To celebrate our tenth anniversary, we continue our #10for10 campaign celebrations with a list of our 10 favourite events over the last decade.
We’ve had the opportunity to work on a variety of amazing events over the last ten years, some which we’ve conceived from scratch, some which we’ve event managed and some that we’ve promoted. We had so many favourites to choose from that narrowing the list down to just ten was a tough decision, but here they are:
In August 2022, we supported Steps star Ian ‘H’ Watkins on the inaugural Cowbridge Pride. Having lived in the town with his children for the last seven years, Ian organised Cowbridge Pride to raise awareness about diversity, inclusion and representation in the town. The week-long event included a Gala Fundraiser, a Boozy Brunch, a Pride Disco and a LGBTQI+ Q&A in the Town Hall, which was adorned with a Pride flower cascade, together with a Rainbow Brick Road art installation created by artist Nathan Wyburn. Many traders in the town decorated their shop window fronts with Pride displays and Pride bunting, artwork and positive affirmations decorated the town. The event raised thousands of pounds, with all of the money raised going to Cowbridge schools for LGBTQI+ resources.
When the ICC Cricket World Cup came to Bristol, we worked with Wild Creations to create an event which would connect, entertain and inspire local audiences. Tying into Bristol’s thriving art scene (the city which Banksy hails from), Wild Creations created a giant sculpture of a cricketer and we arranged a participatory art event for the local community. In the lead up to the first matches, the public was invited to take part in our giant art event where they could paint the ten flags and emblems of the countries competing in the tournament directly onto the giant sculpture. Local street artist Silent Hobo was invited to create a live complimentary piece of artwork, which also entertained the public while they were waiting to take part. To find out more about this campaign, view the full case study here. To find out more about this event, view the full case study here.
As part of our wider Vale Town Centres campaign on behalf of Vale of Glamorgan Council, we came up with the idea of organising a Festival of Flowers in Cowbridge. The event was put on to encourage residents and visitors to visit the town and shop locally.
As part of the event, local traders were encouraged to decorate their shop windows, a local florist created pop-up flower installations throughout the town, and flower workshops were also arranged. We also arranged a Flower Fairy Trail in the Physic Gardens and a culmination celebration featuring street acts, a real-life Flower Fairy, storytelling, and wire flower workshop.
After its tenants were hit badly by COVID19, Mermaid Quay arranged for the UK’s largest animatronic Dragon to visit during October half term to draw back crowds. We were tasked with raising awareness and a buzz about this event and encouraging footfall to the leisure destination. As we were competing against a whole host of half term activities for families, we packaged up the ‘roarsome’ beast’s arrival as an opportunity for visitors to see the closest thing possible to a real-life Welsh dragon and pulled together a number of other activations and attractions including:
As well as a series of competitions, we also created a fire-breathing dragon Instagram filter to allow visitors the chance of transforming themselves into a majestic dragon, and arranged an exclusive blogger event on the launch morning.
Another of the events we organised to encourage residents to support and visit their local high streets as part of the Vale Town Centres campaign, was the Christmas Post Office in Barry town centre. We were involved in every aspect of this event from start to finish including designing and producing event material, dressing the venue, promoting the event, managing the event, sourcing event staff, dressing the venue and creating the activities for people to take part in. Over the course of 10 days, families were invited along to the Christmas Post Office to meet Santa’s elves, hear a Christmas story, decorate a bauble and, of course, write and post their letters to Santa. in the Santa’s Post Office including letter templates, envelopes, Nice List Certificates, cookies and baubles to decorate. In a post event survey, an overwhelming 100% of attendees thought the event was ‘very good/good’, with 92% agreeing that it was a good initiative to encourage people to their local high street. To find out more about this event, which won a Gold Award for Best Event at the CIPR PRide Awards, view the full case study here.
We established the Wales STEM Awards, in partnership with Grapevine Event Management, to shine a spotlight on Wales’ STEM stars. Now in its third year, the awards continue to go from strength to strength and do a fabulous job of celebrating those businesses and individuals leading the sector in Wales, those creating an impact on the Welsh economy, those addressing the STEM diversity gap and skills shortage, and those inspiring and raising aspirations of the next generation. Our role includes sponsorship activation, branding, promotion and marketing. To find out more about this event, view the full case study here.
In October half term, Cardiff Bay became home to 13 hand-built brick Ocean creatures when the BRICKLIVE Ocean Show headed to Mermaid Quay. Free to view, the display featured an array of creatures of the deep, including a 10ft long Mako Shark and 7.5ft long Green Sea Turtle. The show was devised to entertain whilst educating children and families about the incredible diversity of life in the Earth’s oceans, and about the major environmental issues that threaten their existence. We loved creating all of the event materials for this event and promoting it amongst families in south Wales.
We helped educational charity Techniquest celebrate its 30th anniversary back in 2016 and it’s something we continue to look back on with extreme fondness.
The anniversary celebrations included creating ‘Smartie pants’ an anniversary portrait of revolutionary scientist Albert Einstein out of Smarties – with Britain’s Got Talent’s food artist Nathan Wyburn, together with a visit from British European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake. At the flagship anniversary event Virgin Galactic’s commercial director Stephen Attenborough was invited to speak to over 200 local business people and dignitaries about how the company aims to make human spaceflight accessible. At the event, Techniquest’s CEO spoke about the charity’s future direction and guests were treated to science-themed canapes. To find out more about this campaign, view the full case study here.
As part of our campaign to launch cocktail bar Dirty Martini in Cardiff, we came up with the idea of a #dirtyinthediff event. We had created three bespoke cocktails for the launch and we invited the great and good of south Wales – including media, bloggers, socialites, local businesses, sport stars and TV presenters – to sample these and enjoy an exclusive look at the new venue the night before the bar launched to the public. We created a bespoke Snapchat filter for the event, giving guests the chance to share their pics using #DirtyintheDiff. To find out more about this campaign, view the full case study here.
To help create a buzz about the launch of American restaurant chain Slim Chickens in Cardiff, we brought on board the expertise of food artist Nathan Wyburn of Britain’s Got Talent fame. When we were researching Cardiff’s links with the US, we discovered that, at the time, there were two American ice hockey players playing for the Cardiff Devils (our local ice hockey team) – winner, winner, chicken dinner! While the fact the restaurant was new would naturally generate some awareness, we knew we had to do something more to get people to say ‘what the cluck?’, so at the official launch event, Nathan came along to create live portraits of our two American Cardiff Devils using chicken tenders and Slim Chickens’ famous sauces. This activity gave us a great hook for the journalists and influencers in attendance to share social media content live from the event. To find out more about this event, view the full case study here.
If you have an event in mind or want ideas on how an event could support your organisation’s needs, we’d love to hear from you.