Introducing Ema Wakeford, 23, the clever head behind 'Live Love London'

Ema, describe yourself in no more than 12 words…
Drinker, addictive, thinker, analyser, musician, liker of smart people, ambitious, & alright...

Now tell us a little bit about what Live Love London does...
We are a PR & Events organisation which features contributors of all sorts from within the creative industries. We aim to facilitate showcasing girls and boys who have the talent but don’t necessarily have the funds or resource. For that reason they’re prepared to get stuck in and want to learn and grow from one and other as well as achieving additional exposure and success as a by-product.

Our events are set-up with the mindset of ‘let’s bring everyone backstage’. They recreate the creative process to allow guests to see how everyone is involved in creating the final result. Live photography shoots, on set hair and make-up, green rooms, outtakes, knitting machines, changing rooms, paint, music, wires, art gallery, alcohol, studios warehouses, mistakes exposed.

How did this all come about?
In Hollywood last year working as a writer I got involved with a young PR team whose work ethos I hadn’t worked with or seen before. Proactively giving everyone a leg up, rather than running each other and the competition into the ground, and it worked. Everyone had so many doors being opened for them daily.

I wanted to apply this approach to events once back in London. Bringing people on board to share their talent with everyone, whether matching photographers with models, artists with AV companies, theres the opportunity to help people and be helped in return and ultimately and importantly getting recognition in the press and media, and other faster because of it; big talent, big hearts, big ambitions to round it up.

Tell us bit about some of the other people involved…
I brought on two others to grow Live Love London with me. They both have very different skill sets, one very much business minded, great speaker skills and then miss chatter box and promo genius, but both endlessly creative, and lovers of late nights, wine, and brainstorming....the key. Meet Miss Sandberg & Miss Murdoch.

Our contributors began with those close to us whom we knew, bringing in photographer and digital artist Nathen Atia and graphic design/playboy bunny in training Rose Woodward. From then we enlisted friend and digital web developer Jason Michael whom co-designed and built the website with us. Photographers, hair stylists, make-up artists, stylists, musicians and venues to name a few skills are now in the LLL mix; abstract, amazing, and multi coloured.

In terms of building a business model, was there anyone who helped you get to know the ropes?
Working in and out of events whilst working as a writer, once I had this idea and was back in the UK I worked full time for an events and marketing company to learn the budgeting, P&L, and so other side of coin, so I understood what I was talking about and what others in the industry were advising me! Although my creative ambitions tend to win over my realistic business considerations it’s important to me to have a balance of both.

What's the personal motivation behind this project?
To have a creative family around me; I always want to be inspired and get annoyed at the time I’ve lost being bored and numb. And vitally I want to help, or facilitate artists and talent working together, like producers helped me as a writer by lending days to me as an unknown writer/artist. To be around bloody hard workers and for it to be free and fun for those involved...two things that also majorly motivate me...

What has been the biggest hurdle you've come up against?
Getting people to believe in the idea before I had the website up, it was hard to explain the idea and for people to understand, but now it’s up and it’s growing, and we’ve got a great blog, and twitter thanks to everyone’s daily musings, people are behind the idea. If I am honest I didn’t care that people couldn’t see through the smoke or were overly pessimistic. Other than that, getting sponsorships, funding, its hard work as we are a new company, but there’d be no fun or worthwhile reward in it if it wasn’t.

What's been your proudest moment so far?
Launching the website! It sounds so small, but seeing everything come to life visually and the hours we’d spent pouring pen over paper copywriting to mean something and even make sense to visitors was satisfying! That was February ‘11, and the first week we secured into the thousands of site views.

Each interview and blog shout, or magazine feature for one of our contributors excites me endlessly!

Annnd finally, one year down the line, where do you want Live Love London to be?
Ever stronger; full of vibrant new contributors and have a great team of sponsors and partners for our varying events. I want us to be an up and coming name, and recognised for our business model, super talented girls and boys and innovative, ever so alcohol fuelled, bloody good events.

BIG LOVE to the Live Love London team, crew and contributors and hot ass team at Ruby Pseudo.

The Royal Bandwagon

Its the biggest wedding of the year. Fair. It will probably bring in the biggest revenue of any Royal event in the next decade. Apart from any Royal babies. Possibly.

To some people it's a huge celebration, and one to be proud of. To others, it's just a bank holiday. Nonetheless, it's EVERYWHERE.

I have brought together a collection of advertisements that make use of the country's.... wait, the World's... obsession with Will and Kate's April Wedding. Here are just a few. Some good, some bad and some just insane.

I'm not telling if I'm on it yet [the bandwagon I mean]. I haven't decided.

Enjoy....

The Freeview HD advert, which we discussed earlier here.

Green & Black's tastefully made print advert plays on a really traditional Wedding theme which I think we can all appreciate.

Ancestry.co.uk playing on a less obviously Royal wedding theme, but a wedding theme nonetheless.

Do I even need to explain? Wow. Saatchi & Saatchi went all out here playing on the recent trend of choreographed wedding dances.

Mr. Men and Little Miss commissioned this title in Spring of last year, and David Riley, managing director of Egmont Publishing Group, said: "It wouldn't surprise me if Prince William had heard about our plans and arranged his wedding to Kate accordingly." Hmmm.....

And Freddie Flintoff, getting into the spirit.

Coming to London in 1700

Imagine yourself, if you will, as a traveller coming to London in the early 1700s. The first thing you would notice is the almost constant pealing of church bells. They were rung not just to summon the faithful, but to alert the community to a hanging-a popular spectator sport-or to a death, when it would toll nine times for a man, six for a woman and three for a child, followed even more sombrely by one stroke for each year she or he had lived. The bell was also a prompt for the 'searchers', the old crones employed by the parish "to repair to the place where the dead corps lies, and by view of the same, and other enquiries, to examine by what disease or casualty the corps died." They were on the look-out chiefly for signs of the plague, and their instant 'diagnosis' would then appear in the London Bills of Mortality.

London by 1700, with half-a-million people, was the largest city in Europe, and with no sanitary arrangements whatsoever. Those approaching from the countryside were first alerted to its presence by smell before sight. Heaps of human sewage was deposited by 'night-soil' men by the roadside. Walking through the streets the traveller had to be constantly alert to the sudden emptying of chamber pots out or windows into the 'kennels', or open-drains running down the middle of the street. Jonathan Swift describes these delightful depositories being blocked with "Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts, and Blood, Drown'd Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench'd in Mud, Dead Cats, and Turnip-Tops." If this was not bad enough our lucky traveller would have to breathe in air thick with sulphurous smoke from domestic fires and industrial furnaces. Those living near graveyards would also have to endure the stink of decaying corpses, buried just below the surface.

Having survived the baptism of stink and smoke, the said traveller was highly likely to contract some fatal disease soon after arrival. Malaria was commonplace, as was typhoid from the contaminated water-supply. Contaminated food was a major cause of dysentery. Poor personal hygiene meant that most people, high and low, had fleas and lice, even to be found in the gentleman's periwig. Smallpox was also rife-so called to distinguish it from the great pox, or syphilis, which was all too common among certain sections of the community. Tuberculosis, also common, was the cause of endless spitting and retching, both indoors and out. One in three babies died before the age of two; and of those who survived, half were dead before the age of fifteen. A great many of these unfortunates simply died of ignorance, with mothers using dirty coins to sooth the pains of teething, and forcing babies to eat solids.

Our traveller would have to find some means of supporting herself or himself quickly, for life was hard and there was no allowance for failure. Suicide was common, and the details of the deaths were eagerly reported by the hack press of Grub Street-"Yesterday morning a woman near White-chappel, who workt to a throwster in those parts, and earned 8 shillings a week, hanged herself in her lodging; but nobody can guess at the reason of her despair."

Welcome to London!