On the 6th of December, a local collective of artists and makers named the Muswell Hill Creatives celebrated the four year anniversary of their founding. The collective features a diverse range of artistic disciplines, including print designing, weaving, ceramics, jewellery making, illustration, glass making, and more. The anniversary was commemorated with a festive evening at the Victoria Stakes pub in Muswell Hill, where creative members and their guests could meet, buy and sell unique products, and enjoy some celebratory food and drink. I interviewed the collective’s founder, Rachael Booth-Clibbord.
RUBY SNELL: Why did you decide to set up the collective?
RACHAEL BOOTH-CLIBBORD: I’ve always worked in PR and communications, and I knew people from when I was at school like Michelle Wyckoff Smith who makes jewellery and Jess Albert who’s an artist. I thought, ‘I’ve got all this experience of promoting people’s work, and they haven’t got the time because they want to be making; perhaps I could help them.’ We met and had the idea of joining together and selling collectively. Six weeks later we had our first open house and it all started from there.
RS: What are the main benefits for members?
RB-C: One thing they find really useful is that we meet privately and talk about things like pricing, give input if people are having a lack of confidence in their products, and learn about marketing, PR, photography, and social media, so we have lots that we do to support each other. The other benefit is participation in selling events, especially because we can join forces and share the costs of stalls.
RS: What are the benefits for the local community?
RB-C: What we’ve added to the community is promoting the importance of independent business and supporting local makers. There’s lots of statistics about how supporting local makers can boost the local economy. We’ve just found so many people in the area who are artistic, so it’s a way of celebrating that creativity. We also find that Muswell Hill is an area that’s really receptive - they understand the value of something that’s been handmade, that someone has spent time on, and that is an individual piece that not everyone will have.
RS: This is the four year anniversary of the Muswell Hill Creatives; where would you like to see the collective in four years’ time?
RB-C: The ideal thing would be to have a shop. That would be amazing…we’ve done a couple of pop-ups, one on lovely Avenue Mews, and we had such a good response to it. So in an ideal world, we would have our own creative space, with studio and retail areas, where our members can come in and out to use it. It would really give us a presence in the local area.
You can find out more about the Muswell Hill Creatives on their website at http://www.muswellhillcreatives.com/, where you can also find links to the work of the individual creatives.
Interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
