No purpose-
built toilets, no IT team, no fixed floor
and certainly no fixed roof or residency.
But that right there is why I love it; the
nervousness of managing Media 10’s only
UK outdoor event!
Any outdoor event is always held
to ransom over the same thing – the
weather – and over the last few years of
working on CDW I can give you one piece
of advice…Trust no one! Don’t trust the
BBC, don’t trust your weather app, don’t
trust ‘the experts’. When you get up in
the morning hang your head out the
window – look up – and see what you’ve
been given for the day ahead. If it’s sunny
– happy days! If it’s not, then you better
have laid enough trackway.
CDW has 115 showroom partners, 11
pop-up showrooms, 25 food and drink
partners, 25 fringe partners, seven
exhibition venues and a programme of
street sculptures and installations…all
dotted over a square mile site.
All the above are top heavy with
content, as the design world unites
to celebrate London’s creative heart,
attracting in excess of 35,000 visitors to
the streets of Clerkenwell.
But that’s not all. The exhibition
venues are far from conventional, as
we transform prisons, churches and
nightclubs into usable exhibition spaces,
juggling complex relationships and
agreements that break the ‘norm’ across
the board.
Fabric Night Club is home to our ‘Light’
Exhibition. Working around Fabric’s busy
schedule is always a challenge – but the
space provides the perfect backdrop for
the most beautiful lighting installations
(installed in a small window of 16 hours).
We adopt the churches and crypts of St
James and St. John – working within the
most historic, prestigious, and therefore
protected spaces. We build outdoor
structures in two of Islington’s biggest
residential parks too, which were clearly
not built with the intention of ever being
exhibition venues.
And then there’s the ‘House of
Detention’, our secret, under-ground,
abandoned, prison. A prison that still
has the metal cell doors, Grade Two
protection and leaks when it rains!
CDW is only possible with the support
of the local council and residents, this
in itself is an involved, delicate, juggling
act to ensure that we don’t cause any
disruption to the local community. We
continue to support local programmes
through schools and community centres
to ensure that CDW is offering more
than the three-day takeover each May.
CDW takes time and commitment from
everyone involved, it’s an utter labour of
love. I feel like I am uniting the Avengers
when I take it on, from our operations
team (Miriam of Ways & Means fame) to
our hand-selected pool of floor managers
to our stand contractor (Proj-X). You
wouldn’t do it if you didn’t love it – so
hats off to them all. EN
July — 33