Out of the Office: Sophie Flanagan

You and the BeaconHouse Events team have gotten involved with a range of charitable initiatives over the past few years – which ones have you enjoyed the most?

I love being outside, and earlier in the year a few members of the team got the chance to support The Children’s Foundation, planting trees at their inner-city allotment, which was a real highlight. It was a cold but crisp spring day and the team from the charity told us about the projects that they deliver from the site and the difference that our support was making for young people in the region. We helped to tidy up the space and then took oak seedlings and planted them in a border foundation around the allotment which felt like we were leaving a legacy for the young people that are using the allotment today and in the future too.

With Groundwork North East, we went up to Hebburn and litter-picked around the local area before heading over to the salt marsh, a re-wilding part of the bank of the Tyne. We learnt about what the team was doing with the space and counted some of the species that were being protected in the space so that the Groundwork team could assess how the patch was growing.

Sustainability is a key priority for us here at BeaconHouse Events, so while this project was ultimately about supporting young people in our community to thrive, it also aligned with our green credentials!

How important do you think it is for businesses to support charities in this way?

When you look at a busy calendar, there is sometimes the temptation to think you’re too busy to take time out to do projects like this, but you can really see the difference in the team when we are back in the office. We carve the time out of people’s available capacity to go and take part in these charitable initiatives like this, which means people can really turn off, take time away from their emails, and get immersed in the task they are doing. While there is the philanthropic element of supporting charities that are close to our hearts (we recently chose to partner with ten charities as part of our 10th birthday celebrations), it also has a strategic business impact too. The team always comes back more creative and collaborative after working together to deliver something for a charity; it is a real morale boost and makes us an even closer team because of those shared experiences.

You have a busy calendar – tell us about what you get up to outside of work?  

I love living in the North East because you have the coast, countryside, and city all nearby, so there is plenty of opportunity to get out and explore. I love cold water swimming with Katie (Whitehouse), another event manager here at BeaconHouse, and alternate going early morning or at lunchtime depending on the weather! I find it helps with managing stress; we work on complex, busy projects, and it can be difficult to take time to totally switch off. Being that cold takes up all your brain capacity, so it is impossible to think about anything other than what you are doing, which can be very addictive! I would recommend it to anyone, especially people who work in the events sector – we tend to be quite tough and resilient anyway in this business, so it’s a great way to push yourself out of your comfort zone and decompress. As a business we acknowledge that the events sector is a busy one, so we make time to check in on each other and share tips on how to focus on wellbeing in and out of the office. I used to do longer walks quite a lot, but I’ve reigned it in a little recently after I contracted Lyme disease from a tick bite!

That sounds nasty! Has it made you think more about your health and well-being?

Yes, it took a a very long course of strong antibiotics to get me feeling like myself again, and it is one of those things that might flare up again in the future. It left me feeling pretty drained and lethargic which isn’t like me at all, and while I feel much better now, it made me think about my health in a way that I haven’t had to consider before. Due to global warming, there is a increase in ticks, and therefore an expected rise in Lyme disease cases over the coming years and there is so much uncertainty and confusing information out there. I would like to take my personal experience and see how I can use my skills to benefit organisations that raise awareness about the disease in the UK in the future, and support people who have also been impacted.

Are there any other causes that you looking forward to supporting in the coming twelve months?

Christmas is just around the corner and we’ll be Christmas wrapping again in Eldon Square for The Children’s Foundation which is always a highlight in our diaries. You get to meet such a range of different people, who either need a bit of a hand to make their gifts look lovely or are looking for their way to support a local charity. We’ll  be donning our festive jumpers and heading down as a team this December to get stuck in.

I love reading for pleasure and find it a great way to relax. One of my ambitions for 2025 is to use some of my free time to start volunteering for a charity that supports children and young people to get more confident with their reading ability. Alongside being a fantastic way to turn off at the end of the day, I’m a big believer that reading for pleasure makes you more creative, more curious about the world, and more able to explore and talk about complex issues; if I can help more children and young people find joy in that I think it would benefit them as individuals, and our future region as a whole.