Worthwhile team building is an activity that every employer would love to achieve.

Maybe I’m a little jaded having been in the industry for 17 years but i’ve seen my fair share of ‘team building’ events.

The thought of a team spending a day together in a hotel conference room with bits of wood and rope being told to build a raft fills seems a little incongruous and . It does not convince me that this will truly benefit employees or employers and I struggle to see the ROI.

One team building event that truly stands out for me as something exciting and rewarding is ‘Garden Challenge’

The event sees employees rally together to turn the overgrown gardens of the elderly members of the community back into functioning, attractive spaces. The teams are given a budget and the relevant equipment (skips/rotavators/wheelbarrows etc) to complete this challenge.

This teambuild is win win win. The team work together to create a real, lasting and measurable difference to someone’s life (and garden!). The owner of the garden gains back a beautiful, manageable space that they can spend time in again. The company heads also gain as the team creating the garden bond in a very different way having been able to achieve something of worth within the community.

The most worthwhile team building events end with smiling faces, a feeling of ‘job well done’ and the true knowledge that a difference has been made!

Contact us on 01628 526782 or get in touch through our contact us page!

There was the cupcake rush of 2012 and now it appears clients have invitation fever..  Our learning curve has been very steep and we now feel confident to talk fluently about everything from die cut designs to letterpress!

Invitations come in many forms from the extremely high end and glamourous (see image on the bottom left) to the alternative and exciting (see bottom middle and right).

The luxury invitation (bottom left) is from our amazing supplier based in London. Each one can be made truly bespoke just for you and can include all sorts of different finishing touches. These can be anything from diamonds to gorgeous ribbon buckles.  This type of invitation would set you back around £20 + VAT per invite (dependant on quantity).

An alternative idea is to theme your invitations to fit in with your event. Amie in our office is getting married abroad and  had save the dates made to mimic boarding passes and invitations that looked like passports. This can however be taken another step further..

The latest in alternative invitations is to send a object that relates to your event. For example sending a golf ball printed with the details of the event for golf incentive weekend or a wine bottle with the event details on its label for a wine tasting event.

These will be sure to impress your guests and the possibilities are endless and can be altered to suit any budget! Please feel free to give us a call on (01628) 526782 or get in touch via our contact us page to discuss any of these concepts further!

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Chinese themed events are on everybody’s minds at the moment with Chinese New Year around the corner on the 10th February. However this should be not the only time of year to consider doing a Chinese themed event! These events are a riot of colour and sound and have the ability to provide excellent cabaret spots as well as ’roundtable’ entertainers.

Chinese lanterns strung across the room and red uplighters will add instant atmosphere and really enhance the theme. Tables can be adorned in Red, this colour is associated with luck in China, with table linen and napkins. Bonsai trees are an ideal table centre and Fortune Cookies make perfect (budget conscious!) table favours.

Entertainment at Chinese themed events is exciting and varies with options such as ‘The Lion Dance’ which creates a brilliant mix and mingle start to a drinks reception and over dinner interactive entertainers such as Caligraphers can write guests name in Chinese Script. There is even an entertainer that will write your name on a grain of rice – (yes really!)

Cabaret spots such as dragon/ribbon dancers or even martial arts performers will make a big impression on guests and help to bring the night to a close on a high.

We’ve many ideas for this vibrant theme whatever your budget might be. So please feel free to give us a call for some inspiration on (01628) 526782 or get in touch via our contact us page!

Are you looking for a venue with a difference for your next event? Then the best place to start is by choosing an unusual venue such as these below!

Hotels, exhibition halls and conference centres are well known for their brilliance and convinience and offer great facilities suitable for most corporate events.. but with the growth and variety of ‘new’ bars, it now means that surprisingy these venues are not only a great place to be social but now compete in the corporate venue market, making them a great alternative venue.

I’d like to share three of my favourite bars in London which would be ideal for your next corporate event.

1.              Venue One is an innovative combination of a West End cocktail bar and cabaret restaurant set in the heart of the theatre-land. The stylish surrealist interior, formulated by British designer Tom Dixon, transports guests into a decadent world of glamorous escapism. The cocktails are heavenly and the knowledgeable cocktail bartenders will not leave you thirsty and can create crafted drinks. This venue is ideal for ‘The experience’  created by the nightly short, sharp bursts of entertainment, designed to be inviting, intriguing, weird and wonderful.

2.              Venue Two is a venue with a difference! This quirky bar allows people to have the freedom to enjoy a ‘good scribble’, have a drink and socialise with some fellow doodlers. Have the freedom to send out messages by expressing your thoughts using chalk! The bar is set against the backdrop of TESTBED1, a dramatic and versatile arts and events space for creative innovation, ideas and experimentation. This venue would be ideal for a board meeting, where you can creatively send out your business messages and objectives.

3.              Venue Three is a chic bar in the heart of London. It could be your slice of New York that you have been missing. A stylish lounge bar, restaurant and boutique club that pays homage to the King of ‘Cool’ himself, Steve Mcqueen. The decor displays vintage touches and an ever evolving art collection this teamed with the fact that they serve the highest quality drinks means that this venue is ideal for leaving a good impression, treating clients and employees to quality food and drink in a relaxed and stylish environment.

The bars mentioned above are only three out of our enormous selection of interesting venues! We’d love to share with you a few of our venues with a difference and inspire you for you next event. If you want to make an impression on your delegates then please feel free to get in contact with us!

New Year, new event ideas, at this time of year that’s what everyone looks for.

So, what are the new event ideas in the industry? Be it a team building event that not one single one of your delegates has done, or thinking much further down the line how can you better last years Christmas Party? So here is a little inspiration…

For team building, food events have become amazingly popular. The chocolate workshop at present winning hands down but a new event idea has just come to the table. Bread Making. Fun satisfying and surprisingly competitive it also loses the “is it a bit feminine?” question. This event works for numbers from 6 – 150

Nothing says ‘party’ more than balloons and there is a new kid on the block in this area too. Tissue paper pom poms, are a clever alternative to balloons, they’re shown here in pastel colours but can any colour of the rainbow. Fuchsia pink, orange and purple give a vibrant intense ‘party’ feel whereas pastels shades can give a sophisticated look to almost any event.

So as a finale to this piece what’s the one item that will set your Christmas party up for the biggest praise? It’s simply dodgems. “But we can’t” I hear you cry “we don’t have an outside space” don’t worry- you don’t need one! Our final new event idea is INDOOR dodgems! ….and boy are these clever!! There is no overhead power source. They come on a ‘rink’ which can be made to fit most rooms and they branded with your company logo too! I promise dodgems is a fast track way to “the best party ever”.

Contact us on 01628 526782 or get in touch via our contact us page!

The best event advice I could ever give?  Having worked in the industry for 17 years I’ve got to know a thing or two about events, but sometimes the best advice is the simplest.

There are tons of tips on how to create a good event such as always elevate speakers/ bands/cabaret entertainers above the seated (or standing guests) as the larger your event, the harder it is for all your guests to see the ‘point of interest’.

My next tip sounds rather negative but ALWAYS plan for an impending disaster and ALWAYS consider a plan ‘b’. You need have all your suppliers contact numbers with you at every event you attend, this means that if anything goes even slightly off plan you can gather the flock accordingly.

However neither of the above would be my best piece of advice…. So after my 17 years of experience running events, this is the number one piece of wisdom. Always take 3 pairs of shoes with you to an event. They can all be high heels all of equal height you don’t need to succumb to flats. Just three different pairs. Your feet will ‘sit’ differently in each pair and the pressure points will be different. Nothing is more debilitating than sore feet and that soreness will show on your face! This agitation may make your guests wonder if anything is wrong with the event itself- which is not a look that you want to portray! When you are literally ‘running’ an event for it’s entirety your poor feet can only take so much. As a matter of curiosity to just how many miles you do cover? I recently wore a pedometer (calibrated to my stride length) to an evening event. The event was for 450 guests spread over two floors with a total of 14hours attendance, including  rig and de rig and the total came to 27miles!!

I can honestly say I walked a marathon In heels- well in 3 pairs of heels!! So my advice stands, 3 pairs of shoes will see you through an inordinately long day when you are on your feet and ‘running’ an event.

Photos by Sam Taylor for a recent conference for Homeserve with the title “Walking A Mile In Your Customers Shoes”.

The above title should probably read ‘the pros and pros‘ of having an ice rink at your event.

A number of public ice rinks appear mid November to late January at venues such as The National History Museum, Tower of London , Canary Wharf and even Westfield shopping centre! These fabulous rinks are created out of real ice and probably above even the largest corporate budget (as they’ll cost upwards of 100k to create!!) Here are a couple of interesting facts about these that you may not know, 10 points to those who do..

– These ice rinks are kept cold with a large refrigerated base – the exact opposite of underfloor heating!
– The ice rink’s base has to be painted white as ice is of course clear!

For those of you who (like us) love the idea of having one of these at your next event, but don’t have 100K burning a hole in your pocket, there is an incredibly good alternative to the above… a synthetic rink.

These are so much more affordable and surprisingly good to skate on. The cost starts at about 5k and the rink is made up of one metre square pieces that slot together ( a bit like a dancefloor). Amazingly the joins are not felt when skating and you can glide across them as if you were on real ice. The companies providing these rinks include plenty of skates in both children’s and adult sizes and even bring gazebos to change in, music to skate to and snow machines to add that little bit of extra fun. These really do give the ‘wow’ factor to an event!