Creative Twinning October Events 2012

Creative Twinning October Events - Join us for these unique opportunities to meet a variety of award winning Creative Businesses from the East Midlands and Nottingham's twinned city Karlsruhe in Germany, along with our supporting Partners; South Nottingham College, Design Factory, Designer Forum, Designers Resolutions, Future Factory & Nottingham City Council.

We have some very exciting creative events this October, we hope you can join us. Let us know which events you are coming to by leaving us a message at info@creativetwinning.com

Summer update

We are working behind the scenes on the Creative Twinning Showcase to be held at Nottingham Contemporary on 26th October 2012. Applications are sought from Karlsruhe designers who would like to visit Nottingham from 24th to 27th October. Please see the 'Opportunities' page or click here for more information on how to apply.

Back from Germany

Time has flown by since we returned from Karlsruhe for a second time! After a week in Germany Debbie and I (Jayne) have been rushed off our feet getting back to our own businesses and working on plans for later in the year.

I'll get a review posted just as soon as I can. In the meantime you can view images of our trip on Flickr by clicking this link. 

Here's the amazingly talented CT designers at the press night at Eunique 

(L-R: Suet Yi, Jayne Childs, Debbie Bryan, Rachel Lunn, Michele Arieu, Ashi Marwaha, Gillian Lee Smith, Lucy Harding and Kit Anderson)

Off to see our Creative Twins

We can't wait to meet up with our Creative Twins in Karlsruhe this week. We're back there showing at Eunique Applied Arts Fair for a second year. This year our ranks have swelled to ten, with designers joining us from across Nottingham and the East Midlands.

Debbie and I are also joined by Mandi, Kate and Georgina from South Nottingham College, who are hoping to set up a student exchange of some kind and are going to see exactly what opportunities there are. Hayley Banks from Design Factory, who have generously supported the ten designers, will be there to make links with creative organisations from across Baden Württemberg and beyond.

We'll be looking for Karlsruhe designers to join us in Nottingham for a reciprocal visit in October 2012 and catching up with Angelika, Brigitte, Nora and Philine from last year's twinning events. As you may know, I (Jayne from JC Middlebrook) have started to work with Brigitte making Nottingham Lace in silver. We hope this year's trip will produce more joint enterprises and design collaborations.

Wish us luck, we'll try and update you whilst we're there. See you soon

Creative Twinning 2012

We're in the midst of last minute preparation for Creative Twinning's visit to Eunique Applied Arts Fair in Nottingham's twin city of Karlsruhe. The original Creative twinning designers Debbie Bryan, Hannah Lobley and Jayne Childs will accompanied by 7 designers from across the East Midlands. You can find out more about the designers showing at Eunique here.

We'll also have representatives from two of our supporting partners Design Factory and South Nottingham College. Alongside the fair we'll be busy making links with creative organisations from the Karlsruhe area in preparation for the Creative Twinning showcase we are already planning for October 2012.

We took time out yesterday to take part in some German Language and Cultural Awareness training from the fantastic Jo Small at Optima Training. Our supporting partner Future Factory at NTU hosted us for the day as we prepared our language skills for the trip!

Creative Twinning next stage plans

We will be meeting with some of our supporting partners and designers this Friday to get acquainted and start planning our Creative Twinning trip to Karlsruhe in May. As you may know ten designers from across the East Midlands will be exhibiting at Eunique Applied Arts Fair in Karlsruhe. We hope to also offer partners from Design Factory and South Nottingham College the chance to meet up with their 'Creative Twins' from that region of Germany.

Then we are planning to invite some German designers to return to Nottingham in October 2012 for more exciting events and a design showcase. Later on this year we will be focussing on bringing on young designers so are working on plans with South Nottingham College to help mentor and encourage them, with the aim of involving the young people in the 2013 exchange.

We'll tweet some photos on Friday so don't forget to follow us @creativetwin

‘Creative Twins’ meet up in Munich

JC Middlebrook designer Jayne Childs has just returned to Nottingham from Munich where she visited her ‘Creative Twin’, jewellery designer Brigitte Adolph at the Inhorgenta international jewellery fair.

Brigitte's stand at Inhorgenta

Jayne met Brigitte in May 2011, when she exhibited at Eunique Applied Arts Fair in Karlsruhe. The trip was Creative Twinning’s first trip, and culminated in three German designers making a reciprocal visit to Nottingham in October 2011. Jayne and Brigitte were reacquainted during this visit and decided to start collaborating on some lace designs for jewellery.

JC Middlebrook lace in real silver!

Brigitte has developed a range of silver jewellery from Jayne’s lace designs and the show was the first opportunity for Jayne to see how the designs had worked in the precious metal.  The pair took some time during Jayne’s stay to work out some technical issues with the designs and plan new work for the coming months. Jayne is returning to Germany with Creative Twinning in May, alongside nine other Design Factory members for Eunique 2012. The pair hopes to have more work completed by then, alongside some special pieces to be incorporated directly into Jayne’s textiles.

About JC Middlebrook – Jayne Childs began making lace under the business name JC Middlebrook in September 2010. She is inspired by the history of machine made lace in her home city of Nottingham and uses original designs from the former factories as a starting point for her lace textiles.

More information about JC Middlebrook at www.jcmiddlebrook.co.uk and Brigitte Adolph’s lace jewellery can be seen here http://www.brigitte-adolph.de/en/spitzenschmuck.html 

About Inhorgenta - Inhorgenta is an internationally renowned industry forum offering the most comprehensive overview of current and future developments in the world of jewellery and watches. Inhorgenta covered a total of 66,000 square meters of space, divided over six exhibition halls at Messe München International and around 30,000 trade visitors made their way around 1134 trade stands.  http://www.inhorgenta.com/en/portal