It’s that time of year again where we celebrate another 365 days of Rogue Piercing Nottingham! It’s been a year full of change and growth for our team and we cannot wait to see what the next five years bring!
At the start of the year, we had the pleasure of attending the very first Wee Scottish Expo in Edinburgh. We packed up the suspension rig and drove from Nottingham to Scotland to spend time with new and old industry friends from all over the globe. As part of the Expo, we worked with the incredible Bliss of Pain Suspension Crew and world renowned practioner Eugenia Delphine for the Body Play day, performing body suspensions to raise money for War Child UK, a specialist charity helping children effected by conflict. Special thank you to the team at Bold and Gold for making the event so special!
Rolling in to summer this year, our very own Head Piercer Breo Hoek received the APP Legacy Scholarship! Together with Gemma, they travelled out to sunny ol’ Las Vegas, Nevada for ten days of hard work, sweat and lots and lots of learning. It was amazing to have Breo as part of the Volunteer Family and the experience was undeniably life changing. You can read more about Breo’s first time attending the APP conference in his blog here.
While Gemma and Breo were off on their adventures, the studio had the honour of hosting Elly Tso! Elly really stepped up to help Jay keep Rogue Nottingham running to it’s full potential while the team were across the Atlantic. Big, big thank you to both Jay and Elly for keeping the ship sailing!
Pretty much as soon as Gemma and Breo landed back in the UK, we welcomed Gwen to the team! Gwen has been piercing for a couple of years now and joined the Rogue team to expand her existing skillset and grow her career as a Piercer 🙂
Almost as soon as Gwen started with us, Aiden and Anna flew Gwen out to Berlin for the annual BMXNet conference to really get a feel for the importance of what we do as Piercers (and of course to network and catch up with some dear friends). You can read more about Gwen’s experience of her first international conference here. We are super proud of Gwen for how they have integrated in with the team and how passionate they are about our craft.
Our last big event for this year was the UKAPP conference which was held in Nottingham for the very first time this year! We had a whirwind of a time, volunteering to help run the Audio/Visual for the event, attending classes and keeping the studio up and running throughout. It was hard work for the team but not only did we make it happen, we had so much positive feedback from Piercers all over the globe who came to visit and be pierced at Rogue. It was especially important for Breo who had the absolutely honour of showing the legendary Brian Skellie around our studio and even had him watch Breo perform some piercings! Not nerve-wracking at all!
We also had the fantastic BVLA team pop in to see the studio and it was such a wonderful experience to meet them in person! Travelling all the way from Los Angeles to Nottingham, the BVLA team had their own floor at the UKAPP expo this year to showcase all their amazing pieces!
And finally, just as the UKAPP conference was about to start this year, ROGUE BIRMINGHAM was licensed! Meaning that we now have TWO locations across the Midlands! Rogue Birmingham has been a labour of love and we are so, so impressed with all the hard work that Aiden has put in to make the second studio possible. Nestled in the Custard Factory at Digbeth, Aiden is now available for piercing and jewellery appointments. We picked up some extra special pieces from our conferences just for the Birmingham site, so head over, say hello and pick yourself out something gorgeous! We can’t wait to see our second studio grow and expand over the coming months, and it will be super excited to write a 5 year anniversary blog for our second site!
Congratulations again to Aiden for all his hard work in setting up Rogue Birmingham and for all of his continued support at Nottingham! Rogue wasn’t built in a day, but it was built in the best interest of our clients and Piercers to provide you with the high quality, safe piercing environment that you all deserve!
See you at our 6 year celebration!
