From hieroglyphics to pizza pop-ups, how to make a side project successful

Over the years we’ve seen all kinds of side projects grace It’s Nice That, from the weird to the wonderful and pretty much everything in between. Particularly this past year, we’ve seen how side projects have kept creatives going. With no time limit or commercial or client constraints, they frequently afford creatives a breather from their day-to-day work and feed into their practice in surprising ways. So, we wanted to take the opportunity of May’s Nicer Tuesdays Online to celebrate these extra-curricular activities.

With an abundance of side projects to choose from, we decided to focus on two very special (and very different) side projects. Spotlighting design collective Archief Cairo and illustrator Kate Prior, we virtually journeyed from London over to the Egyptian capital and back again to London for this month’s edition of creative talks. Our speakers talked us through two tremendously exciting projects. First, Archief Cairo co-founders Maram Al Refaei and Hana Neuman took us through their project, which sees the collective restoring old letterpresses at Cairo’s French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, a museum which houses the only caseroom with hieroglyphics in the world.

Then we were joined by the London-based Kate Prior who swapped her illustration tools for cheffing over the lockdown. Having moved to a new area just as the world started to close its doors, Kate and her partner Ugo set up a pop-up pizza joint as a way to get to know their neighbours, with a range of exciting visuals to accompany the new venture. In a Q&A with our editor-in-chief Matt Alagiah, Kate talked us through the details of this project touching on the community values at its heart.