March meet up with Concept North

In March we opened our doors to the talented interior team at Concept North and their design community for a stylish evening filled with everything we love: fantastic creators, great music, good food, a few drinks and inspiring conversation. Concept North’s Melinda Kiss and Natalie Holden tell more… 

We first came together to form Concept North last year out of a shared passion for the creative industries in the north. We’re both interior designers and after connecting on Instagram we found we had a fair bit in common, not only in terms of work but we’re pretty well matched personality-wise too!

We found that we were both struggling to get to design events and access networks locally as everything seemed to based down south, so we decided to join forces to create our own community. With creative industries in the north growing so rapidly, our vision is to bring together designers, architects, interior designers and property developers to collaborate and inspire each other through relaxed networking-style events. 

We came across the Artistry House on Instagram and couldn’t believe how lucky we were to find this hidden gem in Preston. Just like us the Artistry House champions collaboration and the north’s creative industries, so it was a great match. A working building as well as a gallery with spaces available for hire, the house is designed to inspire, changing the way creatives work by bringing the home to work- imagine spending your 9-5 in front of a fireplace, on the sofa, barefoot! 

We always try to make each of our regular meet ups unique with different themes, ideas and structures for each and our March event was probably the most out-there we’ve done so far. Scrapping most of our tried and tested methods we decided on live demonstrations from local crafters and creatives instead of guest speakers with more of a house party environment to traditional networking. We wanted everyone to feel comfortable, relaxed and ‘at home’ so we truly hope we achieved this and thank you to everyone who came along. 

As always there are many people we couldn’t have done this without, and no one worked harder than our live demonstration creatives - Concept Bespoke Joinery (who is also Concept North's Main Sponsor) with their joinery set-up, Imogen Woodings from Bluebird Upholstery with the stool upholstery demo, Michael Wylie from Sketchbook Design who worked on his artwork in front of you all and the team from Tektura Wallcoverings (our ever supportive Event Sponsor) who chatted to you about trends in the world of interiors. 

Special thanks goes to all our goody bag and competition contributors who made it possible to give you a little bit of something extra at the end of the evening, to Robyn Swain and Hype Films for helping us document the night and of course to Lynsey and Andy, our amazing hosts the Artistry House. 

Concept North’s May Meet Up will be held in Chester with the theme Let’s Talk Marketing. To find out more visit conceptnorth.co.uk.