From the very first conversations with our co-creators at Dynamo and Sunderland Software City, we knew we had to do things a little differently to ensure that accessibility, inclusivity, diversity, and sustainability were the golden threads that ran throughout the whole experience. So, the ‘Good Festival Ambition’ was born.

This ambition meant working hard to deliver a diverse events programme to make our core events truly accessible, considering those with different protected characteristics, ensuring we meet a wide range of needs, and making everyone feel as welcome as possible.

We sat down with Jamie Hardesty, director of communications at Sunderland Software City, to discuss his experiences of collaborating with the team here at BeaconHouse Events, how the festival has evolved since the inaugural year, and why the team was keen to focus on tech for purpose.

Hi Jamie! Now that the dust has settled on a second successful TechNExt festival, how has it evolved from 2023?

In that first year, we had an ambition to do something fun and inviting, and we knew that we wanted to connect what we have here in the region with the rest of the world and celebrate the work that is being developed here. That foundation remained for the second year, but we challenged ourselves to generate more value by introducing themes or golden threads that ran through the whole events programme that would resonate with our delegates.

Early in the planning process, we worked with the team at BeaconHouse Events to interrogate what that theme could be for the main stage conference. We were conscious that we didn’t want it to be something too generic or overdone, and in the end, we settled on ‘Tech for Purpose’. In the tech sector, the concept of ‘Tech for Good’ is already a well-established idea, but we wanted something that was more agnostic – a theme that cut through the noise and would really matter to people regardless of the sub-sector they are part of or the touch point they have with the tech ecosystem. I’m proud that together we developed a subject matter and curated content that resonated with the audience.

It takes a lot of content to fill a busy five-day festival programme; how did you collaborate with the team at BeaconHouse Events to bring that content to life in an accessible and engaging way?

The relationship was a natural extension and evolution from year one – the team at BeaconHouse Events is so easy to work with and is very strong at generating ideas and making things happen. No matter who you work with in the team, there is a lot of energy. Being such key members of the TechNExt development team, Sarah and Catherine espouse enthusiasm for the project, and that is modelled across the whole team. It was a real privilege for me to work with Katie McNeill for the first time on the festival this year; she is incredibly detail-orientated and diligent, which is key for a project as sprawling as TechNExt.

We would have regular biweekly and monthly touchpoints where we could look at key priorities, but we started by taking the time to look at our levels of audiences and what matters most to them. We broke down each audience and questioned what we meant by each group, what we thought would be interesting to them, and where there might be some gaps in the programme that we could creatively develop if we wanted to get these people interested and engaged. It very much boiled down to being able to have regular sessions where we could generate ideas, positively challenge each other, and have really frank conversations about what was possible. While the team at BeaconHouse is very creative, they are also experts at understanding what is realistic and achievable to specific deadlines and budgets.

There are a lot of different stakeholders involved in making TechNExt happen; logistically, how did that work?

We had a multi-channel process in place to make sure that everyone felt connected and aware of each moving part; from email chains to group chats and regular in-person meetings, there was a feeling of being one large team pushing towards a shared goal. Alongside the scheduled catch-ups, as the festival got closer, I appreciated how flexible, agile, and contactable Katie and the team were to address more time-sensitive decisions. That could be a quick WhatsApp message to iron something out or jumping on a call with a speaker to answer some last-minute questions, it made it much easier to keep the project moving forward.

Events can be stressful situations, and there are lots of moving parts, but having a transparent and honest relationship with the BeaconHouse team meant that we could problem-solve effectively. Running orders change last minute, key messages need to be communicated to delegates about new opportunities or logistics need to be tweaked, and having Catherine on-site and available on WhatsApp at the Main Stage conference meant that we could manage different parts of the room and address things in real time. The support during the week was incredibly valuable to me and the rest of the team and is a testament to the skills within the team at BeaconHouse to keep everything going smoothly in the lead-up and during the event itself.

What were your highlights from the festival?

I might be biased, but my highlight of the week was the Main Stage conference. Seeing a couple of hundred people being exposed to technology leaders who were there to share ideas, be thought-provoking, and inspire our delegates was very special.

I was delighted to see some of the feedback that we have received for the event. It really felt like we were doing something different and adding value to the region and the sector. This festival wasn’t about delving into generic topics or showcasing shiny things; we were talking about how technology can have a real-world impact on people here in the region and beyond. We talked about how tech can support people living with dementia to how digital can intervene in and prevent child labour crises – these are hard-hitting issues where yes, we are talking about innovation, but ultimately, we are talking about people and how tech can improve lives through purposeful intervention. It was a real privilege to put together.

How did you make sure that the event was open to as many people as possible and did as much good as possible?

I have expertise in the technology field, and I’m confident creating content around those themes, but where BeaconHouse really shined was curating a purposeful festival that is fit for everyone. We were passionate about reducing the carbon footprint of the entire festival, and the team at BeaconHouse led on that sustainability drive. Equally, we had speakers and delegates from a wide range of backgrounds, and BeaconHouse was strong from an audio-visual point of view making sure that everyone was able to access and engage with the content in a meaningful way. Accessibility and equity were just as key a theme as sustainability and formed a key part of the Good Festival Ambition.

The Good Festival Ambition was something that BeaconHouse developed and championed from TechNExt 2023, and we took away a lot of feedback and learnings from year one, and we were keen to put those into play this year. Those learnings meant that we were able to work together to produce an even more accessible and enjoyable festival in 2024, and we’re already starting to pick up that discussion on how the festival will look in 2025.

TechNExt is a fantastic example of how the public and private sector market focusses can collaborate and support one another to support the region and help people better understand the technology sector, how they connect to it, strengthen it, and ultimately grow it.

The team at BeaconHouse Events is very understanding of their client’s overall goals and ambitions and was incredibly supportive in collaboratively working together with us to ensure that we achieved success. Their flexibility, open communication, and critical feedback are really healthy and a key reason why they have long-lasting relationships with their clients.

For TechNExt 2023 we created the Good Festival Ambition, to ensure that everyone felt happy and confident to enjoy and participate in the full events programme. This ‘Good Festival Ambition’ has now been used as good practice for other events in our portfolio, focusing on inclusivity, diversity, accessibility, and sustainability, protecting our planet and creating a welcoming experience for all. We know that making sure that our spaces give an equitable experience to every guest is important so we wanted to speak to an expert on what that means in practice.

Catherine Grinyer, Managing Director at Attendable, a specialist consultant in making events more accessible shared her thoughts on how our sector can create truly equitable events in 2024. Catherine said, “I think it is our job as experts in the event industry to make sure that everyone has a good time, everyone can turn up and be themselves and participate fully. That means making sure that there are no barriers to accessing the content being discussed, to other people, or the perks being offered.

“I think most people go into this with good intentions, but if you think about something as simple as switching from a guest speaker to break-out groups, there are lots of things to consider. More sharing of information and collaboration on best practices is really important to move the industry forward. You need a push and a pull, as event planners we need to be having conversations about accessibility and inclusion with our clients, with venues, with suppliers, and with attendees. All of these components need to work in harmony to make lasting change and to ensure that every event is open to everyone.

“If you make an event inclusive you make it better for everyone, because every delegate will get more out of it, not just the people who are directly impacted.”

So, how can you start to take a meaningful action to focus on accessibility and inclusion at your events?

1. Build equity and diversity into your planning

Start thinking about DEI right at the beginning of the event planning process. At BeaconHouse we begin every new project by thinking about why you are doing this event in the first place, and once we have worked with the client to agree on the purpose, that’s when we can start to plan how people from different groups and communities participate, and what we need to know to establish how they might need to access things a little differently. DEI isn’t a quick-fix add-on, it should be a holistic part of your event strategy from day one.

Considering the individual needs of your guests in advance can impact other areas of the planning process too, like your emergency evacuation planning. If you are organising a large-scale event, or it’s outside or in a high-rise building, understanding who is there and what their accessibility needs are will help you to plan for every eventuality. You can be confident that everybody knows their role and what might be required.

2. Think about how to make your event barrier-free to attend and participate in

While you might think having captions or a BSL signer is enough, it is important to consider how the logistics of your event may impact how people can take part. Consider a scenario where your delegates move from watching a keynote speaker to small group discussions – a blind or hearing-impaired guest suddenly has to navigate switching tables, background noise, or multiple conversations at once which could be a barrier to how meaningfully they can participate. There are some quite easy workarounds to navigate through each situation, it just takes a bit of thoughtful planning. Whether it is thinking about the height of the microphones for people who are of smaller stature or in a wheelchair, or making sure gangways are clear of clutter. Often it isn’t about reinventing the wheel. Still, by focusing on the smaller details and speaking to people impacted rather than taking a broad-brush approach, we can move the needle and make events truly accessible.

3. Consider pre and post-event communications

Making an event barrier-free includes all of the marketing and communications that surround an event. A good example of this would be how your registration form is designed and whether you have considered whether the event management system is visually accessible. For many years people with additional needs were too frightened to voice what support they might need because it may mean being excluded entirely. With each event, we make a conscious effort to let people know what we have already put in place to create an inclusive environment, in the hope that it will encourage others to tell us more. By sending out accessibility information for the venue and any pertinent information in advance to all delegates you’re empowering them to feel fully prepared as well as not adding to the mental load by asking them to consider and plan things that other guests simply don’t have to think about. This could be a little video of the venue which shows transport routes, multiple entrances, bathrooms, and quiet spaces and while this might seem like a lot of work, it pays huge dividends as everyone there can now fully relax, enjoy the event, and have meaningful input.

4. It’s ok to ask questions

Don’t be afraid to ask questions, ultimately an individual is experiencing your event, and that experience will be nuanced. It is common practice to ask people what their dietary requirements are in the lead-up to an event, but far less common to only consider physical access needs rather than a wide range of accessibility requirements. Instead of simply telling people “This is what we have done to make our event barrier-free” we should also be asking “What else can we do to support you and your individual needs?”. Events are all about people, community, and bringing people together. By asking the in-depth questions to really understands each individuals needs you can adapt to the real people who are attending not just a theory of what a person with neurodivergence or a physical disability may need.

5. Train your front-of-house teams on best practice

Once you have asked questions and established what your audience needs, it’s time to put that information into practice. Has your front-of-house team been trained to understand and adapt to people who have different or additional needs? Issues can be easily avoided by briefing teams on details such as alternative entrances and extra support so they are equipped to confidently help everyone equally when they first enter the space.

Alongside training our team so they are confident and comfortable supporting all delegates, we also work with venues to support their internal staff to prepare for a wide range of delegate requirements. Recently we have put a buddy system in place for anyone nervous about attending on their own so they can access additional support while on site.

6. Focus on structure

The word ‘networking’ can strike fear in a lot of people, but if you are neurodivergent there may be an extra layer of uncertainty when it comes to the less structured moments in the schedule. While event planners might think that it is a nice break from a packed schedule, for some people this might be overwhelming if they have to navigate having to approach new people or start conversations cold. Neurodivergence is a broad spectrum so this of course doesn’t apply to everyone, but these are some of the internal barriers that a neurodivergent person might have.

One way of mitigating this is by communicating specific tasks or talking points that can be used throughout the session; both are ways of making sure that everyone can fully participate, add their ideas and expertise to conversations, and make meaningful connections.

While there have been improvements in the sector, DEI still tends to sit in silo, rather than holistically being part of the event planning process. At BeaconHouse we are committed to learning from experts in the field of accessibility and diversity and from the communities that take part in our events to continuously learn, improve, and share best practices.

To speak to the team at BeaconHouse Events about your event ambitions for 2024/25 email info@beaconhouse-events.com or call 0191 691 3456.

BeaconHouse Events was established in 2014 to establish environments and experiences that brought people and ideas together; creating space for conversations that could change the world. Support for local causes is baked into the culture at BeaconHouse Events and each charity on the list has been chosen by a member of the team because it aligns with core value of the business. These donations sit alongside the business’s ongoing hands on support for local non-profit organisations, including the The Children’s Foundation. Over the past year the team has volunteered to weed and dig at the charity’s inner city young people’s allotment, took to the lanes at a fundraising bowling night and supported a project bringing vital mental health workshops to schools in the region – all to give children and young people in the North East the best start possible.

Co-founder Sarah Thackray said, “Events are ultimately about people, and we would like to mark this milestone year by partnering with charities and community groups who are working hard to raise aspirations and create opportunities for people who live and work in our region. This forms a key part of our ESG strategy which aims to position us as a leading voice when it comes to driving positive change across the event sector, It includes a considered and consistent commitment to support projects focused on health and wellbeing, quality education, and climate action in the North East.

“We have a dedicated pot which will be divided among the charities, and rather than simply donating, we are working with the teams to understand what will be most beneficial to them at this point in their journey.”

Project co-ordinator Rebekah Hutchinson said, “I think I can speak for all the team when I say volunteering and charity support is embedded into the culture – it stems from a shared desire to do something good. Being involved with local community organisations who share our values gives us a sense of purpose; it’s a fulfilling and rewarding experience to share together which boosts our team morale, and it’s a chance to learn new skills to grow personally and professionally.”

Without further ado, our ten chosen charities for 2024 are…

1. Newcastle Food Bank

Newcastle Food Bank is an anti-poverty charity that provides emergency food and welfare support for people in the North East. In a bid to stop food waste at our events, we work with the team to redistribute food that would usually go to landfill and see first-hand the dedication and passion of the team behind the charity. With the use of food banks at an all-time high in our region we agreed it was important to support Newcastle Food Bank to deliver their vital work supporting people experiencing financial hardship right here on our doorstep.

2. North East Rewilding Network

The North East Rewilding Network champions the rewilding and restoration of ecosystems in the region so nature can take care of itself. While we might be orange on the outside, we’re green through and through and we unanimously agreed that supporting a project that promotes nature’s recovery and climate solutions while empowering communities aligned perfectly with our environmental aims for BeaconHouse Events.

3. Rise

Rise works in schools and colleges across Newcastle and Gateshead to support children and young people (aged 5-18) with their emotional wellbeing and mental health. They work with parents, teachers and education professionals to help young people feel more in control and more resilient in managing their wellbeing and mental health. Working in a fast-paced environment with high burnout rates, the mental health of our colleagues is always front of mind for us. Recently the whole BeaconHouse team was trained in mental health first aid which equipped us with the knowledge, awareness, and tools to promote health and wellbeing and have each other’s backs. Our brilliant project co-ordinator Rebekah a champion for mental health within the business put forward Rise as a charity close to her heart and we couldn’t agree more.

4. North Tyneside Arts Studio

Creativity with purpose underpins every event that we bring to life and we believe that everyone should have access to, and get the benefit of, engaging with the arts. North Tyneside Arts Studio provides a safe, supportive environment where people can discover how creativity can support their mental health and personal recovery.  Their community has a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and diagnoses, but their common experiences of living with mental health issues help to build the tools and social connections that empower people to achieve long-term change. Our resident artist and project co-ordinator Alice put forward their work for consideration and we are thrilled to support their work.

5. Stepney Bank Stables

Our neigh-bours in the Ouseburn Valley recently launched an appeal to help save the inner city stables after facing a critical funding gap which meant the vital community resource was under threat of closing due to a perfect storm of financial challenges. Stepney Bank Stables operates a valued youth programme just around the corner from our home in Hoults Yard so as part of our commitment to making our local area a vibrant place to grow up we wanted to safeguard the organisation’s future and contribute to the welfare of the horses who rely on the stables for care and shelter.

6. Groundwork North East and Cumbria

Our co-founder and sustainability champion Sarah sits on the board of trustees for Groundwork NE and recently we have partnered with the organisation to ethically offset our carbon impact by opting to donate our carbon credit equivalent for 2023’s events programme. The donation went towards supporting the charity to deliver its nature-based Solutions portfolio of environmental community initiatives. The work that the team at Groundwork is doing is inspirational and aligns completely with our values and vision for the region. This donation as part of our 10-year campaign is just one part of a much larger relationship we have with the charity, including volunteering on-site with the team in the coming months.

7. FareShare

FareShare is the UK’s national network of charitable food re-distributors, made up of 18 independent organisations. We work with clients across the UK and as part of our ongoing efforts to combat food waste in the events industry and make positive change in the sector, we want to support a national charity working to find solutions to the issue. FareShare delivers a range of projects including school breakfast clubs, older people’s lunch clubs, homeless shelters, and community cafes. Every week they provide enough food to create almost a million meals for vulnerable people.

8. Ouseburn Farm

We are always striving to be the G.O.A.T when it comes to events, so when we heard about the opportunity to sponsor Sonny the micro-goat at Ouseburn Farm we jumped at the chance! Ouseburn Farm sits nestled in the Ouseburn Valley, just ten minutes along the road from Hoults Yard providing visitors with the opportunity to learn about the origins of food and care for nature through engagement with farm life. As a team that is actively looking to create events that are accessible to everyone, we were particularly drawn to the fact that the centre is also a care farm with a placement programme for adults with learning disabilities, difficulties, and ASD (autistic spectrum disorder), where people can learn new skills and connect with nature. Fingers crossed Sonny can visit us soon!

9. Curious Arts

Curious Arts is a North East-based charity championing and developing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual + arts, artists and communities across the North East of England and beyond. Creating inclusive spaces where everyone feels comfortable to attend and participate is high on our agenda for every event we create and when we heard that Curious Arts offered training to organisations and venues so they can feel confident to create safe, inclusive, and welcoming environments for LGBTQIA+ people, we knew we had to support them as part of this campaign.

10. Rainbow Trust

Last but by no means least is the Rainbow Trust, a national charity supporting families who have a child with a life-threatening or terminal illness. As a family-oriented organisation, we resonated with the work the team at the Rainbow Trust is doing to support over 86,000 children with life-threatening conditions across the UK. We hope that our small contribution will make a difference to families who have a seriously ill child.

To speak to the team about our campaign to celebrate ten years in business email info@beaconhouse-events.co.uk

As well as partnering with private businesses across a whole range of sectors, our client portfolio also includes prestigious academic institutions. This year we were brought on board by Newcastle University to deliver the British Applied Mathematics Colloquium (BAMC), the largest applied mathematics conference in the UK. The event took place over three days in April 2024 and brought together students, academics, and industry professionals to discuss recent advances in the field. The organising committee for the event was chaired by Dr. Magda Carr, a Reader in Applied Mathematics at Newcastle University. We sat down with Dr. Carr to discuss what it was like bringing this prestigious event to the North East, how event management is a far cry from her day job, and talk through some of the unseen legacies that the event has created.

Tell us a little bit about BAMC 2024 and why it was an important milestone that it was held here in the North East. 

The BAMC is the largest conference in the UK for applied mathematicians, attracting delegates from across the UK and internationally. It is hosted by different universities each year and this year it was the turn of Newcastle University which gave us an amazing opportunity to welcome people to the city and put Newcastle on the map in our field. As well as getting fantastic feedback on the event itself, it was uplifting to hear the positive feedback for our city from first-time visitors too. Almost 400 people attended the event and we had lots of delegates commenting on how welcoming they found the city; how easy it is to navigate and how much there is to do here. It is easy to forget how lucky we are when all this is right on your doorstep so it was good to see it through fresh eyes.

The last time we (Newcastle) hosted the BAMC was in 1984 so we were delighted to be able to host this prestigious event again in 2024.

How did you find working with the BeaconHouse team to organise such a high-profile event for your sector? 

This was my first time chairing an event organising committee and this particular event is quite a big undertaking but I was happy to take on the challenge. I’m quite an organised person naturally so it wasn’t too daunting, and I did get teaching relief as the School of Mathematics does value how much time it takes to give the delegates a memorable experience, and it was great to know that BeaconHouse Events were there to support throughout the whole process. The team was recommended to me by another academic in the School who had recently worked with the team at BeaconHouse Events on a large-scale medical science conference where complete autonomy had been handed over to BeaconHouse and the feedback was fantastic on what was achieved.

We had a scoping meeting with Sarah to talk through our ambitions for the event, what we wanted it to entail, and how much in-house resources we had, and discussed budgets and timescales. That meeting was really helpful for me and the rest of the committee, who of course don’t come from an events background, because it was flexible in terms of what budget we had and how we could make best use of that. From that meeting, Sarah took all of our thoughts and came back with a detailed approach that she thought would be the best way to achieve what we needed to achieve. After that, we were introduced to our dedicated event manager Katie who took over all of the organisation and we were able to really get into the detail of what the event would look like. What we appreciated was BeaconHouse taking the reins and being very transparent throughout the whole process which helped us understand what support we were going to get. This communication and transparency meant that we were able to utilise the budget effectively and felt like we had a robust understanding of where all the resources would be allocated.

The event was over three days, that’s a lot of content to manage. How did you decide what that looked like and how did you keep people engaged? 

We had a good idea of what worked well from past BAMC events, but we worked closely with Katie to develop a timeline so we could get abstracts (a summary of the papers that were being presented) in advance, and when they came in we were quite heavily oversubscribed which resulted in the team making the decision to increase the length of the conference from two and a half days to three full days. BeaconHouse were great at keeping the schedule very flexible and we ended up booking the venue for the full week, just as a contingency plan if we did run over with the volume of abstracts being presented.

We were conscious that we needed break-out spaces for conversations to happen and where people could digest complex information, and the venue (the Frederick Douglass Centre) lent itself to that perfectly. We were aware that it was a packed programme so as well as the breakout spaces where people could meet in small groups to talk, we made sure that there was a designated quiet room where delegates could take some time away from the main conference if needed too. We also created an LGBTQIA+ safe space where anyone who identified as part of this community could meet other peers working or studying in the field.

This is a tried and tested conference, how did you make sure that BAMC 2024 was a unique experience? 

We worked very collaboratively with Katie and the team at BeaconHouse to bring ideas to the table, it was a very creative process to be part of. We held a minisymposium on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion which had not been seen at previous BAMC conferences and was really well received. This is something we should be discussing and addressing as a field and the delegate feedback was that they were grateful that EDI was included in the programme as a topic in its own right. The EDI symposium set the tone for the rest of the conference and people were very generous with their time and expertise. We also invited chairs for each presentation from the community which meant we had a real mix of people with established careers alongside people who were quite early-stage researchers which made the event a little more relaxed and gave people the confidence to speak up regardless of career stage or gender which was an evolution from past BAMC events and made it as inclusive as possible.

Conferences like this can be quite intimidating, especially for PHD students or postdocs who are presenting work, and one of the highlights for me was how inclusive and welcoming the whole environment had been designed to feel. Where the BeaconHouse team was fantastic was pushing and challenging us on sustainability. We aimed to make the carbon footprint of the event as low as possible which meant we had to interrogate every aspect of the conference that might have an impact on that. For the first time at a BAMC event all of the catering was vegetarian or vegan, and while we were initially worried about how that might go down with meat-eaters, actually people understood and embraced what we were trying to do and the positive feedback reflected that.

What has the legacy of this BAMC been so far?

One of the really positive spin-offs from the EDI session was a group of LGBTQIA+ community members meeting and going on to set up a network to support applied mathematicians in their community. They had a working lunch as part of the conference and that was the first-ever meeting of a brand-new network that has now been established to support applied mathematicians who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community across the whole of the UK. This was never something that was planned or on our agenda but an organic thing that is a real testament to the power of events and having the opportunity to connect with others.

Planning an event can be stressful. What was the relationship with BeaconHouse during this process? 

This is the first time that I have been heavily involved in something like this and we couldn’t have been more supported by Katie during the process. I had a weekly half-hour meeting with Katie each week to touch base and make sure that both sides were on track with what needed to be delivered. While we had a plan, we also had the flexibility to change and adjust things during the process which was appreciated, and I knew that the team at BeaconHouse was all over detail as things changed and flexed as we got closer to the event; that weekly meeting meant we could react to things in real-time and keep things moving.

As the event came closer the support from BeaconHouse ramped up and they brought in expertise that we just wouldn’t have thought of on our own. Katie was great at making sure that we had all of the speaker presentations in advance (something that doesn’t usually happen in the community and just alleviated so much stress on the day) and had such a professional and friendly way of communicating with us and with our speakers. Their approach made the event feel a lot more professional and ran so smoothly, just because of those seemingly small details that they took care of. Even when things were out of our control that didn’t go as planned, Katie and the team reacted in such a positive and solution-focused way which meant all of the delegates still had a fantastic and memorable experience.

Before an event, you have no idea how it is going to be received and the feedback on the professionalism of the event has been incredibly positive – several people have comment to myself and colleagues that BAMC 2024 was one of the best they have ever attended both in terms of scientific content, environment and organisation.

Find out more about how we brought BAMC to life and speak to the team about your event ideas email info@beaconhouse-events.com or call +44(0)191 691 3456.

Companies that invest in the importance of creativity and innovation have a much better foundation to develop new ideas, products or solutions, but people need space to develop these skills and a culture that celebrates creative thinking, considered risk taking and collaboration. Creativity, imagination and innovation are all fuelled by new experiences, interesting conversations and spending time with different people – which is why events can be such a power catalyst for new ideas and creative problem solving. Whether it is a conference, a staff engagement event, a festival or round table, events offer a unique opportunity for teams to share ideas and think outside of the box.

Expose your team to new ideas

Your keynote speaker or expert panel doesn’t necessarily have to be from within your sector. Choose relevant speakers who have interesting stories, insights and experiences to share and your team will come away inspired, motivated, refreshed and armed with the tools to think differently. Getting the opportunity to hear external perspective can encourage your team to think big and aim high.

Give them space to think and have fun

An event offers a break from the daily routine and provides a chance for people to step out of their comfort zone. Even something as simple as a change of scenery can stimulate new ideas, insightful solutions and push colleagues to explore new approaches to what they are working on, rather than moving on to the next thing on the to-do list. Success is often defined in organisations in terms of productivity or efficiency – and unfortunately creativity is rarely efficient, but it is effective. Give your team space to step away from the day-to-day, learn new things, get inspired and have some fun.

Foster psychological safety

Teams that feel psychologically safe are more likely to unlock creativity, innovation and results. An event is the perfect opportunity to help build trust and connection between immediate colleagues and wider team members, making it much more likely that they will feel comfortable enough to share new ideas, and challenge current thinking to make it better. Connection is a powerful way of boosting creativity within your organisation, and shared experiences can strengthen bonds between team members and create a sense of camaraderie that can enhance creativity and innovation across the business.

Receive feedback and validation

Everyone is busy and events offer a valuable and unique opportunity for people to share ideas that they might have been sitting on for a while. Receiving feedback and validation from peers though group discussions, organic conversations or pitch sessions can make ideas take shape much faster than when they are stuck in an email chain. Sharing creative thinking with others can help refine and evolve ideas, while giving a platform to identify pitfalls early. By giving space for people to discuss big ideas, your team can challenge their assumptions, think critically about their idea and develop more innovative, collaborative solutions.

A chance to mingle with new people

Creativity can’t happen in a silo and with remote working limiting chance meetings and algorithms feeding us curated information, it can be easy to get stuck in an echo chamber of the people you work closest with. By bringing a diverse mix of people together at an event you expose them to new perspectives and give space for organic conversations and idea sharing. Speaking to colleagues who are separate to their usual roles and responsibilities will expand a person’s world view. Remember innovation happens where conversations are, and if you are only speaking to the same people, then your ideas are going to stay the same too. Workshops or interactive sessions that encourage conversation will expose your team to new concepts, trends or industry insights that they wouldn’t usually have access to.

If you want to inject some creativity into your team, get in touch with the BeaconHouse Events team to find out more about how we bring ideas to life! info@beaconhouse-events.co.uk

There’s something about needing to exceed the expectations and create the ‘wow’ factor that will inherently be something we strive to achieve as a team, when adding that need to planning an event for a bunch of event planners, well the pressure is really on!

The Grand, York though…somehow made the whole experience…effortless! With a special mention to Janet Scally who from the moment we outlined our brief made the entire 24 hours a whirlwind of York-based inspiration. The brief; half day workshop with excellent meeting room tech, people engagement activity x 2 (learning based and interactive), wind down and reflection time, an overnight stay and some excellent food and drink. Luckily we chose a hotel that for most of that brief it’s second nature! From the moment we stepped into the lobby (actually the platform at Newcastle *tip of the cap* to the customer service levels on London North Eastern Railway) at the hotel the staff couldn’t be more accommodating. Whisked into our meeting room ‘The Gibb’ for the morning to enjoy coffee on demand and some freshly baked pastries, whilst bathing in the natural daylight from the original double-glazing floor to ceiling windows. If anything, it was a little difficult to focus on ‘business at hand’ and not peek out at the sights and sounds of historical York, but the huge 90″ screen helped keep our attention. After a morning of business strategy, culture review and team awards, 🇬🇧 John Paul Addison 🔴🔵🟡/🟢 joined us for part two of our Insights Personality Assessment, we learned more about working as an effective team and how we all like to be communicated with – announcing our lead colours with personalised treat boxes.

Time for lunch, again no challenge for The Grand, York to serve an energy boosting, pescatarian lunch for a bunch of hungry event managers. Then we donned our new ten year anniversary t-shirts (shout out to Clothes2Order for the apparel and our own Alice Adams for the design) and headed to York Dungeon, our horrific* host Mark Mattinson (*on theme!) took us through the options for private hire, themed tours and seasonal changes to the visitor attraction before the whole team got locked up and ‘edutained’ (our take on education / entertainment) for the next 90 minutes.

Back into the sunshine before checking in to the 5 star luxury of our suites at The Grand, York cases already in our rooms, welcome chocolates, personalised note, branded stationery and obviously a fine selection of fine Yorkshire brews, could arguably make it a little difficult to drag ourselves out of the fluffy robes if we didn’t have the pièce de resistance still to come…

The Cookery School The Grand, York if you haven’t yet been is a treat for all the senses. One chilled glass of wine down, Luke, our chef and host for the evening took us through the intricacies of making our own vegan curry paste to set the scene for the main show, an express cookery class for cauliflower sweet potato and spinach curry with garlic and herb naan and lentil dahl. Cue the competitive ‘ready, steady, cook’ nature of your team and you’re in for an evening of fine dining, fantastic banter and an all round memory-making experience. We came away with a branded apron, lots of leftovers and the threat of returning on numerous occasions to complete one of the many upcoming classes they offer including dim sum making, french brasserie and Weber LLC essentials!

Back for a spot of shut eye before sampling York’s finest French toast for breakfast at ‘The Rise’ after an early morning steam, sauna and swim. All in all, The Grand, York set a bar of hospitality that we recognise and appreciate whole heartedly as we proudly proffer to offer ourselves. If you’re looking for somewhere to host a senior leadership team workshop, second-level private dining, a speaker dinner, a pre-event party with a little razzle-dazzle, or a people engagement event for a medium-sized team, stop the search… you can thank us later. If you need an introduction or a means of personalising the experience to suit your particular needs we’ll be happy to relive the memories with a detailed slideshow.

Steve is dedicated to leading every business to be the energy for great change in the world, and he has inspired many to make every action they take a force for good, including through Planet Mark’s esteemed annual awards recognising outstanding achievements in the sustainability space.

Over to you Steve…

BeaconHouse Events has been working with Planet Mark for over five years – how did it all start?

Very early on in the Planet Mark days, I was invited to be part of a design industry event in London. Sir Tim Smit, the co-founder of the Eden Project was speaking and one of the key topics of the day was sustainability. It transpired that Sarah and the team at BeaconHouse were the organisers of the event. I was really impressed with how this event had been put together and after experiencing the quality of what they deliver first hand I reached out to Sarah to see if we could get a piece of that too. 

That initial idea was the first Planet Mark awards which have gone on to become a highly anticipated annual event. We didn’t want it to be a formal sit-down dinner and speech, we wanted the experience to be much more theatrical, participatory, and with a faster pace. The venue was a theatre near The Angel in Islington, London and it was this incredible performance space with huge screens, just perfect for what we were looking for. We hit the right style from the get-go and we haven’t really deviated from that over the years since then. BeaconHouse Events brought our vision to life and we were on the same page from the start. We wanted something that celebrated the incredible work that individuals and businesses were doing in the sustainability arena, and it was key that it was action-orientated rather than the ‘business as usual’ approach you see at a lot of conferences. Cost can sometimes be a barrier for smaller businesses attending events like this, especially if you have to pay to take a table, and we wanted to create something that allowed everyone to celebrate their achievements, regardless of the size of their organisation. The brief was to create an impactful event with interesting speakers who engaged with the audience, rather than just becoming background noise, and have wrap-around experiences to carry that energy through to post-event too and BeaconHouse did that from the start – the only thing that has changed is that it has got phenomenally bigger since that first event in 2016. 

The Planet Mark Awards celebrate sustainable practices – how has the landscape changed in the UK since you first designed the event?

When we first launched the Planet Mark Awards ESG and net zero  were in their infancy. The awareness of our planet changing around us, the loss of biodiversity in nature, and the impact that this is having on our societies are so much higher than it was, and we have had to adapt and scale to reflect that. We believe that most people and organisations are responsible citizens at heart and as the market has grown, so has Planet Mark. As a result, our Awards have become more and more meaningful, and to win a Planet Mark award really means something to businesses these days, and the team at BeaconHouse understands that the event is a reflection of that.

Whilst we have Nikki Faigen our events manager, we always want to work with partners who are excellent in their specialist areas and BeaconHouse totally compliment our in-house team, so that together we can put on an event that is spectacularly good.

Is the process collaborative?

Absolutely. I put that down to both teams being open to collaboration and working to a strong brief with great enthusiasm. Events are so important to us that we have an events manager in-house, Nikki Faigen, but we have always wanted to keep our awards with the team at BeaconHouse because it is such a big undertaking and they do it so very well. I put a lot of that down to the leadership and clarity of vision that Sarah has, and Event Manager Katie has been with us from the start, so she understands our organisation and community inside out. The Planet Mark network now includes over 800 businesses and tens of thousands of people and BeaconHouse has a really strong understanding of that which translates into a symbiotic and collaborative relationship.

Our certification is based on data, and so detail is incredibly important to us across the whole organisation, all the way through to events. Katie works with our internal events team to focus on those small details that add so much to our awards and the logistics of the day are always seamless. Once we have the big picture and the vision for the event, then we can get into the details and I am always impressed that the team can do both so well. They can bring us to incredible venues, while also looking after everything from the staging, award entries, sponsors, and engagement with other key stakeholders. That is then fed into the relevant parts of the organisation so we can make sure that everything is aligned with our messaging and communication in the lead-up to the event and post-awards. 

What skills have particularly impressed you from BeaconHouse? Why do you enjoy working together?

Katie and the team are great at communicating with our team in a really straightforward and personable way, which completely aligns with how we operate. In the lead-up to an event the pressure can start to ramp up a little bit, but they are always really calm and thoughtful about helping us to make decisions that make the event successful.

I like working with people that I trust implicitly. In life, nothing ever goes completely as planned and it is all down to how you plan for and adapt to those bumps along the way. Sarah, Katie, and the team are meticulous planners – they look around corners to see things that could turn into issues, they jump on problems and I know that they will be solved. Their communication is second to none, and they also know how to have good fun in doing it which makes for a very positive working relationship.

Sustainability can sometimes go under the radar – how important is having an events portfolio as part of your business strategy?

Events are an incredibly important part of our business. When we created our certification, we recognised that there is value in three particular types of activity when it comes to sustainability. The first is measuring the impact of what you are doing, the second is to engage people in the process and the third is to communicate what you are doing. We take every opportunity to show that sustainability is interesting, exciting, and relevant to all of us – and bringing people together is a fantastic way of doing that. BeaconHouse Events can put on the most impeccable, exciting events that people feel proud to be part of. The people who win a Planet Mark Award are going above and beyond and delivering something extraordinary, so we want to give them the best experience possible to celebrate that success and inspire others with what is possible – the awards take that to another level.

Bringing people together is fundamental to what you do and the awards are a great way of communicating with external stakeholders – do your internal team take a lot away from them too?

Absolutely yes. The high standard of the awards makes people very proud of where they work and has a definite impact on morale. It is also one of the rare opportunities during the year when the whole team can come together, but it is also a chance for us to meet so many of the organisations that we work with in one place. The energy of the awards is truly uplifting. Everybody in the team looks forward to the awards, they serve as a reminder of the role that every person in the team plays in helping our members to unleash their potential and so we all look at them with a great deal of pride.

You are having big conversations at the Planet Mark Awards – can the structure of the event be a catalyst for innovation and action? 

We spoke to the leader of a member organisation just today who told us that they will never miss a Planet Mark Awards event because of the opportunity to be in a room with so many people doing incredible work. You can’t help but learn from the other people in the room and the energy and inspiration are infectious too. The event is set up for people to meet new people and have those important conversations, get fired up, and wake up the next day newly invigorated to do good work. The off-the-cuff conversations that people have at our awards are where the magic is. When you bring people together in a room, if there is a challenge or an issue to be resolved people are inherently ingenious, and relentless, in working together to solve some of the biggest problems that we are facing as a society and BeaconHouse is fantastic at curating an environment that gives space for those conversations to happen.

Thanks, Steve!

Find out more about how we bring Planet Mark Awards to life and to speak to the team about your event ideas email info@beaconhouse-events.com or call 0191 691 3456.