IDEA13

On Wednesday the 29th of April Metal held thier second Pecha Kucha night at the Leigh Centre, Elm Road. The evening began at 7pm, with over 150 people turning up to listen to artists talk about their creative practice using twenty images with only twenty seconds to expand on each image. With some amazing speeches from Simon Poulter, a visual artist in residence with Metal, Charles Sharman-Cox, writer, director and actor for theatre and film, Roger Griffiths, an actor and theatre archivist from eye2eye productions, Kamil Pechalko, from community group Transition Westcliff, Darren Berry, Graphic designer and founder of southends young creatives and Scott Dolling, from enterprise and tourism at Southend-On-Sea Borough Council the audience were shown a whole new light on creatives based on southend. When the presentations were over, some beautiful and delicious foods were passed to the hungry audience provided by the welcoming staff of MyKitchen and the room was filled with the excited hum of conversation and laughter from the audience, fellow artists, actors, musicians and creatives.

Pecha Kucha literally translated from Japanese means “chit chat”, but has become known as a style of presentation with strict rules. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up.

The concept of Pecha Kucha originally came from designers Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public, but the idea has spread and now Pecha Kucha nights are held in over 180 cities all over the world. Licenses to hold such events have previously been awarded to organizations from three UK cities – London, Glasgow, and Brighton. Southend on Sea is only the fourth place to hold this type of event in the UK, and notably the only non-city to be accepted as an official Pecha Kucha night. Check out www.pecha-kucha.org for more info on Pecha Kucha.

Look out for more information on IDEA13 for up and coming Pecha Kucha nights in Southend on Sea.