Work in Motion from Workpattern

Wednesday the 9th of September, just after nine. The doors are open, the coffee’s on, and nobody yet knows whether people will treat Work Beyond Walls as a workplace or a trade show.This is the episode about the two event days themselves: what was going on, who was there, and how it felt in the moment.Back in episode 2, Will Easton, the first person to register, said he’d know within seconds of walking in whether it had worked. We get his verdict, and find out whether Greg the pushy salesman turned up. Tom Coxon of Allermuir explains why the partner brands felt like an England squad on international week. Bertie van Wyk of MillerKnoll counts the people working at settings that clearly aren’t theirs. And Hannah Naylor-Skeats witnesses a moment of serendipity.Then a run of firsts. A prototype KI chair that was hidden behind frosted glass at Clerkenwell in May, now available for anyone to sit in. Podium’s first official talk. Courtney Chilvers of Atom bank giving her first public talk, and Jenny Johnstone of Sage her first to a property audience. And two Northumbria graduates, weeks out of university, amongst furniture they've studied inside out.Also: why a chair can make people apologise, what day two’s regional speakers  brought to the show, what happens when the Boiler Shop gets compared with Copenhagen and Stockholm instead of London, and Paul Glaister’s verdict once the band started: it’s like having a party in your own front room.Featuring Terry McStea (RTC / Design Network North), Will Easton, Tom Coxon (Allermuir), Bertie van Wyk (MillerKnoll), Joanna Laverty (KI Europe), Josh Jackman and Joe Kupusarevic (Podium Performance Intelligence), Courtney Chilvers (Atom bank), Jenny Johnstone (Sage), Elora Foley and Albert Wolstenholme (Northumbria University), Ella Hughes (GT3 Architects), Michelle Percy (Develop North), Phil Witcherley (North East Mayoral Strategic Authority), Nadean McNaught (NaughtOne), Hannah Naylor-Skeats and Philippa Lobb (Workpattern), and Paul Glaister.Work Beyond Walls took place at the Boiler Shop, Newcastle, on 9 and 10 September 2026.workbeyondwalls.ukFollow Work Beyond Walls on LinkedIn for future event announcements.Work in Motion, series 1: The inside story of Work Beyond Walls, is written and presented by Ian Ellison, and produced by Dave Crackles, for Workpattern.Subscribe so you get the next episode as soon as it lands - and if you know someone who needs inspiring about how to make work better, please pass it on.

Monday the 7th of September. The venue has let Workpattern in a day early, on one condition: they can deliver, but not build. Seven wagon loads of furniture go in, laid out on a floor marked up in blue tape.Every office you've ever worked in was designed by somebody. But at the point of order, the baton gets passed on. To order furniture, chase delivery, and manage that install. This episode is all about the 'back end' of workspace design - and we finally meet the two people at Workpattern who turn a design into a delivery.Helen Henshaw started as maternity cover in 2007, found a hole and filled it, and now takes over every project at the point of order, working remotely from Liverpool. John Lennox left school at 15 for a joinery apprenticeship, spent 14 years as the junior, and used to call into the Boiler Shop when it was a builder’s merchant. Helen likes a plan. John likes a problem. A perfect match, or recipe for disaster?Then the get-in itself: approaching 30 manufacturers building their settings side by side in a single day, a spiral staircase that became the bane of John’s life, a cracked panel on a very expensive pod, and a very healthy registration count.Also: the back end of a pantomime horse, a quick tutorial on the iron triangle of project management, why there’s a plant in a slightly odd place in your office, a live radio interview about a podcast that ends up in the podcast, the Great North Run needing the building back, and Bongo's Bingo.Featuring Helen Henshaw, John Lennox, Hannah Naylor-Skeats and Philippa Lobb (Workpattern), Mark Catchlove (MillerKnoll), Jacqui Martin (Consult North), Terry McStea (RTC / Design Network North), Will Easton and Paul Glaister.Work Beyond Walls took place at the Boiler Shop, Newcastle, on 9 and 10 September 2026.workbeyondwalls.ukFollow Work Beyond Walls on LinkedIn for future event announcements.Work in Motion, series 1: The inside story of Work Beyond Walls, is written and presented by Ian Ellison, and produced by Dave Crackles, for Workpattern.Subscribe so you get the next episode as soon as it lands - and if you know someone who needs inspiring about how to make work better, please pass it on.

Work Beyond Walls has happened. It went well. Really well, actually. So no more episodes that start with registration numbers!Before we go back inside the Boiler Shop, this episode is about the place the event was built for. Almost everyone interviewed for this series ended up talking about the North East sooner or later: where they grew up, why they stayed, why they left, and why they came back.Mark Catchlove of MillerKnoll arrived from Kent at 18 and checked he still had his wallet when strangers said good morning. Jenny Johnstone of Sage got the same welcome on a petrol station forecourt. At Northumbria University, Seton Wakenshaw and Rickard Whittingham try to name the secret sauce behind a design school whose interior design course is about to take its biggest ever intake. And Elliot Brook explains how deadgood began with a chance meeting in a student bar.Then the people who left. Jacqui Martin couldn’t wait to get away, and came back to find that workplace consultancy didn’t seem to exist up here. Darren Richardson went from painting model aircraft in his Thornaby bedroom to designing for Delta and Cathay Pacific, and moved home wondering what he’d done.Also: whether the North East is twenty years behind London or having its moment, the difference between hopeful and expectant, why a leaky boat breeds camaraderie, and why the people Paul needed never had to walk out of a cornfield.Featuring Mark Catchlove (MillerKnoll), Jenny Johnstone (Sage), Seton Wakenshaw and Rickard Whittingham (Northumbria University), Elliot Brook (deadgood), Ella Hughes (GT3 Architects), Hannah Naylor-Skeats (Workpattern), Jacqui Martin, Darren Richardson (Gardiner Richardson), Terry McStea (RTC / Design Network North) and Paul Glaister.Work Beyond Walls took place at the Boiler Shop, Newcastle, on 9 and 10 September 2026.workbeyondwalls.ukFollow Work Beyond Walls on LinkedIn for future event announcements.Work in Motion, series 1: The inside story of Work Beyond Walls, is written and presented by Ian Ellison, and produced by Dave Crackles, for Workpattern.Subscribe so you get the next episode as soon as it lands - and if you know someone who needs inspiring about how to make work better, please pass it on.

One week to go until Work Beyond Walls.312 registrations against the 500 Paul needs... and a sneak peek inside the Boiler Shop with Hannah Naylor-Skeats, the Workpattern designer whose job it is to fill it. She doesn't describe herself as 'the floor plan police' for nothing.Check out this bonus episode to learn:What nobody knows yet about the acousticsWhy one speaker who overruns could ruin a dayWho's on the registration listWhich unexpected themes are emerging for the sessionsWhat the QR codes throughout the living workplace are forAnd the curse of Eventbrite: why 'free' tickets keep organisers up at nightFeaturing Hannah Naylor-Skeats and Philippa Lobb (Workpattern), and Paul Glaister.Work Beyond Walls took place at the Boiler Shop, Newcastle, on 9 and 10 September 2026.workbeyondwalls.ukFollow Work Beyond Walls on LinkedIn for future event announcements.Work in Motion, series 1: The inside story of Work Beyond Walls, is written and presented by Ian Ellison, and produced by Dave Crackles, for Workpattern.Subscribe so you get the next episode as soon as it lands - and if you know someone who needs inspiring about how to make work better, please pass it on.

Five weeks out. Fifty-one registrations of the 500 Paul needs. The optimism-o-meter hasn't moved all week.Everyone who tries to build a workplace design event starts by copying Clerkenwell Design Week. In this episode we find out why you can't - from the woman who curates its talks programme - and what you do instead.Katie Richardson explains that Clerkenwell works because of where it is, not what it is, and explains the closed loop every new event has to crack: brands come if you have visitors, visitors come if you have brands.Meanwhile, Dave James has spent four years building a version called ClerkenWales in a converted chapel in Cardiff, and Herb Kim, who has run Thinking Digital in the North East for seventeen years, is disarmingly honest about his own first year - where the target isn't a full room... it's a room that isn't embarrassingly empty.Also: what Work Beyond Walls actually is, why Darren Richardson told Paul that if he didn't use the name he'd take it and do it better himself, a thirty-year-old government publication nobody else spotted, and what would have to be true to get a magazine publisher in Stoke on a train.Featuring Katie Richardson, Dave James (BLOKKA), Herb Kim (Thinking Digital), Darren Richardson (Gardiner Richardson), Mark Eltringham (Workplace Insight), Will Easton, Terry McStea (RTC / Design Network North) and Paul Glaister.Work Beyond Walls took place at the Boiler Shop, Newcastle, on 9 and 10 September 2026.workbeyondwalls.ukFollow Work Beyond Walls on LinkedIn for future event announcements.Work in Motion, series 1: The inside story of Work Beyond Walls, is written and presented by Ian Ellison, and produced by Dave Crackles, for Workpattern.Subscribe so you get the next episode as soon as it lands - and if you know someone who needs inspiring about how to make work better, please pass it on.

Seven weeks before the doors open, Paul Glaister has one registration. Two, if you count the one he entered himself to check the form worked. He needs 500.This is the story of how a simple request from two interior designers - could you fill a railway arch with furniture for a couple of days? - became a two-day event in the post-industrial building where they built Rocket.We meet Beth Lawford at GT3 Architects, who asked the question and then refused to take any credit for it. Philippa Lobb, who carried it back to Workpattern. And Paul Glaister, who booked the biggest space he could find in Newcastle, before the event had a name, a brand, a budget, or a single person signed up to attend.Along the way: why the North East has nowhere to see the furniture it specifies, what Workpattern lost when it gave up the Queen Street studio in 2016, why nobody at the company can quite explain what Paul does, and what a 1989 Kevin Costner movie has to do with any of it.Featuring Beth Lawford (GT3 Architects), Philippa Lobb and John Lennox (Workpattern), Terry McStea (RTC / Design Network North), and Paul Glaister.Work Beyond Walls took place at the Boiler Shop, Newcastle, on 9 and 10 September 2026.workbeyondwalls.ukFollow Work Beyond Walls on LinkedIn for future event announcements.Work in Motion, series 1: The inside story of Work Beyond Walls, is written and presented by Ian Ellison, and produced by Dave Crackles, for Workpattern.Subscribe so you get the next episode as soon as it lands - and if you know someone who needs inspiring about how to make work better, please pass it on.

Paul Glaister booked the biggest space he could find, then went away to work out what to put in it.Work Beyond Walls is two days at the Boiler Shop in Newcastle, a former locomotive works, and the kind of event you'd usually have to get a train to London for. Paul needs 500 people to sign up. When we started recording, he had one. Well, two, if you count the one he entered himself to check the form worked.Series 1 of Work in Motion, from Workpatten, is a six-part series about whether he can pull it off. Not an advert for the event - an honest account of building something ambitious in a region that's never had one, with full access and no shying away from the numbers.Episode 1 is out Wednesday 12th August. Subscribe so you don't miss a thing.Work Beyond Walls took place at the Boiler Shop, Newcastle, on 9 and 10 September 2026.workbeyondwalls.ukFollow Work Beyond Walls on LinkedIn for future event announcements.Work in Motion, series 1: The inside story of Work Beyond Walls, is written and presented by Ian Ellison, and produced by Dave Crackles, for Workpattern.Subscribe so you get the next episode as soon as it lands - and if you know someone who needs inspiring about how to make work better, please pass it on.