Since being set up in 2017 by Diana and Sam, M.Y.O has hosted over 10,000 guests and 100s of groups while they got creative.

This has taken many forms and we'd like to share them, so you get a nice idea of what we do!

A listing of all the creative things we currently do in London (updated January 2020):

Regular creative classes 5-7 afternoons and nights a week

Company team building

Creative meeting space hire

Hen dos and stag parties

Birthdays

Baby showers

Family celebrations

Studio hire for other classes

Filming and rehearsal space hire

How-to tutorials on different arts & crafts

Brand activation workshops

Creative off-site sessions at events

Read on to find out more on each if you like...

It evolves often and we're always keen to try new things!

We want you to feel at home in our creative studio, so you can BYOB (bring your own beer/wine/prosecco/ tequila(!) etc) if you like, we provide the glasses, or get a cup of tea or coffee :). Want to bring some food or snacks? That's no problem either.

We have creative studios in Borough (SE1 1HA - capacity 30). We go off-site regularly too, number of guests for those can be as many as you like!

This has been the staple of M.Y.O to date and what makes us a little unique - a real mix of regular classes during the week in the evenings and on Saturday nights and some Sunday mornings in the studios. We change the activities up regularly and you can try things like calligraphy, embroidery, watercolour flower painting, painted ceramics, creative hand lettering, macrame, t-shirt & tote bag design (and baby grows on request), illustration, lino printing onto prints or tote bags / t-towels, vision boards, life drawing, tassel earrings, handmade pottery - pinch pots, slab & coil pots and now terracotta planters! We also do 'book creative studio time' type sessions, where you can dabble and choose what to do during the session. For Christmas, there is tonnes of Christmassy ones of course!

See Borough classes here.

We've done tonnes of creative sessions with teams from companies like The Premier Inn, Sainsbury's, Diageo, Fairtrade, John Lewis, Hotels.com, Innocent, Lloyd's, Google, YouTube, BCG, Lily's Kitchen, Virgin Galactic and tonnes more. It's been a lot of fun! Groups can choose from any of the above mentioned creative classes and we can go bespoke, too. For example, we've helped Warner Music employees re-image their company logo and transfer / paint it onto a ceramic mug, find out more about those here.

We've also started to see companies purchase tickets to creative classes for their employees as part of their wellness budget and also setting up 'creative clubs' which we run for them, which has been great.

We finally launched this in March 2019! It went well, we got lots of feedback and we may relaunch it in the future! London's first creative gym membership. You get access to 3 classes a month for 2 months (6 total), along with deals / discounts, member socials and more! All for only £80 per month.The aim is to provide you with a full on creative experience over 2 months, where you can truly explore your creative side through the range of creative classes we offer. Full info here, spaces are limited! We can't wait to get started!

If you'd like to work from a colourful and creative environment for a morning, afternoon or evening, we can do that. Want to follow it up with a creative session perhaps? Walk this way. Local organisations use the space regularly for meetings and we've had comedy and theatre rehearsals too! Some more info here.

Getting creative with BYOB beats going to just the pub doesn't it!? Come and get creative with us, catch up with everyone properly, learn to make something great, have music you like in the background and have a good time. We can figure out a theme to do with the hen/stag, maybe make things for the wedding itself or just have a good creative knees up! You can order in food if you like too.

We've started doing these a lot more regularly as guests who come to classes decided to do something a little different for their birthdays when they come up. Much like hen parties, they're a lot of fun and is always so nice seeing the smiles around the tables as connections are sparked and things to be proud of are made! We've set up different creative stations for bigger groups, so guests can dabble or there could be a theme running through it, depending on numbers.

What better way to celebrate a new baby than making bespoke clothes and toys for them? We have expanded from our classic classes to designing personalised baby grows to include; making baby felt mobiles, baby bunting, finger puppets and soft books!

Love these! Is it clear that we enjoy all things creative yet, for any occasion?? For private groups, we can host children and adults for creative time. Evoke memories of your childhood as parents still show their children what to do, haha. On a serious note, we've had 3 generations of a family come and make things together. It felt super special to be able to host that and they all have something to remember the occasion by, forever. Awwww.

Numerous creatives have rented the studio from us to host their own creative workshops, which is fine with us! We think we've created special studios and love to share them with others. For example, Southwark Council hosted classes for a number of weeks whilst their normal studio was being refurbed, Alice Gabb did a calligraphy session for Bumble and Chloe Campbell hosted a brilliantly colourful paper craft class on a Saturday afternoon.

We see a lot of potential with this one and would like to do more of it, so get in touch if it may be of relevance to your company! For example, we've partnered with the Diageo owned (they own Bailey's, Guinness, Smirnoff etc) Irish Whiskey brand Roe & Co. We're helping them launch the whiskey in London through a series of creative workshops that are relevant to the brand in our studios, but also off-site in a special tram that has been made. We hosted a brush lettering drop in style session at the launch night in the swanky TT Liquor and the next night we invited creative souls to partake in a brush lettering class in our old Peckham Levels studio, followed by whiskey tasting. The brush lettering used recycled / reused equipment where possible and the output was a quote inspired by whiskey and Irish proverbs - both which link back to the brand. The follow up sessions will be lino printing and decoupaging Roe & Co bottles, both again linked back to the brand where possible so it all ties together nicely. Find out about that here.

We've also hosted creative sessions in Adidas' Oxford Street store and worked with UCL to host classes over their freshers week, whilst bringing a creative element to Beefeater Gin's World Cocktails Championships, see here and here.

Learning and doing creative things is a memorable and special thing to do and connections really spark when everyone is around a table together doing it, so it makes a launch, general or brand activation event a little different and more meaningful. I am biased, but genuinely believe being creative with others ignites colourful sparks. As we're flexible, we can work with you to figure out what activity or theme could work best, so the creativity flows and guests enjoy it even more.

We've had an episode of Celebs go Dating in our studios (Alik painted and spoke about his love life with his Dad!), an ad for Tastemade with American Express, Tamzin Merchant (The Tudors, Salem) filmed scenes for a day for her upcoming film, Virgin Experience Days came to film for their Christmas campaign, the Queen biopic (Bohemian Rhabsody) used the studio whilst filming, elves came to see the studio as part of Visit London's Christmas campaign in 2019, a well known bakery show came to shoot some scenes..., the Arts Council took some footage for their new website from the studio. The Borough studio is very colourful and Central (SE1), so can be easy to get to also.

Got an ad you need to shoot or need a colourful central location for filming some content? Let us know.

We launched a little YouTube channel in 2019 and shortly after were asked to work with a big film studio to make Christmas themed how-to videos inspired by a particular (very famous, but we're under NDA) film series. We came up with some ideas, broke them into steps, then went to their studio with the equipment and materials to help film them (they cut and edited the footage).  

Over Christmas 2018 we also showed invited influencers how to creatively wrap Christmas presents for River Island in their Oxford Street Press HQ! It was a good opportunity for those invited to learn about the Christmas line the store had, whilst learning some new and practical creative skills.

St. Katherine's Dock invited us to run workshops at the Classic Boat Festival 2 years in a row, where the themes have been 'imports of the Dock' and 'boats!', so we devised a lino printing class onto cotton (one of the imports) tote bags where the imagery used was the other 9 imports (things like shells, marble and indigo). In between classes we ran family friendly drop in sessions. We've also been to things like the Standon Calling music festival, Miss Jones PA summit, hosted creative sessions at Boston Consulting Groups London office Christmas party in 2019, along with doing lots of creative sessions for off-site member / client socials, see here. Getting creative together is a great way to break the ice and meet new people or build a better relationship with people you already know! We'd love to do more of these types of things, so...