All posts tagged THECUBE

I am London Private View

23rd February 2012
6:30-9:00
@THECUBE

Studio 5
155 Commercial Street
E1 6BJ

THECUBE London is pleased to announce ” I am London”, an exhibition of photography, illustration, and graphic design that looks at describing what it is to be a young Londoner.  The images are those from the collective of young artist using their work to explore, respond, describe and answer questions and problems facing everyday in London. This group of artist is a mixture of those born and raised in London and those having only moved here a few years ago.

Looking Ahead At 2012

Dear CUBERS,

We are excited about what is ahead for the year 2012! Firstly we would like to thank you for choosing THECUBE once again to be part of  your entrepreneurial journey.

Over the last two years THECUBE has built its reputation on housing an exceptional entrepreneurial community, this is something we would like to continue to foster as well as create new ways to collaborate and innovate.

Looking Ahead
1. Virgin Innovation Lab: We will start with PLATYPUS to begin our rapport with the Virgin brand. This will bring new and interesting opportunities to the members. This partnership will showcase for the first time how corporations can collaborate and nourish entrepreneurial communities like THECUBE.

2. Pro Bono Projects: To continue building on THECUBE’s community we will be working with charities and NGO’s, who are creating an impact in their fields. The first one is Khulisa, who brought down the crime rate in South Africa and now is building their brand in the UK. The role of THECUBE will be to help these NGO’s & charities on a pro bono basis with strategy, branding, and digital media. We believe that we are now in a position as a business and community to create a strong and unique CSR platform.

3. International Collaborations: We are looking forward to creating projects which will bring NYC together with London as well as announce our partnerships with entrepreneurial communities in Dubai, Hong Kong, and Rwanda.

4. Inspiration: If THECUBE were a person it could not be faulted for its intellectual abilities and nerdiness, however this year we want to bring more inspiration to the space. Telling the story better, bringing inspirational speakers to the space, and sharing more CUBER stories.

We wish our entire CUBER community a prosperous, happy, and fulfilling 2012.

Thank You.

How An Entrepreneur Divides His Time Between His Start-Up & A Charity

One of our CUBERS, Ashwin Saddul founder of  mobile strategy agency, Better Than Paper shares his time between his start up and a Charity. The charity has just been featured on the BBC and it focuses on helping street children in India.

If you would like to get involved, we have christmas cards at THECUBE.

Why did you start the charity?

  • After spending many years in advertising, the realisation my job will never make the world a better place
  • To make a visible difference to people who really need it by focusing on one particular cause instead of many
  • Had to create a balance between giving and taking
  • I have Indian heritage with family in India where poverty is a huge issue.
  • After being exposed to very bleak poverty -seeing and hearing, first hand, the personal stories of human suffering & tragedy, we became even more emotionally connected to the cause
  • To come back to England after our experience and continue as normal would be a travesty – to help educate people at home and give them a channel to contribute was the right thing to do
  • We met with like minded people who had similar experiences to us and wanted to continue their support in some way when they returned to England – this made it easier to motivate us all to do something. Easier said than done !

2 How does giving back influence the business ?

  • Not much influence yet as we’re in the early stages of launching both
  • The charity and my business are entirely separate at the moment – this means separate conversations with different clients or donors. There are no mentions of the charity on our company website yet.
  • As we are a new business, our client relationships are only starting to develop. Although some of my clients have donated, generally I don’t feel comfortable discussing it with them otherwise i feel i might be trying to off-load too much too soon or emotionally blackmail them ! One strategy would be to start donating a small percentage of profits back to the charity – but we’re a long way from that yet.
  • From a personal point of view, i feel more emotionally balanced and confident when approaching clients - the charity gives whilst the running our business means a lot of pitching which is one-sided to a certain extent.

3 How is change generated ?

  • Broad question, depends on the type of change desired and where it is directed. From a business and charity point of view: Its about value exchange /  mutual benefit. If you can communicate with clarity so people understand the immediate benefits of how a change in their behaviour (could be a change in purchase behaviour) could benefit everyone then i think that is a powerful tool in generating change. There are obvious mechanisms to achieve this such as advertising ( there – advertising isn’t so bad after all is it ??!)

The Idea
We always encourage CUBERS to do something else along side their enterprise to keep the brain open and scanning for new things. It is all well and good to stay focused on the goal, however this often creates tunnel vision, which can lead entrepreneurs to miss opportunities.

IFE Projects Offering Support To Young Fashion Entrepreneurs

CUBER, Bukola Dagiloke is the founder and CEO of IFE Projects, which is a company that helps young people break into the fashion industry. Their latest project is are below….
IFE Projects are now running Independent Fashion Entrepreneur Training and Innovative Fashion Enterprise Development courses, for more detail follow this link :http://www.theifeelexperience.com/ifespotlight.php?action=fullnews&id=64 Please get in contact if you would like to find out more information.
We also have opportunities for fashion creatives to get involved in workshops and other paid projects on a freelance basis and we have some intern roles available in 2012. More information about these opportunities can be found here: http://www.theifeelexperience.com/joinus.html

About THECUBE

THECUBE is a coworking space that houses diverse entrepreneurs and helps create community via events and curated introductions.

How Collaboration Works At THECUBE

We asked CUBER Jonathan Lister to tell who he has collaborated at THECUBE. Below is his story.

Who have you collaborated at THECUBE?
I have collaborated with a wide range of people from digital to coworking, below are some of the projects.

Richard White – SeenOnScreenFitness.com
Charlotte Hambly – SweetSpot.com print brochures
Alison Coward – a project proposal Alison was working on
Adam Austin – SEO proposal for SweetSpot
Araceli Camargo – Coworking plans

Would you collaborate again?
Yes!

Why do we encourage our members to collaborate?

THECUBE’s reputation is highly founded on its community. We have worked meticulously to create a space that supports collaboration. Our members generate business leads, bid for jobs together, and share skills. When you are starting a business it can be a lonely process and you need people around you to stimulate ideas and help you generate contacts.

How we create collaboration
1. THECUBE is small and open plan, this helps take  away anonimity and thus encourages people to introduce each other

2. We set up curated introductions amongst our members and outside contacts

3. We hold monthly lunches and roundtables where members can meet each other and share ideas.

About THECUBE

THECUBE is coworking space in Shoreditch, East London dedicated to collaboration, building sustainable businesses, and driving innovation.

3 Questions With ArtDriver

We have asked our member Oleksiy Synelnychenko the CEO of  ArtDriver to answer three questions.

What are you working on?

In addition to helping a number of innovative startups and charities with their  web development and SEO projects, I’ve been working on our own Internet startup that will incorporate online booking, ratings and reviews for Kyiv, Ukraine restaurants. As you know, Kyiv will be hosting Euro 2012 European Football Championship in the summer 2012, and it is essential to help this city to accommodate the needs of hundreds of thousands of English speaking sport fans who will ascend upon the Ukraine’s capital and will be looking for places to eat.

2. What is the book that changed your life?

One book that comes to mind and really stands out is “The World is Flat” by Thomas Freedman. The author described the importance of globalisation and how countries, companies, communities, and individuals can and must adapt to it in order to be successful or “put it straight” survive in the modern and rapidly changing world.

3. What is THECUBE?

The very name of this place makes me think that I am a part of something great, a place that allows me to immerse myself into the world of creativity and become a part of the community of entrepreneurs. THECUBE also helps me to run my startup business efficiently, share my ideas and meet new people.

About ArtDriver
We are masters of utilising SEO and social media marketing to position our clients’ websites in top search results as well as increase clickthrough and conversion rates. ArtDriver provides Internet marketing services and carries out SEO strategies with a military precision.

3 Questions With NGO Consultant Olivia Munoru

Today we are speaking with NGO consultant Olivia Munoro, she joined THECUBE community in the summer. Below is her story.

1. What are you working on?
In exactly 1 month, ministers from across the globe, government representatives, parliamentarians, civil society organisations and private sector representatives will come together for the 4th High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea. Approximately 2000 delegates will review global progress in improving the impact and value for money of development aid and make new commitments to further ensure that aid helps reduce poverty and supports progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

I am currently consulting for a global NGO, who will be attending this conference.  I am passionate about ensuring that this process is truly democratic which is why I have agreed to carry out some research to help prepare the delegates for this forum. They will be advocating for greater and more meaningfulchildren’s participation in policy dialogue, especially in regards to issues that impact children’s lives (such as health, housing, education and development). It is a real honour to be involved in such a process.
2. What is a book that has changed your life?
The book that changed my life was King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild. Until I read this book I had no idea of the scale of the genocide in The Congo during Belgium’s Colonial rule. Millions were killed (estimated 10 million) and millions more had their hands chopped off for disobedience or lack of productivity.
What inspired me were the early human rights activists, some real underdogs and unlikely heros in colonial times (an African American slave, a working-class shipping clerk and a closet homosexual) who risked everything for what they believed in.

What is THECUBE?

Welcome Artist & Photographer Gabrielle Cooper

THECUBE London are pleased to announce “Ubiquity”, an exhibition of photographs dealing with space and presence. Gabrielle Cooper is a young London artist and photographer whose thoughts and work return to recurrent themes: spatial composition and human connections.

Gabrielle’s interest in space, physical space and mental space, began with the reading of city descriptions. She read short articles and booklets describing various places, cities, and spaces. She began to wonder if the place the words allowed her to visit through her mind was the same place she would experience if she was physically present. But how could she visually convey this experience to others?

Gabrielle uses double exposures, repetition, and varying techniques to convey the impression of the space visited and reproduction of its atmosphere. The images not only hold the memory of the space for Gabrielle but act as new words for an onlooker to encourage them to visit the area in their minds. Would it be the same place described if the viewer visited it physically?

We can enter space with our physical presence and mental presence. We can enter any realm we choose. With the use of our minds we have the ability to have Ubiquity.

About THECUBE

THECUBE is a co-working space in East London, which sponsors artists on their first solo exhibition. Each artist is chosen based on their neurological value and aesthetic.

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Notes To The Editor

THECUBE says about Gabrielle’s work “Gabrielle’s work is compelling, thoughtful, and with purpose. She is intelligently combining the perception of space with photography to observer how we perceive and interact with different types of spaces, both in mind and physical presence”

Gabrielle graduated with BA Hons Fine Art at Camberwell College of Art.

This is Gabrielle’s first Solo Exhibition

Gabrielle speaks about her work “It exposes my obsessions with light, shape and repetition and that I often envision myself as many people, all with different interpretations of a space. I then have to compete with my personalities to get their ideas and vision in a photograph which often resolves into something quite scattered and unpredictable.”

Blue Stern Joins THECUBE Coworking Space

Blue Stern is a market leading provider of experienced candidates and top percentile graduates fulfilling sales and recruitment roles across London and the South.


Since 1997 the team have successfully run sales and leadership training programmes and have helped create some of the UK’s top salespeople across numerous industries. Several years and an appearance on Dragon’s Den later, Blue Stern Recruitment was born, with the sole aim to become the market leader in sales and recruitment to recruitment (rec to rec) sectors. Should you and your organisation benefit from talented candidates, do get in touch.

Black Tea Events Joins THECUBE Coworking Space

Black Tea Events is a free venue finding and events management service, based in London and operating throughout the UK and overseas. Whether you are looking to book a dinner, drinks reception, meeting or Christmas party we are there to help. From initial enquiry through to event we can be there every step of the way from venue finding, negotiating costs and helping with entertainment.

Jessica Mills
Black Tea Events
T: 07855 239 716
E: Jessica@blackteaevents.com
W: www.blackteaevents.com
A: The Cube Studio 5, 155 Commercial Street, London E1 6BJ