What A Holy Hullabaloo!

Posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Pheweee.

It’s Wednesday morning. It’s the 14th December. Days and days after we hosted our Made in the Shade event finale, we’ve just about recovered!

Our initial apprehension about organising the event at all and subsequent pre-Hullabaloo jitters were, we are relieved to say, utterly unfounded. With eager beaver visitors trying to sneak in before opening time and literally thousands more joining us throughout the day, we could not have hoped for a more perfect finale to the Made in the Shade event series!

To the 40 amazing designer makers and indie businesses that set up shop with us and did such a sterling job helping promote the event, we cannot thank you enough. Customers were utterly bowled over by the whole affair. Tonnes of visitors approached us to compliment the quality of work on offer and with so many of you making that extra effort with display, stall features and customer service you really did us proud. To those of you who travelled pretty huge distances to join in, hats off to you. And to our local crafty pals? It was really great to have you all in one place at Made in the Shade one last time. Not sure y’all appreciate how important it was to us to get the ol’ ‘creme of the crop’ gang back together.

To our collaborators and featured hosts, The Modern W.I & LOOP, La La Land, Lesley Barnes, YHFphoto & Neil Slorance and of course Architecture and Design Scotland – the extra oomph you added to our Hullabaloo was… super-oomphy! More visitors (big and small) engaged with public crafting than ever before thanks to the W.I and the pop-up cinema (complete with cinema tickets and pop corn made by the fair hand of Belle & Sebastian’s Sarah Martin!) proved a CRAZY hit! Sarah Graham, owner of indie boutique La La Land, pulled out all the stops in the Tower Room and wowed her customers with fashion related gifts and encouraged everyone to get involved with her art/design competitions. YHFphoto & Neil Slorance’s robot exhibit preview sold out (sold out!) and we are so very, very pleased to report that thanks to our amazing Made in the Shade customers investing generously in the LOOP project, 5 women’s charities will benefit this Christmas.

Very special thanks must go to Lesley & Sam at A&DS. Had they not invited us to host the event as part of their High Street exhibition launch weekend, the Holiday Hullabaloo idea wouldn’t have occurred to us. The gals at A&DS provided excellent support in the set-up of the event and techie whizz Lynn worked real hard to prepare the gallery space in time. Thanks too, to Ian and all the staff at The Lighthouse – with particular mentions due to Laura, Jennifer, Brian & Stewart.

Worried that perhaps our Made in the Shade event had fallen off the radar since we hadn’t held one since August 2010, Clare and I laid all the ground work to (hopefully) attract a footfall of around 1200 people. Then we prayed. We agreed that we’d be ecstatic if we reached 1500. In the end, we missed a total footfall of 3000 by a mere whisker. Our minds have been well and truly blown. To everyone who came to The Holiday Hullabaloo, we could kiss each and every one of you. Not only did you take the time out of your busy Christmas schedules to spend time with us, but you saved your pocket money and you spent it generously with teeny tiny businesses who will each really appreciate your support. Not only that, but feedback – about our organisation of the event, about the ambience, about the footfall and overall – about the great variety and quality of the work available – gave everyone involved a much needed boost. Special mention must also go to our event volunteers who, this season, knocked our blinkin’ socks off with their smiley faces and unwavering enthusiasm. To Laura, Annalisa, Lydia and ThisBadMouse – you were all amazing hostesses (and Laura, thank you for accompanying me while I hung out with Jeremy the enormous wooden light-up reindeer on Buchanan Street!). As always, massive thanks goes to our honourary Made in the Shade fellas, John & Garry. Thank you too to our sound fella, Ken :)

To everyone who helped promote the event – you are wonderful and we really, really, really appreciate your help and support. So much Tweeting and Facebooking went on in the run up to the event and on event day and we don’t underestimate how much of an impact this had on visitor turn out. To everyone who blogged about The Holiday Hulllabaloo, who sent out mailing list messages, who displayed our e-flyer – thank you. Special mention should go to Made in the Shade gal, Clare – who traipsed around in the wind and rain hanging posters and doling out flyers in the weeks prior. Thanks too to Claire at The List for all her amazing mentions in the December issue of the mag, to Alex and Adeline at The Skinny, to Ali at The Herald, to everyone at SeeGlasgow, to Yelp and to all the other listings sites and online shopping pages that featured us. To anyone we’ve missed – apologies (but know that we’re really grateful for your help!).

At the risk of coming over incredibly schmaltzy and kicking off an utter gush-fest, we ought to say too, that the comments and feedback we received on the day made us blub. Yes. We actually BLUBBED. Carrie blubbed twice. It might sound a bit odd, but turning the music off at 5pm was a bit of ‘a moment’ for us. This was our last song at The Made in the Shade Holiday Hullabaloo.

As soon as we can snatch a moment in between festive madness at The Maisonette, we will post a collection of comments and testimonials about The Holiday Hullabaloo (or about the Made in the Shade event more generally, if you’d prefer). If you would like to submit one or if you would like to share any of your own Made in the Shade stories or event photos, then we’d love to hear from you. Please email us at: mail@wearemadeintheshade and we will feature you on the site.

For now though, here are some photos our resident snapper managed to capture (while also hosting a sell-out photography/art exhibit!).