Semi Permanent

There are many ways to be inspired. Some folks find their best ideas come wrapped up in a musical package. Plenty of writers use attempts to create the latest feature as an excuse to guiltlessly guzzle the better part of a bottle of gin (and no, I cannot guarantee I am not one of them). I once had an architect friend who couldn’t come up with new plans for a client’s house without driving to small-town Huskisson, drinking a schooner at The Husky Pub – yes, just one – and driving back to Sydney again. He claimed that inspiration always hit him like a ton of bricks on the return trip. I always thought he was kind of nuts, until I suffered from my first official writers block in the summer of 2003. Nowadays the simple fact that he has ownership of such a full-proof plan pretty much makes him a god to me.

It’s hard to pin down what it is that shifts a lot of minds into gear, what causes the darkest reaches of our brains to open and spew forth bubbles of brilliant thought. Contrary to my god-like friend I, like millions of other unfortunates, was unaware of anyone with any real sure-fire method. Until one sunny autumn morning we here at kluster stumbled (albeit in a rather organised manner) upon Sydney’s best-kept inspiration secret. And by George I think it’s time someone blew the lid on the creativity-inspiring cult they call the Semi Permanent Design Conference.

This year two members of the kluster staff – and one random friend – decided it was about time we stopped drooling over the advertisements for the yearly Semi Permanent event, stopped simply leafing through the pages of their annual book before allotting it prime position on our book shelves and actually attended the conference. So we dusted off our notebooks, grabbed one of the only still-working pens we could find in our cluttered desk draws – curse the cyber-age – and headed down to the water at Darling Harbour, with thoughts in our head and ears open; ready to absorb.

Now imagine if you will a mystical building perched on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour. Inside said building participants with a predisposition for creativity can find spaces filled with a plethora of speakers, creators, speaking creators, products, secrets, ideas and inspiration. Not to mention all those other wonderful things that will cause a creative’s eyes to light up in excitement and glaze over in concentration at the same time (I need not specify, you know what they are). Now replace that mystical building with the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre and you’re right where you should be: at the abovementioned conference.

And now my uninspired friends, without further ado, we would love you to feast your hungry brains on a selection of the jewels hidden within: