The 2023 Urban Sketching Symposium took place in mid-April in Auckland, New Zealand. I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand; when I was a kid I bought a little pocket Berlitz guidebook for New Zealand, I used to read about Milford Sound and learned a couple of Maori words (admittedly it was just ‘Kia Ora’ which was easy to remember because of those juice adverts, “It’s too orangey for crows, it’s just for me and my dog” “I’ll be your dog! Woof woof woof woof…” You remember the one). So when the first international USk Symposium after the pandemic was announced, I was excited to go. Except, it was in April, and in New Zealand, and that was a tricky time with work, so I decided, ok, I won’t go. I’ll get to Auckland another time, I guess. So I got to watch all my other fellow sketchers’ posts from down in Auckland, but I didn’t have time to be jealous because instead, I went to a different conference. This was for work was the UC-AMP conference at UC Berkeley. Despite not being at the USk Symposium, I still acted as if I was, and kept my sketchbook out at all times. I drew pretty much all of the speakers whose talks I attended, as I usually do as I am taking notes at the same time. I was very impressed with all the talks, this being my first UC-AMP I was not sure what to really expect, but I’ve not been as engaged at a work conference as with this one, and I learned a lot that I will bring back to my own job. The networking was good too, and I met some interesting people and got some different perspectives. See, even though I’m not urban sketching, I’m still obsessed with perspective.

Many of the talks focused on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in a pretty broad number of ways. The keynote speaker was Dania Matos, Vice-Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at UC Berkeley, and I really enjoyed her talk. “Data drives decisions, but story telling drives commitment.” I liked that phrase. As I say, I drew most of the other speakers too, though I’ll not go into all their talsk or names here, but here are the sketches I did.

I mostly drew in the small Stillman & Birn Alpha pocket sketchbook I use for people sketches (and occasional travel sketches), and mostly used that purple Pigma Brush pen that I like for these quick people sketches (though I did use the black Zebra pen for one of Eugene Whitlock, above).

I will say though, the guy above, David Alcocer, gave a really excellent and engaging presentation on the UC Budget. I thought, as did others, that this would be the one very dry talk, but it was the opposite, and I felt like I knew a lot more about the bigger picture, plus he was just a great presenter too.

With these last two, I did write a lot more o what they were saying down, as it was worth noting. The colours by the way are just my usual watercolour, with a waterbrush pen.I’m very much looking forward to the 2024 UC-AMP conference, whcih will be in Riverside, and hopefully won’t clash with the Urban Sketching Symposium. Although actually it probably will, because once again the next one will be in the souther hemisphere, in April, in Buenos Aires, in Argentina. Another place I’d love to go, another place I probably won’t make it to. We shall see. I do miss seeing all of my global urban sketching community, but it was nice to be part of another community for a few days, and come away just as full of ideas.