Meet the Team: Louisa McClure

Our team is absolutely full of surprises: talents, skills and achievements in all areas. Louisa is a prime example of this. You will have seen her behind the counter in the cafe, frothing milk to perfection. You will have seen her laughing heartily with climbers – super cool at all times.

At age twenty-two, Louisa has many passions in addition to bouldering and coffee, even releasing her own single this year after having studied at East London Arts and Music College and Leeds College of Music. We have many secrets here at Volume 1 …

What brought you to Volume 1?

After working in customer service for The Emmerdale Studio Experience, I wanted to move back home (East Grinstead) to save up for a place in Leeds. Before I moved home I came across The Dawn Wall on Netflix, and became engrossed. A month later I saw a job opening at Volume 1 and took it as a sign from the universe.

You work mainly in the cafe at the moment. What are the challenges and the best bits?

I hadn't had any barista experience before, but as I'm a coffee enthusiast, the coffee machine is now my baby! The main challenge is how busy we get on Sundays. Everyone and their uncle loves to relax in the cafe on a Sunday and I can hardly blame them! The food is so delicious, vegetarian and healthy. I'd highly recommend the brics, too. One of the hardest parts is telling people we've run out of salted caramel brownies!

Did you climb before working at Volume 1? What are your interests outside of work?

I've done some rock climbing in the past with Scouts and then after I left, too. Working at Volume 1 has given me the opportunity to climb with the staff who are absolutely unreal, so I'd love to carry on when lockdown is over. However, I'm also really interested in writing and playing music! I've got a solo project called KAIROS that I've been working on for the past four years. I've coined the sound as ‘indie sad boi bops’.

Do you see any parallels between the pleasure you get from your music and the pleasure you get from climbing?

Absolutely! When you start writing a new song, sometimes you get stuck with an eight-bar loop. You listen to the same thing over and over again and you're just not able to think of anyway to progress the piece further. It is one of the most infuriating parts of composing and sometimes you need to have a day off to come back at it again. But once you change a melodic line, you're able to get over that mental block and you can instantly hear how the rest of the song will sound in your head. When you're able to finish a song/boulder problem then the pride you feel is incomparable.

What's the team atmosphere like at Volume 1?

The team atmosphere is great! There's never been a day when I haven't cried of laughter from other team members. We're all such a positive bunch of people who wholeheartedly want this place to succeed as much as possible. I adore it here. It's typical of people to say ‘we're like a family’ but we really are! I'm just waiting for Ben and Katie to adopt me so I'll let you know how that goes …

You can listen to Louisa’s single Falling Apart here, and if you like what you hear, give her a follow on Facebook or Instagram . In the meantime, we all look forward to a McClure coffee special at some point in the near future, back at Volume 1.