3. Welcome to the North East

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.uk Follow 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.