London is open

A year ago, we opened a door in South Melbourne and called it free.studio. We had a handful of people, an idea we believed in more than was probably sensible, and a genuine conviction that the creative industry was ready for something different.

Twelve months later, we're opening another door. This time in Farringdon, London. And I'll be honest — writing this feels bigger than I expected it to.

London isn't just another market for us. It's personal.

Most of the free.studio Melbourne team have spent years in London. We've worked there, lived there, made some of our best work there and met some of the best people we know there. Sophie, Steve, Chris, Geraldine, Dino — they're not just London-based free-folk. They're people we've sat across tables from, argued with in good faith, celebrated with, and wanted to work alongside again for years.

So when we say we're opening in London, what we really mean is: we're finally getting the band back together. Just with better terms and no timesheets.

Melbourne taught us a lot. It taught us that the model works — that if you bring genuinely senior people together, give them the freedom to choose their work, price everything transparently and remove the politics, something rather good happens. People do better work. Clients notice. And nobody dreads Monday mornings.

It also taught us that this thing is fragile. That the culture only works if you protect it. That saying no to the wrong project is as important as saying yes to the right one. And that the moment you start compromising on the people — lowering the bar because you need the headcount — is the moment the whole thing unravels.

We haven't done that. We won't.

I've started things before. I've been part of launches and re-launches and transformations and all the other words people use when they're trying to make something sound more dramatic than it is.

This one genuinely feels different. And I think the reason is embarrassingly simple: we're doing it with people we actually care about, for reasons that actually matter to us.

There's no venture capital. No holding company. No three-year earnout that means we have to pretend everything's fine when it isn't. It's just a group of people who've done this at the highest level, choosing to do it together, on terms that make sense for everyone — including the clients.

When your mission feels that genuine, it does something to you. It makes you feel like there's nothing you can't actually do. Together. Which is either inspiring or delusional, depending on your perspective. We're going with inspiring.

Everything Melbourne has, built on the same foundation. A co-working space in Farringdon. A community of senior practitioners across strategy, creative, production, technology and business consulting. Curated project work. Transparent pricing. No lock-in.

And something else — something harder to put on a website. A genuine belief that the best work happens when the best people choose to collaborate. Not when they're assigned to a project by a resource manager who's never met the client. Not when they're grinding through timesheets to justify an overhead nobody can explain. When they choose it.

London has always been the world's creative capital. We think it deserves a model that matches the quality of the people in it.

If you're reading this and you're London-based and you're senior and you're tired of the way things work — talk to us. Not because we're recruiting. Because we're building something, and we think you might want to be part of it.

And if you're a client who's ever wondered whether there's a better way to access brilliant people without the overhead, the layers and the politics — there is. We've spent a year proving it in Melbourne. Now we're bringing it to your city.

Founding memberships are open. The rate is locked. The space is ready. And we're more excited than is probably cool to admit.

See you in Farringdon.

Michael McConville
Founder & Creative Director, free.studio
Melbourne & London