#suffolkhour

First ‘Jelly’ meet up takes place at the Atrium Studios at University Campus Suffolk

 The Atrium Studios’ first ‘Jelly’ meet up has taken place at University Campus Suffolk (UCS).

A Jelly is a regular co-working event for freelancers, artists, people who work from home and those who run their own small businesses work in a shared environment.

Hannah CatchLove is a graphic designer and has her own company ‘Catchlove Create’, she said “I was looking for a networking event and I came across on twitter and thought the Jelly sounded really good, lots of creative people and I liked the idea of it being informal.”

“I moved to Suffolk from Kent in March and I’ve found working at home really lonely and I don’t know anyone being new to the area. I wanted to come out and meet people and I think the idea of having a desk in a creative space with lots of other people is a really great idea, it’s a day out of the house and an opportunity to be collaborative with other people. I met Rob who is part of The Atrium, he is also a graphic designer with lots of contacts in Suffolk and gave me some useful advice about setting up.”

Carol Gant, Arts Curator for the School of Arts and Humanities and project coordinator for the Atrium Studios said “Our Jelly events are free and it is about meeting new people, working socially, collaboration and trying to combat some of the isolation that working by yourself can bring. It’s a mixture of work, conversation, sharing ideas and passing on tips and help. The aim is to provide a meeting space for like – minded people to bring their laptop and work together, exchange ideas and help each other.”

Oliver Squirrel is the founder of a ground-breaking online platform for the creative arts called ‘Pop my mind’. He said “I just moved into the Atrium Studios about a month ago and have taken on our first full time employee, Lauren Berry who went to UCS. I’ve made a lot of connections and it’s a vibrant place to be. Previously I worked on all my projects from home, when you are working home alone it can be isolating and not very invigorating so to be here amongst other creative souls is interesting especially for us as our product is an online platform, a piece of tech, in the arts sector. I think that’s what perfect about the Atrium it’s a real mix of tech and hands on creative arts.”

“At the Jelly I’ve already met a lot of different people from all different industries like marketing, PR, design; all of which could be of benefit to us. Pop my mind is an online platform for creative arts so essentially we’ve got a community of artists, illustrators, photographers, creative writers, poets, costume designers, dancers, anything remotely creative and the idea of Pop my mind is that we challenge our community to create work in response to each other’s work so you have artists responding to sound, musicians responding to poetry, poets responding to film so really it’s a springboard for brand new work. Most other platforms just host your existing portfolio but we are kind of, we want to become the internet’s creative spark, something that galvanising new work and be cutting edge. They then upload it to the platform, the main metric of our platform is called a ‘pop’ so your piece of creativity would earn a ‘pop’ each time something you’ve made has inspired something else so that’s really a unique feeling we can offer the community when your work has been reimagined as something else especially when it jumps media so for instance I’ve made a little bit of poetry I have uploaded and that has since been converted into music, artwork, video so you can see it snowball.

“I would encourage people to come out and see what The Atrium and the Jelly sessions are all about. It’s a very invigorating space, there’s such a variety of skillsets and experiences here just within this one room. We’ve only been here less than a month but I’ve lost count of the connections its lead onto both with the university and externally as well.”

 The aim is for the Jelly events to take place monthly from the New Year. They will include an ‘Atrium Fix’, an opportunity to talk to advisors who may be able to help solve a problem or help develop an idea whether it be about Social Media, WordPress, Animation, CMS, Software, Online Business Advice, Project Management, E Commerce, Marketing and Graphic Design, E-News and Exhibition Management.

 If you are intersted in finding out more about the studios or the Jelly events please email [email protected]