The events team at The Great Yorkshire Show are masters at hosting a large-scale event. CEO of hosts The Yorkshire Agricultural Society, Allister Nixon, tells us more prior to this year’s July edition.
Hello Allister! Tell us more about the planning process like for an event of this scale?
Hi! Not everyone is aware it’s the Yorkshire Agricultural Society that puts on the show which is a charity. We have around 110 permanent staff who cover events and a broad range of businesses which are part of the charity like our farm shop Fodder. But, for the majority of the year, the events team is very small: we’ve got four people in our livestock section, two on trade stands, and an operations manager.
But by the time show comes, we will have brought in around 300 temporary staff and over 600 volunteers who support the show including 250 judges and 360 stewards.
How important is the flexibility of the venue?
The Yorkshire Event Centre was built to support the show, it is the food hall for the show, with fantastic indoor and outdoor spaces, and it’s also an amazing facility to use throughout the whole year – it’s a great rural setting for events.
We keep the map of each area largely the same which gives us an initial template. Otherwise, we use an architect design programme which means we can be flexible. Having a really accurate piece of software means we can move things about on screen and get a good understanding of what will work. We recently introduced a sheepdog trial section for the first time which led to some changes.
Has the show evolved over the many years?
It’s not about making big changes for us; it’s about looking at things every year and keeping agriculture at its core. The big thing for us is improving the engagement for the public when they’re walking about. This year we’re reintroducing the People’s Choice which is a way of getting the public involved with judging the livestock in a fun and interactive way so they can hopefully come away with a genuine improvement in their understanding of farming and the rural community.
Another thing we try and do is improving experience year on year. The capacity for the show is 35,000 visitors daily, we could go to 55,000 but we put a limit on it because we believe it’s better for the visitor experience that way. We’re all about ensuring a great day out for everyone, we’re not chasing headline numbers anymore.
Tickets for this year’s show on 9th to12th July 2024 at Greatyorkshireshow.co.uk