Ever organised a children’s party? Crafty Arty World Group takes the connotation of children’s events to a whole other level

Thursday the 17th October Let’s Talk Events & Leisure had the pleasure to welcome Emily Hall, Business Development Manager and Tony Jacques, Marketing Director from Crafty Arty World Group.

Crafty Arty World

Crafty Arty World Group has grown organically at a rapid pace the past years and experienced a steep learning curve. Starting as a local company organising arts courses for children they got a call that would change everything to come. They were asked to organise a children’s party and realised quickly that there was a gap in the market. Today 99% of the business is London based though the office is based next to a beautiful meadow in Dorset. They have 3 companies under the umbrella Crafty Arty World i.e. Crafty Arty Parties™, Tikes & Tiaras™ and Prop Dead Gorgeous™ http://www.craftyartyworld.com/ and have plans to develop even further.  They deliver corporate and private children parties with bespoke and creative solutions. Everything is made specifically for each event. The company organises the biggest corporate children’s party in London for the 3rd year running. Tony explains that “corporate clients has moved away from merely treating their employees and clients and are now focusing largely on family events. Happy children make for happy parents and happy employees.”

Emily graduated from the Events Management program at School of Tourism in 2012. She started her journey with the company as a placement student and is now responsible for up to high profile 30 clients at one time. She tells the story of the first time she was invited by her manager to be part of a pitch. “I have done bungee jumping and I honestly thought that it at least can’t be as bad as that. They are just humans in that room and they are not going to eat me”.  Emily won the pitch and was promoted.

Emily Hall

“What did you think about when you hear children’s party?” Tony asked the students. They would find out that it is much more than balloons, clowns and cupcakes involved. Crafty Arty World Group is an event production company from start to finish. The audience learned about the ups and downs when it comes to building client relationships, answering to briefs, landing a pitch, and finally delivering and event. The biggest challenge is to get into the door. “There is no one way to get a client and sometimes it can take years of work to get that meeting” says Emily. She also stressed how important it is to make the clients remember you, be creative, and know your finances. But most of all make sure to get a signature on that contract.

Tony JacquesThe future looks bright for Crafty Arty World Group. They are launching a new brand, developing their e-marketing and increasing international business. After Christmas Tony and Emily will fly to New York in the search for new opportunities. When Crafty Arty World Group met with students after the presentation the room was packed. They are currently looking for students to do casual work as well as offering graduate opportunities. If you are interested contact Emily at Emily.hall@craftyartyparties.com  or Tony Jacques at Jacques@craftyartyparties.com.

By: Maria Näs

 

Seminars in October and November

All seminars are on Wednesday afternoons in TAG32.

23rd October, 3pm in TAG32

Philip Long, ‘Creativity and Tourism: Theory, Policy and Practice’

Cláudia Henriques (University of the Algarve), ‘Place, Identity and Paradoxes: the case of British tourists’ attitudes regarding the Algarve’.

30th October, 4pm in TAG32

Berta Ferrer Rosell (University of Gerona), ‘A new way of segmenting tourists: defining low-cost tourists by their expenditure composition’

Adam Blake and Heather Hartwell, ‘BU PhD Studentships’.

13th November, 3.30pm, TAG32

Marina Marouda and Adele Ladkin, ‘Family Rituals 2.0 – supporting work-life balance for mobile workers in the digital age’

Ian Jones, ‘Why we carry on when things go wrong: Social Creativity, Sport and Leisure’.

Tracy Halliwell, Director of Business Tourism & Major Events at London & Partners

On the second part of Let’s Talk Industry Guest Speaker Series we were happy to welcome Tracy Halliwell, Director of Business Tourism & Major Events at London & Partners.

BU Talk T Halliwell

Tracy who is a BU alumni herself started her career in hotels and catering where she spent 20 years working her way up to more senior positions. She then decided she wanted to try something new and went on to destination marketing.

During her presentation she gave an in-depth perspective of the organisation London & Partners which was launched in 2011 to bring together several organisations with the aim to talk with one voice, vision and mission to promote London and attract and deliver value to business, students and visitors. London & Partners is a not-for-profit public private partnership, funded by the Mayor of London’s office and their network of commercial partners.

Tracy shared her experiences from working on the Olympics 2012 where London & Partners played a big role, not only in the bidding process but also regarding accommodation, hospitality, media centre, the Mayor’s Hospitality Programme and the Cultural Olympiad -Summer Like No Other. One of the challenges was the so called displacement effect that often takes place in destinations before and after a major event. This effect was minimized by London & Partners by providing a range of initiatives encouraging people to visit London.

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When asked by the students what she likes most about her job Tracy replied that she has a varied job where no one day is the same. Her advice to students is to get as much work experience as possible to stand out from the crowd and have real life experiences to talk about when applying for jobs.

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By: Maria Näs

Let’s Talk Events & Leisure Industry Guest Speaker Series 2013

Let’s Talk Events & Leisure was delighted to kick off the Industry Guest Speakers Series 2013 with a full lecture theatre and visit from Peter Gunn, Chief Executive BH Live and 3 BU graduates.

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Peter Gunn gave his large student audience an overview of the broad scope of Events & Leisure venues and programming on offer with BH Live. With products and services covering leisure activities, the arts, entertainment, culture and events it employs upwards of 1,000 people across its venues and leisure centres.  BH Live also draws in 50,000 conference and exhibition visitors e.g. BIC and has over 1.6 million visits to its Leisure Centres each year. Peter highlighted their BH Live Experience Privilege scheme to over 200 students, and shared the news that BH Live has also recently signed the contract with Portsmouth City Council to manage and operate the Pyramids Centre in Portsmouth.

20131003-IMG_8227   From the left: Hanna Parsons, Alex Ainsworth, Cathi Farrer

Cathi Farrer (BA (Hons) Leisure Marketing 2006) currently working in the Marketing Department at Bournemouth University told the students about her decision to come back to Bournemouth due in part to its appeal in life/work balance, & being closer to friends and the beach. Cathi has a passion for sports events and after having spent time on the Rugby Events event circuit, Cathi was determined to get involved with the London Olympics. She applied for a majority of the jobs out for grabs and landed a position as Services Group Leader at the shooting competitions. Not her favourite sport though she had a fantastic Olympic experience that she’ll never forget. Cathi’s advice to the students was to be persistent and try new things, find the areas that they like and build networks.

Hannah Parsons (BA (Hons) Events Management 2012)

Hannah shared her story of when her placement turned into a management position on her first day as the current manager left the company. A big (and scary) challenge that she took on which gave her great experience. Hannah then worked part-time during the last year of her studies to add to her work experience. Currently working as the event coordinator at a cancer hospice associated with Poole Hospital, her advice to students is to not only go looking for opportunities for the most obvious events companies, but to open your search criteria and you will find event jobs in industries you never thought of.

Alex Ainsworth (BA (Hons) Events Management  2012)

Alex started his journey at RNLI as volunteer and was later promoted to team leader. Alex currently holds a position as the RNLI’s south central area face to face and events manager.  Alex encouraged current students to grab all university opportunities that are presented to them, including volunteering, guest lectures and industry competitions. It builds on the learning and helps build industry contacts. It also shows people you are interested and keen to learn more and gain experience in the events industry.

A big thank you everyone involved. See you next week!

By: Maria Näs

Bournemouth Arts by the Sea Festival – a student reflection

As part of their level C induction BU Leisure Marketing students documented their visit to the opening of Bournemouth Arts by the Sea Festival. Read their story and see the movie they made.

By: Yaz, Baz, Jade, Penny, Lucie, Ellee, Tom

To begin our research project of the arts by the sea festival we did a very general background information study finding out the theme, the event size and the kind of performances as well as the general aim of the festival.

This allowed us to understand what the arts by the sea festival was about and how we could capture our event experience.

We decided to base our research project around a particular act in which we were all curious in spectating. this happened to be the Dick Danger show – ‘Dick Danger attempts the impossible as he steers his way through a health and safety nightmare. watch a man diving from a very high pole head first into a bucket of water.’ In order to capture the our Arts Festival experience we decided to film ourselves around the event as well as the act itself, this enabled us to pick up on the atmosphere and the energy of the event. As demonstrated in the video you can see that the event was very lively with a very happy crowd with one of our group members actually participating within the show.

After knuckling our heads together we decided to make a short video that concluded every aspect of what we were trying to show. Yaz was the designated editor and he put the video together very well and we all agreed on trying to make the video fun and enjoyable to express our experience how it was. During this project we all got to know each other very well and it has brought us together which overall was the main aim of the introduction project.

See the movie here

Arts by the sea Bournemouth, Report

Fusion invests in future of Events Industry

 

The UK Events industry is a critical economic contributor projected to grow from £36 billion and 550,000 jobs to £43 billion and 630,000 jobs by 2020. Growth requires new event products, entrepreneurs and talent, currently provided by cultural festivals, in addition to their role in improving community cohesion and image. However, the current economic environment requires justification of these entrepreneurial, social and economic impacts in a transparent manner.

The Festival Impact Monitor project seeks develop an event evaluation approach to overcome the limitations of existing qualitative (external validity) and quantitative (internal validity) methods.  By aggregating and analysing public data available from online social media platforms, we intend to generate insights on the impact of events unavailable via conventional approaches.   The findings of this research is intended to guide stakeholders involved in planning and staging festivals, helping to improve funding allocations. A major component of our project is the development of Reusable Learning Objects to help guide researchers who are seeking to use social media data in future projects.

In the first stage of the project, the team will consult industry stakeholders to understand evaluation needs and identify Festivals for analysis.  Next, the team will archive and analyse social media narratives about these Festivals to understand their Entrepreneurial and Social Impacts. Finally, the team will review the findings with industry and academic stakeholders to present a validated approach for evaluating Festivals using data from online Social Networks. In addition to the industry and academic impact, our project will contribute to enhancing the learning environment at BU as we will develop RLOs to guide future researchers.

Our team wishes to thank the Research Office for all of the support provided and we highly recommend that anyone intending to apply for Fusion funding attend the dissemination and engagement sessions.  It would also be useful to get someone from outside your area to read your bid to see if they understand the impact and benefits of your research.  We’ll post monthly updates on the research blog and feel free to contact us:

Nicole Ferdinand nferdinand@bournemouth.ac.uk

Alexandra Ott aott@bournemouth.ac.uk

Debbie Sadd dsadd@bournemouth.ac.uk

Nigel Williams nwilliams@bournemouth.ac.uk.

FROM: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2013/09/23/fusion-invests-in-future-of-events-industry/#sthash.sUKJwl7b.dpuf

WTM Technology Enabling Travel organized by IFITT

Dear Tourism and E-Marketing Enthusiasts!

On November 4, 2013 the International Federation for Information Technology and Travel and Tourism (IFITT) invites you to join the event ‘WTM Technology Enabling Travel’ at the World Travel Market 2013.

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Event Details:

The event will take place in form of a workshop themed ‘Gaming and Gamification in tourism: opening a new experience’, which will address both issues, phenomenons gamification and location-based games and will introduce best practices in the tourism industry. The motivation for this topic evolved from the WTM Global Trends Report 2012 where gamification was described as one of the major trends in tourism. The report also highlighted the finding that many travel companies and destinations (Tourism Ireland, Australia Tourism Board, Lufthansa) as well as hospitality organisations (Marriott, Starwood Hotels & Resorts) have already applied the concept of gaming in their business to create new experiences, which are fun and engaging for customers and employees likewise. The workshop is aimed at people who want to:

  • Understand the concept of gaming and its impact on the tourism experience
  • Learn how gaming can be applied in the tourism context
  • Find out from leading experts in the field about current best practices and future opportunities of gaming for the tourism industry.

The event will be moderated by IFITT President and Chair in Tourism at Bournemouth University Professor Dimitrios Buhalis. Together with Jessika Weber from the eTourism Lab at Bournemouth University he will open up the workshop topic with a presentation about ‘Augmented Reality Gaming: A new Paradigm for Tourist Experience’. After that the event will continue with a number of interesting presentation by speakers from famous universities and tourism companies, such as Antonio Coelho from Porto University who will talk about ‘Location-based games for tourism’ or Benjamin Kolb and Julia Bachwinkel from Tripventure who will give insights into ‘Augmented Reality Games for Tourism Urban Destinations’.

Registration Process:

The event is completely for free but you have to register in the following way: First, you need register for the WTM opening day, even if you have already signed up for a standard WTM admission. Registration for the opening is absolutely necessary, as otherwise access to the WTM on November 4, 2013 will be denied. Secondly, you need to register for the event at http://ifitt.eventbrite.co.uk/.

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis says: “Augmented Reality in combination with gaming will open up a wide range of opportunities for tourists and visitors. This workshop will provide a great opportunity for tourism practitioners and destination managers to find out about this cutting-edge concept in tourism marketing and how it can be applied to achieve great results. “

The workshop is part of the World Travel Market 2013 and will take place on November 4, 2013 from 11.30 to 14:00 in the BTM Theatre at ExCel London. Prior to the event participants are encouraged to engage in the conversations on the Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/events/120171938153132/) to make first contacts and raise issues to be considered at the event.

For more information please contact: Professor Dimitrios Buhalis (IFITT President) at ifitt@ifitt.orgor dbuhalis@bournemouth.ac.uk.

The Digital Destinations Project – Working together for innovation

Dr Philip Alford is featured as guest blogger at Visit England where he tells us about the Digital Destinations project an ESRC-funded research project led by Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism with an overarching aim to:

 ‘Capture change in the adoption and use of digital technologies by small visitor economy businesses to enable them to engage more effectively with existing and new customers and develop a strong, competitive local tourism economy.’
For the full blog please visit

Events & Leisure Industry Guest Speaker Series kicks-off this week

Let’s Talk Events & Leisure is happy to announce that the Industry Guest Speaker Series 2013 will kick-off this Thursday. Welcome to Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus KGO1 1100-1200.

This week we are very privileged to have Chief Executive, Peter Gunn of BH Live address our students and staff.  Peter is due to feature the scope and importance of Events & Leisure sector to their core business (i.e. BH Live oversees the planning and operation of: BIC (Bournemouth International Centre); Bournemouth Pavilion; Stokewood Leisure Centre; Pelhams Park Leisure Centre etc)  BH Live draws in over 2 million visitors annually, employs over 4000 people and draws over £2.5 million in economic activity.

This week’s guest lecture will also feature 3 BAEM & BALM grads. Seminar room P403 is booked 1200-1300 so that students and staff can continue on and meet with the grads informally for further questions after the guest lecture.  Tea & coffee will be available!

Guest lectures

If you are a BU graduate or from the industry and would like to attend, please contact Mary Beth Gouthro, Graduate/Professional Engagement (Events & Leisure) email: mgouthro@bournemouth.ac.uk  phone:  01202 961531