Richard Seabrooke is one of Dublin’s leading creative forces. He is currently the chief creative officer at ‘The Tenth Man’, the festival director of ‘Kaleidoscope’ as well as a practicing artist. Richard was also one of the creative minds behind ‘OFFSET’ Ireland’s biggest creative conference.
Where did you spend lockdown?
Except for a few days, I spent the time since lockdown in the studio on my own. Was surreal at times and cathartic at others. It was pretty wild to be in a space that had around 40 people in it all on my own but it’s reassuring to see life and the team return.
Did you have access to a work space during this time? If not, how did you continue to create work?
Yes, once we made the decision to close down on Friday 13th we packed everyone off home with their computers and I was the only person who came in. It was quite nuclear at the start, especially with the guards outside all the time questioning people on their movements, but amongst the chaos I found clarity and began to think and plan for the first time in ages. After two years of wild organic growth it was interesting to consider where I/we go from here, and start putting plans in place to get there. Now to follow through…
Can you talk about the type of work that you do?
I’m Creative Director of The Tenth Man, a creative agency based in Camden Street in the heart of Dublin. Two years old and we have a 20 strong team working all manner of projects for profit and passion for the likes of Jameson, eir, Bord Bia, KBC and more. We also run the family festival KALEIDOSCOPE which saw 15,000 people come together in Russborough Estate last June and will return next June again.
Did you experiment with any new methodologies during lockdown?
Absolutely. At the start we did like everyone else and put our heads down, reassuring ourselves it would all be fine. As soon as the briefs and budgets slowed up we just applied ourselves to our own work.
Our documentary THIS LAND had been due to launch on the week COVID struck but we ended up having to cancel the sold out screening and premiere it online. This was the catalyst for a lot of self-initiated projects like – THE PHOENIX, a film we put out Easter Saturday that got over a million views, a mural we did on Easter Sunday which was used as a backdrop for lots of articles on national media, an installation and print project called HOME, a mural paying tribute to the HSE, and a couple of other projects.
Given the limitations and restrictions of the last few months, did your work process change at all? If so, do you think this will continue to change how you will make art going forward?
In the vacuum of the city and lack of things going on we used the city as a canvas in a way we couldn’t in more noisy times and we played with formats, media and outputs to keep it interesting and hopefully contribute positively to the collective mood. We also used social and digital in ways we hadn’t done before, both for our projects and clients, the realities of this unique time informing our approaches to create innovative moments.
Did you have any projects during quarantine?
So many it kinda blows my mind looking back… we did an online documentary launch, a film that went viral including being posted by Michael Bublé, a global broadcast for Jameson, a track made by 3 artists who never worked together for Jameson, an installation and 102 prints based on HOME for Pieta House and Dublin Simon Community, multiple murals, made a music video with Wild Youth, created and branded a project to give emerging creative graduates a platform to promote themselves, helped a friend create a new initiative to inspire second level school goers to unlock their inner creative potential, plenty of instagram pieces, an instazine to promote local makers and creators, UGC projects for KBC, eir and GoMo and we even launched brands and refreshed entire client branding projects in the meantime… all while adapting to working remotely with each other and working within the COVID challenging environment…
Do you have any upcoming projects?
Lots on but the momentum has changed to less but bigger projects. Meaty brain stretching challenges are my horizon for the foreseeable, which is great. Time to do less and push myself and the team to stretch our creative muscles more… we also have a couple of super secret projects in the pipeline but they will reveal themselves in time… exciting times!
All photographs were provided by Richard Seabrooke. To see more of The Tenth Man visit their website and Instagram.