We recently ran the second of our Forever Curious ‘My Creative Story’ workshops at Chats Palace in Clapton with a brilliant bunch of kids from Millfields Community School. The W+K adults (or rather, big kids) in the group had just as much fun as the kids did. It was an absolutely wonderful day, and we loved getting stuck into some hands-on storytelling; we came away totally awe-struck and inspired by the kids and we can’t wait to do it again. 

One of the Millfields children we had the pleasure of spending the day with wrote us an account of her experience. Take it away, Ivy… 

I came to a big room with a big circle of about thirty or forty adults. We were told to write three words to explain what we felt like. Some people wrote things like brave, curious, excited and scared. Then we had to walk around and pretend to be strange things like giants and witches. Then we found a buddy, who was an adult. Me and my partner had to choose between painting inside out characters, acting our stories out, making dens and puppets. We chose to build dens. We made a lovely den out of two pink pieces of material and told stories in our dens. I then made some puppets from the story I made up earlier, and me and my buddy put on a show.

I worked with a lady called Amy and she was very nice. We did everything together and she let me choose what to do. I felt very happy that we worked well in a team. It was a great experience and I’d love to do it again.

It made me feel a mixture of different things like curious, excited and brave. I liked it because it’s like when you’re reading a book and anything can happen. I also liked it because I felt like I was in a story.

Last Thursday was that time of the year again…Wieden+Kennedy’s Founders’ Day, the day when we all get together to celebrate the founding of the agency and to get even more creative.

Like every year, the day’s itinerary was shrouded in mystery and this year was no different, apart from the strong hint that there would be a 1920s movie glamour theme, which we deciphered from the posters around the office, an invitation entitled ‘Wieden+Kennedy Makes the Movies’ and the 1920’s short film we were shown featuring certain famous faces from around the agency!

We all gathered at the office first thing, and after a hearty breakfast, discovered that our day would be spent in teams, filming our very own 1920s silent movie. Props and all.

The result was 15 short, rather peculiar and hilarious silent movies that, dare we say it, were pretty impressive! We even had a silent rap video/horror movie mashup titled “Jack the Rapper”. Turns out we’re not too shabby at this thing.

We ended the day with a glitzy, Great Gatsby-esque dinner and party (minus the prohibition act) in Bloomsbury, dressed in our vintage finery. Just imagine lots of flappers and dapper gents, and an awful lot of feather boas. The fantastic entertainment included a live band, a burlesque dancer and a giant Martini glass. The highlight of the evening was of course a mass screening of our hard day’s work and a few awards.

We had a great day all in all, and the best part was getting the chance to step outside of our usual roles and get creative whilst spending time with other W+Kers we don’t always have the chance to work with.