Last Thursday I attended Glug 2, the sequel, and as never happens in Hollywood, it was better than the original. Glug is a series of events for the creative community held all over the world. This one was in… Leeds. These events involve talks from people in the creative industry, beer and a lot of beards (I’m guessing the beer and beards combo is UK specific). The first Leeds based Glug event was in March and this event was the second as the name might suggest.
The event was held at the brand spankingly new Duke Studios collaborative workspace on Sheaf Street in Leeds. So new in fact that it hasn’t officially opened and I was told by one space renter than I shouldn’t tweet images of the office interior yet.
As soon as we walked in we were given a swag bag of merch, courtesy of Awesome Merchandise and a free beer. Never underestimate the power of free stuff, they’d won me over already and nobody had spoken yet. There were 4 and half talks in total. First up was New Substance, I’d never heard of them either, their tag line is; ‘Where architechture meets drama’?! In layman’s terms they make massive or impressive experiential stuff such as showering The Secret Garden Party festival with 10, 000 mini paper helicopters or sailing a massive glowing Candy Crush bear down The Thames.
Talk 2 came from Awesome Merchandise who handed out the free stuff on the way in. They’re a printers that have recently had a nice rebrand from Leeds based agency Robot Food They’ll print anything and quantity isn’t an issue which was refreshing to hear. So if you want 1 mug or 1 million mugs they’ll do it.
I’m going slightly gloss over talk 3 as I missed a large portion of it after bumping into someone I knew at the bar (sorry talk 3). Check our their website for more detail than I could possibly hope to give.
Talk 3 and a half was a short interlude from the peeps at Robot Food, they’ve set up a new social venture called Beer Run Leeds In their own words; “A couple of fat lads wanted to drink beer and not get fatter.” Thus Beer Run Leeds was born. You meet at a designated place and then run 5k ending at a pub. An evening of sharing blood, sweat and ideas.
Talk 4 was the big hitter from Manchester based Music. It was awesome as expected, their work is loads of fun and massively ideas driven rather than lead by discipline. They were also pretty funny, in fact all the talks were, it definitely makes for a more fun event and keeps you interested when you’ve got a smile on your face for 90% of the evening. It was great night, well done Glug, if it weren’t so patronising I’d give you a pat on the head. See you next time, I’ve started growing my beard already.