The Power of Events at 2: "If we all move together, big things can happen"
M&IT editor Paul Harvey caught up with The Power of Events founder Rick Stainton on the second anniversary of the initiative...
Since launching two years ago The Power of Events has gone from strength to strength, powered by a steely focus on inclusive collaboration .
M&IT caught up with founder Rick Stainton to find out about The Power of Events' big successes, such as the Schools Engagement Programme and the Events Industry Insight App, and also what 2025 has in store for the initiative...
M&IT: The Power of Events is two years old. Happy birthday!
Rick Stainton: Happy birthday. Well, who knew? When this all kicked off and I asked the industry to support a not-for-profit on the back of coming out of Covid, it was either the best time to do something like this or the worst time. Everyone was in the spirit of openness and collaboration, but also quickly back to ‘Right, we've got to get our business back on track’.
I'm very grateful to the industry for realising that there was an opportunity to gain better understanding and value for our amazing industry. That's all the mission is, and over the last two years we’ve tried to stay true to that.
I wanted it to be as inclusive and as collaborative and as open and as transparent as possible, with a very simple mission to benefit the whole industry. Our job is to make that part very simple and easy and efficient so that you can focus on your day job while helping a little bit. If we all move together a little bit, big things can happen.
That's what we're trying to leverage with this unique spread across seven sectors, across four nations, that collective community has never been created before. If we can move together on just one or two projects a year, things will change. That's what we're trying to stay focused on.
M&IT: What has been the biggest achievement of the last two years?
RS: Two things. One, the fact that we are still growing in our profile and it's got some sense of credibility and support and positivity after two years. A lot of these things come and go very quickly; we've just built and built. When we launched, we had about 100 supporters and 60-70 partners. Now we've got over 600. That’s from the biggest to the smallest, the breadth of support is incredible.
We've asked the whole industry to help and support and put a few quid behind it, so there's a massive pressure and incentive for us to keep delivering because we're beholden to the whole industry. There's growth, there's progression, there's transparency, there's credibility. After two years, are we there yet? Of course we're not. We've got X per cent to go, but that in itself is a key success.
The other key success is obviously the Schools Engagement Programme. I don't think ever before has the whole UK event industry across four nations, across seven sectors, across all different types of organisations worked on one thing. If you can name something then let me know.
I sat down with the CEO of one of the biggest venues in the UK for lunch last week and he said, “The one thing that all sectors have as a challenge collectively is they all need new talent. They all need better understanding of the schools, universities. So well done for picking that initiative.”
I appreciated the sentiment, but we didn't pick that initiative. We don't pick anything. The industry suggested it, and we made it happen with their support.
It’s pretty clear that if we've got this platform, then the output should be projects like the Schools Engagement Programme. We have a clear mission to get in front of those four and a half thousand secondary state schools across the UK, within five years and hopefully on an annual basis. We’ve got sponsors across the four regions we've launched in: East of England to start with and then Birmingham, South Coast, Hertfordshire. Edinburgh is about to launch, along with the Northwest in April in Cheshire, Liverpool and Manchester with a whole bunch of eclectic supporters, and then we'll be launching the Southwest, in Bath and Bristol by the summer and also one or two London regions as well.
We will reach over 300 schools this year, engaging with over 50,000 to 75,000 young people. That's us doing the hard run, but also sponsors putting the money behind each region and then individual ambassadors volunteering to actually go and deliver the presentations. So it's a really unique collective effort. I'm very proud of that.
That will scale, it will become an annual programme and it will involve more people. There may be secondary, tertiary outputs of local involvement of event businesses with schools as they develop a relationship with them individually that we've brokered. So the impact is that the next generation, their teachers, their parents, their influencers, their career advisors; they’ll be collectively talking about the events industry as a viable career option, because they'll understand the basics and they'll be inspired to go to the platform to learn more and they'll be signposted off to loads of organisations that can help them pursue that journey.
"Representative, inclusive and welcoming – that’s the whole essence of The Power of Events. "
Rick Stainton
Over the last two years, what have you learned about the events industry?
I spent over 20 years at Smyle in an agency that was flying and did great stuff. But you're in a channel, you don't get the time to go and learn from the festival industry or the sports industry, or whatever it might be, and discover the people and their challenges and the organisations that wrap around them.
I’ve engaged with hundreds, probably over one thousand businesses over the last two years, and about 90 plus per cent of those organisations I've never heard of or spoken to before. So, you know, major music promoters and venues, touring production companies, exhibition companies, major international event organisations, the festival industry - and then you start engaging with a lot of the smaller agencies. That's been really invigorating. I've realised how little I knew about the wider industry. I think many people will have the same experience of that channel vision, which is not a criticism. It's just what you do.
The key thing is that the vast majority of people I've engaged with have really lovely shared values. You just need to find them and ask them to to help and they will. We’re learning from them; how they work, how they network, tapping into other people's networks. We're trying to be as inclusive and as representative as we can.
Aligned with that is discovering all the industry events that I wasn't aware of. There's huge award ceremonies and conferences and exhibitions, and I'd not really engaged with a lot of them. There are almost 100 events at any one time on the events industry calendar on the platform. Did I know more than a quarter of them? Probably not.
Then there's the associations, the podcasts, the online communities. There's a massive amount of support and network opportunities and insights you can gain by giving yourself more of an opportunity to discover them. They all have views and networks and a valid opinion on where things are going well. The more you can engage with these organisations and networks and their insights, it's only going to go into that bank of experience and knowledge that you can then leverage, as and when the opportunity arises.
The enlightening thing for me is how all interconnected we are. Over 90 per cent of the supply chain works across pretty much all the sectors. I think that's really important because they see a huge amount of of the stuff that's going on and the challenges and the opportunities and the innovation. The interconnectivity is quite extraordinary and that's where The Power of Events has hopefully tapped into something.
After two years, do you feel you're getting that cut through with people?
I hope so. But you know what? People are busy. They're focusing on clients and talent and delivery and operations day in, day out. The Power of Events is of course not their priority. We've got to be very clear and simple in what we are and what the benefit is to the industry. And if we've got to constantly deliver that message that's totally fine. We'll do that to the end of time.
What we have done, perhaps which we learned from other initiatives in the past, is that we're not hiding behind an office or a screen. We visited more than 40 industry events last year, and personally presented or showcased The Power of Events at most of them.
A lot of people are getting involved, but a lot of people aren't yet and if they're interested, we will discuss it with them and then try to position whether they can get involved to a lesser or greater extent as a supporter, get involved in some of our projects or events, download the app, get involved in the schools engagement programme. They can be ambassadors and volunteer if they think they can't be a sponsor. There are multiple touch points, just look at the platform. Representative, inclusive and welcoming – that’s the whole essence of The Power of Events.
What have you got lined up for the coming year?
The plan is to develop more app projects. We'd say we did four or five towards the end of last year and there's a couple more exciting ones in the pipeline. We're also supporting some final year university students with their dissertations and offering that for free to our university partners where they can use the app to engage with the industry for support with their dissertations.
We’re going to develop the schools engagement programme, get more regions involved across the four nations. We launched in Edinburgh, we'd love to launch also in Glasgow. We want to talk and develop perhaps with Belfast and Cardiff, Newport and Wales and so on. London obviously is the big one. There's a lot of plans there. We'll do probably over 40 events this year to engage and see people at.
It's really just making sure that anybody that's got a vague awareness of The Power of Events is realising they can get involved at any level they want to. There's no big ego here with regards to, you have to be a certain size, or have to have a certain knowledge base. Everyone's got the right to support and engage with The Power of Events, it's there for the industry. There's no cut off point.
I can't think of any other organisation that's open to everybody that is relevant to everybody and you can get involved at any level. If over the next year or two we get more people interested in The Power of Events, understand what it is, and see how they can get involved, then we're doing our job pretty well.
What does success look like?
We are going to be judged by the industry. It's all going to come down to impact and demonstrable engagement and results from the support and advocacy. And we need to continue to demonstrate that. That’s another key mission for the next few years.
With event professionals’ support for the shared values that we show, things can happen if we move together. If everyone moves together then that's a big impact. If everyone does fractured stuff and it never really aligns, then you're going to get a fractured impact. So we're picking our battles.
Anyone who would like to discuss getting involved with The Power of Events can get in touch at [email protected] or take a journey around www.thepowerofevents.org
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