Leap Day

Leap Year Leap Day

photo c/o rick harrison

Amid all the good morning and Happy February greetings on Twitter it struck me that 2012 is a Leap Year. Woohoo – we get a free, bonus day. What to do with it? Surely we can think of a few fun, useful and interesting things to do together?

So I hereby declare 29th February 2012 as Leap Day. I’d like to make a few things happen in London on that day and I’d love some help.

Maybe some of you will join in, maybe you won’t.

Maybe some of you will suggest stuff we can do, maybe you won’t.

Maybe some of you will come along for the whole day, maybe just a part of it.

Maybe some of you will organise your own Leap Days in other places, maybe you won’t.

If you would like to get involved in anything from coming along to suggesting and perhaps leading on a part of the day all ideas are would be very welcome. Time and enthusiasm will be given freely. Any cost for the day will be agreed in advance and will simply cover materials, any entrance fees or anything else that is suggested and co-created and all that jazz.

Warning! If you choose to take part you may end up meeting interesting people. You may end up enjoying yourself and there is a high risk you will learn useful new things.

So if you fancy a mini adventure, a Leap into the unknown – stick your name down here and we’ll start to make stuff happen.

Update:

Leap Day is Taking Shape

Bringing work and art closer together has interested me for as long as I can recall. Art helps us think differently, whether we are viewing it or creating it. Different parts of the brain are stimulated by different activities and I’ve seen for myself how applying art into a team environment can spark new and different ways of thinking, and solving.

I would like to invite all our Leap Day guests to explore and discuss and practice how we might bring work and art closer together, for mutual benefit. Developing creative opportunities, learning opportunities, business opportunities.

Vandy Massey, one of our Leap Day guests, is an accomplished painter, specialising in water colour. Vandy has kindly agreed to lead a painting workshop as part of the day. We’re also looking at visiting a gallery, and bringing some speed coaching into play too. Doubtless other things will emerge as more ideas are sent in and shared.

I’m in discussion with a quirky, different, and suitably lovely venue close to Waterloo which I hope we can use as a base, as a leaping off point for some of our activities. I’ll have more news on this soon.

The day will start around 11am with coffee and conversation and we’ll take it from there. I expect we may want to wind things up around 4pm and perhaps move on for optional beers and maybe even a bite to eat in the early evening. There will be opportunities for people to hook up with us through the day if the suggested start and finish times aren’t suitable.

Update:

Photography will be playing a part in the day. Some folks are bringing cameras so I wonder if we can try and make a photo collage and try out some cool photo apps too. We may have a poetry reading too.

Update:

Delighted to confirm the venue for Leap Day is Coopers Natural Foods, 17 Lower Marsh, London SE1 7RJ. Coopers was featured in the recent Rebecca Ferguson video – Nothing’s Real but Love. Awwww. Thanks to Tim at Coopers for agreeing to let us use his famous place as a base.

Author: Doug Shaw

Artist and Consultant. Embracing uncertainty, sketching myself into existence. Helping people do things differently, through an artistic lens.

29 thoughts on “Leap Day”

  1. I’m in – happy to facilitate/connect in with group from edinburgh if enough people interested. Otherwise will come down to London for the day – how exciting xx

  2. Great idea Doug. Afternoon looks possible for me. Morning would need some rearranging to be able to join in.

  3. Thanks for all the replies folks. I’m hoping the day will end up consisting of a number of events so that people can leap in and out to suit. I’ll start to ping a few ideas around next week and would welcome ideas and thoughts from you all, and from anyone who can’t make it and can think of some useful fun stuff too.

    Cheers – Doug

  4. Heh Doug – at Essex I’m hosting a Speed Networking event – we ran our first one last year on Valentines Day, really great fun with a serious message underpinning our TLC to engage mantra – time for networking and building relationships matters – this year we thought we would run it on Leap Day so you can imagine the comms we’ve got linked to that! Although tied up with this through until late afternoon, I could leap (sorry!) on a train from Essex to be in London for an event early evening.

    1. Sounds great Lisa. I know we’ve exchanged a lot of notes and ideas across the years and yet somehow the mists have not yet cleared for us to meet. It may well be that the Leap Day becomes an evening too. I will keep you posted and if it happens that we meet on the 29th that would be great. If not – then let’s make it happen soon after. I’m sure we’ve loads to chat about.

  5. Hi Doug, great idea and would love to join in. I was thinking of a physical leap, maybe fancy dress, from height onto something soft or maybe into water. Or maybe a leapmob our own leaping version of a flashmob. quite like that 🙂 brain is getting excited so will sign off their

  6. OK – so currently I think our guest list looks like this:

    David Goddin, Sean Trainor, Natasha Stallard, Alison Smith, Jon Bartlett, Martin Couzins, Noel Gray, Vandy Massey

    Plus some possibles: Peter Cook, Mark Benfold, Sarah Matthews, Rob Jones

    I’ll keep updating this as we go.

  7. Very enjoyable day, thanks Doug. Plethora of highlights, my person favourite though, was the random lunch guest, old boy in the wheelchair, parking up and painting too.

    1. Thanks for coming along and taking part. It was lovely that the group was so encouraging that others felt welcome to join us. Thanks for that observation and hope to see you again soon.

      Cheers – Doug

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