Founder’s Day XXX
It’s taken a while to write this, but then, it’s taken a while to recover. Sunday 1st April saw our annual Founder's Day. Normally this is a day of group activity shenanigans followed by a booze-up. But this year was different. This year was Wieden + Kennedy’s 30th anniversary, and although booze was still involved (natch) the order of the day was something a little bit more inspirational.
As we passed through the doors you couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss. The walk in stupid man was in a silver sweatsuit, the library was a sea of white and bean bags. Everywhere looked…tidy. It could only mean one thing: we had somehow travelled forward 30 years into the future to the W+K Centre 2042.
After a feast that was resolutely planted in the present, the rest of the day was spent looking at where we might be in the next 30 years with the help of super-curator, Beatrice Galilee. Matt Jones from BERG kicked off the day by blasting us into the future (sorry about the un-futuristic projector, Matt).
And what a day. We smelt the moon with We Colonised the Moon, learnt arduino with Technology Will Save Us (Tony D was pretty pleased with his Lumiphone), tasted the future with food artist Caroline Hobkinson and explored new territories with the Unknown Fields Division. Finally, Sam Bompas from Bompas & Parr came in with the Experimental Cocktail Company and blew our brains out by drinking futuristic cocktails and sniffing something lethal from an apron. Don’t ask.
All of which set us up perfectly for walking back out of W+K Centre 2042 and going back to the past, way, way back to 1982 at the CuckooClub, Mayfair. Drinks flowed freely, faces were painted, shapes were thrown. The highlight was Boy George was on the wheels of steel closely followed by a magician. Some thought him better than Paul Daniels. Yes, he was that good.
