Project ESIN promises 'challenging' creative workshops in Hong Kong, Japan

Project ESIN, produced by creative agency Eat Creative and featuring mentors from a variety of places including London-based creative collective Tomato, is open to anyone, from any industry, who wishes to re-energise their creative process or investigate their creative potential, according to the organisers.

“It’s about exploration, and challenging yourself through exploration” Melbourne-based John Warwicker, a graphic-design expert who is the "creative father" of the workshop series, told Campaign Asia-Pacific.

Warwicker is a Tomato co-founder and former professor of design at Monash University Art, Design & Architecture (MADA), whose long creative career includes music-industry graphic design for the likes of The Rolling Stones and The Police.

"It’s not about us standing up to a Powerpoint, it’s about getting people talking about something, then making something," he continued. "In that way I suppose we’re trying to help people beyond the workshop—to give them a way of negotiating the world that means the world generates ideas for them, as opposed to being detached, separate.”

Warwicker said the workshop is intentionally designed in a non-linear fashion, such that a lecture on photography might be followed by a robot-building project. "It’s scattergun, to keep people off balance, take them out of their comfort zones," he said. "But it all comes together. They may not realise what they’re learning until well afterwards.”

• Hong Kong: MakerHive, Kennedy Town: 24 to 28 September
• Tokyo: Makers’ Base: 19 to 23 October
• Sapporo: 26 October to 6 November
• Hong Kong: MakerHive, Kennedy Town: 11 to 15 November

The Hong Kong workshops are priced at HK$7,500, while the Tokyo event is ¥150,000 and the Sapporo session is ¥120,000. 

This film shows scenes from a Tokyo workshop held earlier this year: