If you have not heard of Pecha Kucha before, it is like doodling in public, or advanced people watching, or pop-up conferencing. All too often at networking events, we don't really talk to anyone, or we talk to people we already know. In both directions, that kind of defeats the object.
Pecha Kucha events try to overcome this by asking six or seven people to do presentations on whatever they want – themselves, their work, their future plans - by using just twenty slides and speaking for just twenty seconds per slide. So, in six minutes and forty seconds, the audience gets to know the presenters, and vice versa, and conversations get stimulated. And as we all know, talking to each other is our greatest art form.
We started Nottingham's regular Pecha Kucha events in early 2014 with the support of Creative Quarter. They are always on Friday afternoon, so folks can come straight from work, maybe even call it work if they need to. They are free, and there is always some kind of bar involved. The events are set up as half way between work and socialising on Friday with a beer. What could possibly be bad about that? We are just about to have Pecha Kucha Event No. 13 – which will be at Igloo, Nottingham's new hybrid backpackers hostel-hotel, on Wheeler Gate, set up by Bea Kristiansen, starting at 5pm on Friday 2 October.
But we want to make sure we are keeping things relevant and interesting. Do we broaden things out, away from just the creative scene, so that more people coming at things from different angles can speak, and thereby speak to each other? Maybe we play with the format to mix the Pecha Kucha presentations with music and performances, so we end up with a full night of stuff? Do we have specific themes for specific events, or keep things more eclectic and free form?
Things like Pecha Kucha work best if it is authored by the folks who come, or might come, to the events. If we act as curators who respond to a collective voice, rather than act as 'owners'. So we want your input into the future of Pecha Kucha Nottingham.
If you want to do a Pecha Kucha slot yourself (all very relaxed and playful, remember); or have ideas about funky venues; or are a cultural-community organization interested in co-hosting something, let us know. Or maybe you have been to a Pecha Kucha event before and think it's bollocks, let us know why... go on, we can take it.
In the spirit of collaboration – seeking to create a space where our great city can talk more effectively to itself, and so better understand itself – get in touch so that we can build stuff together. If you do want to tell us something, do it on the Pecha Kucha Nottingham Facebook page.
Pecha Kucha takes place on Friday 2 October at 5pm at Igloo
Pecha Kucha on Facebook
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