Following a highly successful event in 2012, full service creative communications agency The fresh Group was appointed to deliver the Special Events programme at The Skills Show for the second year. Taking place at The NEC Birmingham in November, The Skills Show is the UK’s largest skills and careers event
for young people, a unique celebration which inspires, motivates and provides exciting opportunities in further education, skills and apprenticeships.
To create seven special events over four days, fresh utilised every division of its full service offering to deliver the creative concept, technical production, event logistics, artistic management, video production, exhibition construction for a third party partner and content management for all the special events. In addition to the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, which each attracted 2,500 guests, fresh was also responsible for a number of smaller events, including a welcome dinner, awards ceremony for one of the event’s key funding partners and a spectacular finale. More than 50 of the UK’s finest young amateur performers were sourced by fresh for the ceremonies, which were attended by entrepreneur and TV personality Theo Paphitis and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg among others.
The Skills Show itself attracted more than 80,000 visitors during its time at the NEC, and provided a great opportunity for fresh to demonstrate how the company’s uniquely joined-up approach to live communications works successfully in any industry and with any audience.
This comes off the back of an unprecedented year for fresh, with a number of large scale events being delivered for numerous blue-chip clients. Managing director Patrick Howells comments: “After last year’s success, we were delighted to be appointed to deliver such an important, high profile special events programme for The Skills Show for a second time. Once again, this was a fully integrated project which utilised every division within fresh, particularly our more recently established Exhibitions department. The fresh and Skills Show teams came together to create a fabulous special events programme and I am extremely proud of the end results.”
“We were delighted with the work that fresh put in to make this year’s Special Events programme at The Skills Show such a success,” comments Sophie Edwards, Content and Visitor Experience Manager. “The agency’s team worked seamlessly with our own to create an impressive, eyecatching series of events that certainly wowed our wide ranging audience.”