I’m not sure, but am I the only one who is getting the feeling that everyone is talking about this year’s Tomorrowland music festival? Plenty of my friends are already constantly posting about it on Facebook. Others are saying that attending this incredible music festival is their goal for 2012.

I don’t have any past experience with this festival, so I tried my best to get as much information about it as possible. I must admit that I’m really impressed with the sound of this upcoming event.

It’s that kind of festival that every electro fan dreams of going to. Once you attend Tomorrowland you will find yourself coming back again and again, until it starts to become an addiction. Tomorrowland has been held in Antwerp, Belgium since 2005 and is a massive success every single year. People seem to have the most enjoyable time of their lives and the music brings everyone together. Tomorrowland is basically the Glastonbury of the house-music world and the Coachella of the trance nation.

Tomorrowland always has an immensely diverse stage set up, which including dancers, a smiling sun with a functioning opening/closing mouth and amazing fireworks. This is something you seriously don’t want to miss out on. I wanna go there so bad!!

The organizers of the event are enticing the crowd with not only an impressive line-up, but also by only announcing little bits-and-pieces of info at a time. Updates of which top international DJ’s will be attending are released slowly over a 6 month period. This is cool because the year is then filled with gifts and mysteries – true to their motto ‘Yesterday is History, Today a Gift, Tomorrow is Mystery’. You can get a little impression of the line-up here.

Tomorrowland – OFFICIAL DATES: 27 -29 July 2012

If you would like to find out more about Tomorrowland please cruise across to their homepage.
Alternatively you can catch them on Facebook or their Twitter pages.

Now this is what I call the ultimate electro music festival. It’s insane!!

Miriam

Springleap loves the Friends of Parent and Child team!

It is not very often that you find a group of people so committed to making a positive change in the lives of South Africa’s youth.

Friends of Parent and Child are a charity organization that seeks to uplift the lives of township children and to help them to fully realise their dreams.

This dedicated team of individuals juggle their normal lives while also managing to help educate and inspire a group of 60 wonderful youngsters.

Every year the team throws an amazing fun filled party for the kids. Springleap wanted to help out and ensure that the kids were treated to a little something extra. We really wanted them to feel as special as they truly are!

Two years ago we donated 60 of our awesome t-shirts to the kids and they were totally overjoyed.
Last year we got involved once again, but this time around Springleap donated 120 tees. That means that each child received 2 of our funky tees. Lucky lucky!!!

The event itself was held at the Village Mall in Hartbeespoort. The kids looked like they had an amazing time! It’s always so uplifting to see those smiling faces enjoying themselves.

If you would like to find out more about Friends of Parent and Child please take a look at my original posting or alternatively check out their Facebook page.

We salute these fine men and women as they strive to make a real difference in the lives of impoverished children, forging ahead to a brighter future.

…………………………

Please contact the team at Friends of Parent and Child to make a donation:

PO Box 93866, Yeoville, 2143, South Africa
Tel: (011) 484-1734
Fax: (011) 643-2957 or 086-690-2771
e-mail: jennie@jpccc.org.za

The Toffie Pop Culture Conference is one of the most anticipated events on the South African design calendar.

Jammed packed with the best local and international design talent you could ever hope to see, the Toffie conference is a spectacle of delights for those of us with a more creative perspective on the world.

This will be only the third Toffie Pop Culture Conference since its inception and promises to be bigger and even more explosive than in previous years.

We are talking about more than 60 of the most talented creatives from every corner of the world, amassing underneath one roof for a feast of ‘sensory glory’. 
You will have the privilege of oogling the work of professionals who have a passion for everything from magazine art to popular culture. I have taken a look at the impressive list of guest speakers and exhibitors and am already mega excited.

Check out the entire list of Toffie Pop Culture Conference guest speakers HERE.

The Toffie ‘experience’ is directed more at hardcore industry peeps and those individuals who take design and the act of sharing it with the entire universe very seriously. It is a place where emerging designers can run shoulders with some of the biggest names in the industry. This is, especially for South Africans, a chance to network with people of diverse and thought provoking design backgrounds. Sharing ideas, collaborating, voicing opinions, being inspired, making offers that cannot be refuse….the Toffie conference is all this and more!

This insanely cool event will set you back R750 (+R250 for workshops) and will be held over three days at the Cape Town City Hall (30 March – 1 April).
The ticket will give you access to all of the exhibitions, the market, conference, small talks, as well as the food court.

I mentioned that there are workshops for an additional sum. Please be aware that these workshops have mega-limited seating. So if you would like to attend you will need to be very quick in snapping up some tickets. Each workshop will only allow a maximum of 20 people…yep, that is all folks.

If you would like workshop tickets please book here:

toffie@thepresident.co.za – or alternatively - http://pop.toffie.co.za/tickets/

The event promises to be filled with fun and quirky activities. I hear they will also be running a contest between international teams of designers in celebration of the upcoming London Olympics. Teams will have to rush around the Toffie Conference doing all sorts of odd challenges and no doubt making complete fools of themselves in the process…sounds great!

Word on the street is that there will also be a famous Freestyle soccer champion from Argentina in attendance who will impress the crowd with his insanely slick foot techniques.
Watch his video here.

To keep up to date with all the news and happening for the Toffie Pop Culture Conference its best to check out their Facebook page or their Twitter feed.

This is going to be out-of-this-world boys and girls!

If you are serious about design and creativity in general, then you simply cannot miss out on this event.

ROARRRRR KERSMASH ZAPPPPP!!!!

Congratulations go out to our January 2 ‘Open Theme’ winner, Carbine.

His Role Playing submission made its mark early on. Right from the start it received a mountain of praise and ‘5 votes’ from the community. We knew it was going to be a serious contender for the win!

The design itself is extremely nostalgic! Carbine uses his amazing design skills to instantly transport us back to our youth! Do you remember the days when our imaginations were free to create without the restraint of societies oppressive ‘grown up boringness’? Well, this design throws off those shackles and leaves us free to dream as big and as expressively as we possibly can.

Role Playing has it all – It is ridiculously intricate, makes efficient use of color, has perfect placement and most importantly is based on a rock solid concept that can be understood across all cultures.

This may be Carbine’s first win on Springleap, but there are honestly very few designers that come close to a win with every single submission that they send through. When a design comes through from this man you know it will feature at the top of the list every single time. Just take a look at Carbine’s design section and you will see exactly what I mean!

We cannot wait for Role Playing to hit the printing floor, it is going to look so hot…just you wait.

Well done Carbine, the team is literally on the edge of their seats in anticipation of your next submission.

Enjoy!

The Up the Creek 2012 music festival lived up to its reputation and then some!

No more will I wonder why this festival has such a strong following, or why every year people travel from all over the world just to sit in the river and listen to some bands. This festival is truly something special. I may have been to quite a few music festivals in my day, but I can honestly say that this is the most chilled, superbly positive and accepting festival I have ever had the pleasure of attending.

What I really enjoyed was that the organisers managed to pull together a perfect mix of musical styles. It was also a great opportunity to see bands that don’t get nearly enough exposure compared to the usual commercial selection of bands.

I honestly don’t even know where to start when it comes to the bands. There was so much talent that it’s actually difficult to single out favourites. However, my ‘band of the festival’ and also a band I’ve been meaning to see for a frigging eon was Shadowclub. These guys are seriously good. They honestly have so much potential, solid lead vocals, inventive riffs and a driving energy. When Good Morning Killer came on the crowd went ballistic. To top it all off they even managed to get a little mini mosh-pit going at the front…which I attacked with much gusto. Who would have thought I would be moshing it up with a crowd that are famously laid back?

Perhaps the most ‘commercially well known’ band that played was the ever impressive Aking. Singing along to Safe as houses was so much fun…what a song, what a band! They rocked a pretty groovy gig, even considering that the lead vocals got a bit drowned by the instruments. Machinery had a similar problem, but in reverse, Sanni’s vocals were too loud and crushed Andre’s insane guitar work.

My worst moment of Up the Creek came when we realised that we wouldn’t make it in time for Jeremy Loop’s set on Friday night. We literally missed it by 30 minutes. I have been telling my girlfriend about Jeremy for ages and really wanted her to witness his musical genius. Luckily he joined Machinery on stage during their gig…however it was only for one song and he didn’t get to show off any of his looping skills, so sad!

It is always a pleasure when I hear a band and instantly connect with their sound. The Kongos blasted the crowd with a fresh infusion of rock, which really got the audience moving. Interestingly enough their musical back ground resonate with the South African crowd, because the four band members, who are also brothers, spent much of their childhood in SA. Their father, John Kongos, is a well respected South African musician who is entrenched in the SA rock scene. They are currently recording in Arizona, but who knows maybe we will be seeing even more of them in the near future. They are on tour in South Africa at the moment, so check their tour dates here. This is a band I will be writing a dedicated post about very soon!

Just when Up the Creek couldn’t get any more surprising the crowd received a wonderful uplifting announcement! Two long time Up the Creek festival goers, Blues Broers band member Rob Nagel and his partner Maggie Frost, were to hold a surprise wedding…right there on the river in front of the entire crowd. It was actually quite a moving little ceremony. Maggie was rowed down the river in a little kayak, smoothly navigating between the masses of inflatable crafts, where she met Rob on the banks of the river. They had a short exchange of vows, which was presided over by Piet Botha (another well know musician). They kissed and waved to the crowd and everybody cheered like crazy…loved it. Supposedly another couple also got married at Up the Creek 2011, but I hear this one was much better and also didn’t mess with the musical schedule. So happy for them they looked so sweet together, congratulations!

The organisers did a pretty good job of coordinating the event itself. Yes there were a few stuff-ups, but that’s the same with any festival. There will no doubt be plenty of people complaining out there, I’m sure of it. To be honest about the biggest mess-up was the mobile Standard Bank machine, which was out-of-order from early Saturday evening…ouch fail! Maybe go with FNB next time, lolz. Oh and the guys at the healthy option food stall ran out of Jalapeno poppers way too quickly, hehe. Ok, that’s all ;)
Let’s focus on the good stuff rather than the poofie shall we!

What is the true magic ingredient of Up the Creek? Yes it’s the music, the atmosphere and the breathtaking prime location, but there is something more. Perhaps it is the fact that there is no divisible line separating the revellers. Regardless of age, people of all persuasions came together and had a massive party. Everybody is respectful of each other and there is a genuine feeling of togetherness. Many people I spoke to referred to Up the Creek as a ‘hippy music festival’. Yes I agree to a certain extent, but there is definitely a very broad mix of personalities running around.

All I can say is that I am well and truly hooked! I have undoubtedly caught the Up the Creek 'bug' and will make the pilgrimage in 2013…I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Up the Creek 2012 was insanely fun and now sits firmly as my favourite South African music festival.
Let’s hope that the organisers keep the festival small and super intimate…its simply perfect as it is now!