Client: ?What If!
Venue: The Brewery, London
Dates: September - November 2003
Budget: £55,000

RAW was ?What If!’s biggest event in 2003. Teams from ?What If!'s client companies were invited to spend a day listening to and taking inspiration from a multitude of speakers. On the main stage delegates saw Jamie Oliver and Mo Mowlam; then the group split into smaller sessions to hear from ten speakers as diverse as: a rocket scientist from NASA, a headmistress, the founder of The Big Issue, a founder of the Drop the Debt campaign, the founder of Innocent drinks, and a vicar. In total there were seven rooms to design.

For the main room, I took my inspiration from “stripped bare”, with huge black and white nude images covered by white raw silk, which was ripped and slashed to reveal sections of the body. As the day progressed, I ripped these further to reveal more and more of the figures. In addition, I hung white raw silk columns around the seating area. These had coloured inner cores, and again as the day progressed I ripped the outer silk to reveal the inner colour.

Each of the five breakout rooms had to accommodate two speakers, speaking in rotation. I paired the list of speakers together, and came up with a common theme around which to base each room. For example, the rocket scientist and the founder of the MOBO awards spoke in a room boxed out in starcloth; while the headmistress and the founder of School Disco spoke in a room themed as a schoolroom ­ of course! Other rooms were themed as an English landscape (complete with cow!), a run down urban scene, and a room of paper-chain-people. Finally, each speaker had individual props and / or images to change the room to their specific story.

On feedback forms, 80% of responders gave the design 4 or 5 out of 5