Sunday 12 July 2015

What it's all about

This week has been our kind of week. This week we had the time to get out and about and meet lots and lots of brilliant Indies, all doing their own thing in their own wonderful ways.

One of the reasons we started the whole Independent Bath project was to shout about the great independent businesses that really make Bath what it is. What would Bath be without it’s thriving indie cafĂ© and restaurant sector? Without the plethora of markets and the passionate retailers bringing Bathonians and tourists alike pretty much everything they could need or desire? Without business owners committed to keeping the money spent in Bath in the city, benefiting us all (we’ve heard it said that if we all spent £100 more per year in indies and extra £3 MILLION would be generated in our economies? It would, we suggest, be much like any other city, just with prettier buildings and lots of bored tourists..

This week we hung out in Maragret’s Buildings at Uber (great chat and AMAZING BOOTS!), The Foodie Bugle (standard fabulousness from Silvana and her team) and Gallery Nine (seriously lovely gallery with everything from fine ceramics to hand crafted jewellery and an owner with a lovely story good enough for it's own blog post); and we chatted to the fabulous indie traders of Walcot street from Meticulous Ink at one end to FigStore and Katherine Fraser at the other. We met tonnes of really passionate indies on Barlett Street and heard about plans for a great street party (more when know). We spent time in Owl in the Ivy hearing about plans for their next supper club and their summer refurbishment and we (of course) had copious cups of wonderful coffee and food courtesy of Society Cafe and The Thoughtful Bread Company.

But this week we also got to do something for someone who isn’t even yet an indie. This week we met with Bath Spa graduate Naomi Stearn who we are hoping to work with over the coming months. Naomi is an illustrator who quite frankly deserves to go places, but, as a recent graduate she has yet to set herself up and was struggling to know where to start. We were delighted to be able to put her in touch with some other amazing illustrators (if you haven’t checked out Ben Rothery yet then get your skates on and bag one of his fantastic anthropomorphized animals). We also got to offer her some work for the awards ceremony which will not only look beautiful but gives a chance to someone at the very beginning of their career.

We are not saying that we are wonderful benevolent people who have the magic ability to further people’s careers. But what we do have in bucket loads is a passion about the independent businesses in Bath and all we can do is hope that a little bit of passion goes a long way.

Sarah, Erica and Naomi Stearn

Bath's 'Artisan Quarter' Walcot Street
Uber on Margaret's Buildings
Beautiful detail at The Fig Store
Meticulous Ink on Walcot Street




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