Last Saturday, Thoughtful were lucky enough to be invited to two events that celebrated creativity. One was THE TONY WILSON EXPERIENCE held in Manchester, and the other was Russell Davies’ INTERESTING 2008 in London.

It was a shame they were held on the same day as we all wanted to go to both, but such is life, so we went our separate ways. James and Stu headed off to the bright lights of the capital, and I went down to URBIS where the Tony Wilson event was.

The Tony Wilson Experience

When I first heard that this event was billed as a ‘24-hour conversation’, I was both intrigued, and slightly concerned. If I go to watch a film in a cinema, I’m fine until it goes past the two-and-a-half hour mark. I then get very uncomfortable and fidgety, to the point where my attention is definitely not on what I’m supposed to be watching. So the thought of sitting listening to around 50 people talking over one day, wasn’t really inspiring me to say the least.

The intrigue over the event however, was swaying me the other way. To pull off a 24-hour live conversation would be quite something. The line up of speakers would have to be great to attract people, and most were. Some had stronger links to Tony Wilson and Factory Records than others, but all shared a passion for what the man was about, and how he could inspire future generations.

The 200 young creatives that were invited were labeled as ‘The Talent’. The speakers were ‘The Experienced’, and the big idea was to get ‘us’ and ‘them’ interacting, and sharing ideas and discussions. Unfortunately though that didn’t really happen. Don’t get me wrong, the event in my view was a success, but from what I saw, it was just more ‘us’ listening to ‘them’ than ‘all of us together’. It may have partly been ‘The Talent’s’ fault because we were encouraged to ask questions and participate, but in a room full of wallflowers, bright lights and big TV cameras, it’s understandable that not many questions were asked. Still, the other ‘Talent’ I spoke to, were in agreement that there could have been more workshop type segments to the event.

I didn’t make the full 24 hours. Urbis were providing shelter and camp beds for some of the more dedicated attendees, but the schedule got a bit thin in the early hours, with an open mic session billed at 5am, for example. So I took in around eight hours of conversation, and made it back the next morning for some more, from the likes of Tim Burgess, Peter Saville and Professor Brian Cox.

All in all, it was great to be a part of the Tony Wilson Experience. Mr Manchester would probably not have wanted the fuss made over him, but would have secretly liked it. The event was filmed, so may appear on the web sometime soon. For this reason, photography and filming weren’t allowed, otherwise we would have shot some of our own footage and put it up here. If it does end up online, the talks by Mark Radcliffe, Steve Coogan, Tom Bloxham, Jayne Casey, Sue Woodward and Clint Boon are worth looking out for, as well as the speakers I mentioned before. Frank Sidebottom was pretty funny too. I’ll be looking out for the talks that I missed.

One quote that did stick in my head was from Mark Radcliffe who said ‘People who don’t try anything, never fail’.

I’d like to say ‘thanks!’ to Ruth, a music promotor/journalist/band manager, who came over and introduced herself because she was on her own too. Ruth runs a successful fanzine for bands in Doncaster called Doncaster Live, as well as managing a band for the first time, despite having no experience in managing. She couldn’t stick around for the 24 hours, but wanted to hear what Alan McGee had to say the next day. Well Ruth, from me to you, you didn’t miss much really, I think that was due to the host of that talk though.

Interesting 2008

Like the Tony Wilson Experience, Interesting 2008 was jam packed full of speakers from start to finish. It must have been good as Stu and James had to get up at around 3am on Saturday morning to make the trip down, and they didn’t fall asleep once throughout the talks.

Lots of bits on Interesting are already floating around the blogosphere for you to look at, and a great place to start would be Russell’s post HERE.

The award for pure entertainment value went to Michael Johnson, who blew everyone away with a very unexpected show of talent.

And special thanks to Arthur.

Rock on!