Rick Stainton, Founder of The Power of Events, discusses the impetus behind bringing the entire industry together in one place.
As with several other key issues in the events industry, it was the COVID-19 pandemic which highlighted a lack of cohesion across the industry to The Power of Events Founder Rick Stainton:
“During this difficult time for the events industry, there was huge amount of lobbying of national media and the government by many different people in the industry, particularly the associations. We were doing really tireless and great work trying to get industry specific support. But what I think it exposed was the lack of coordination and collaboration among the different sectors.”
For such an extensive industry, Rick believes that there needs to be more clarity for those not within the industry:
“We’ve not been clear enough about defining ourselves as an industry to the wider external stakeholders. All these campaigns and hashtags were flying around at the same time and using different data. We really needed them to just talk and coordinate better.”
The Power of Events developed from the One Industry, One Voice movement which Rick established during the pandemic:
“I set up a Zoom call once a week and contacted as many association leaders as possible across the different sectors of the industry to talk to each other. We had 20 to 30 organisations from across the industry. We defined seven sectors: bespoke sports events, business and brand experiences, exhibitions and congress, outdoor events and festivals, music and live performances, weddings and private events, and public and third sector. That was an informal project so that people could meet, collaborate, and share what they were doing.”
The success of One Industry, One Voice inspired Rick to create a platform to bring all of the resources, associations, data, and publications across the industry together in one place as an easy reference point: “At the end of last year I realised that we had a bit of momentum. I sat down with Simon Hughes, the ex- Chair of BBP, and realised that there wasn’t one platform for people to go to that showcases the industry in a simple signposting way.”
Rick has seen a wealth of support for the idea coming from the industry itself:
“I went up to Scotland and saw several people up there. It’s very important that it’s across all nations. We don’t want some London-centric orientated element. I’ve presented to hundreds and hundreds of organisations this past year and we’ve had an incredible unilateral 99% buy in rate from everyone that I’ve spoken to that is supporting in one way or another. No one has said that it’s not needed or that they don’t understand it, so that’s very exciting. For the first time we’ve got the industry moving together on a very simple mission.”
Thepowerofevents.org