Childs i Foundation Summer Party, Charlotte tells us all about it!

Stepladder Worldwide were engaged by the Childs I Foundation to work with them to produce their summer party.

Childs I came to us in the hope to develop an idea that would result in an event that leaned away from a typical black tie charity dinner.

The Childs I supporters are mostly made of a very young crowd and therefore we wanted to explore a different way in which we could encourage the supporters to attend an evening party that was exciting, fun, low key and most of all helped raise money for a worth cause.

This was the first project this year where I was responsible for my own client, making sure that all their needs were met to pull off the event.

Being a charity, it was their main priority to gather as much support as possible to hold the event. This meant that the budget was at an absolute minimum and it was all up to people providing their services for free or at a large discount.

A couple of brainstorming meetings later and we were moving full steam ahead with an 80’s themed summer party.

The next step was sourcing a venue. Finding a space that would help fit with the theme, fit the amount of people we wanted in it and also had all the requirements necessary for a variety of potential entertainment acts.

The Wenlock & Essex on Essex Road in Islington in London was the final decision. After several visits and discussions with the team and with the venue manager we were donated the back of the venue as well as their back room which included a light up dance floor and access for a DJ, band and big screen. They even opened the venue up for late license, up to 2am. Amazing!

Next, the entertainment. Hawaiian Tropical was the band of choice from Childs I. Made up of a series of backing performers for several famous bands, who specifically play 80’s themed music. After previously working on shows with sevens7 before and observing how and what is required by performers, I was able to communicate with the band to ensure they had all the equipment they required for their performances, checking the length of their sets and what we needed to produce to fill the gaps in the evening.

A comedian was engaged to add to the programme for the night, as well as DJ Eddie’s Road show, blaring some 80’s classics on the decks for everyone to dance to.

It was then time to start building up the guest list. This was mostly up to Childs I to send out information on the event and how to purchase a ticket. Tickets could be bought online, a really simple way to manage ticket sales as it could be monitored as to who purchased for the guest list when people arrived, resulting in less money being at the event on the day, always safer!

As well as ticket sales, another way that money was raised was through a raffle. A couple of Stepladderettes came down on the evening to help run the event, to volunteer and see it all happen. They did an amazing job of selling tickets which we had collated a very exciting list of prizes including festival tickets, one night getaways to the Cotswolds and much more.

The evening kicked off at 7pm, with a slow start as people were coming from work and had to get themselves dressed up in their finest attire to suit the 80’s theme! By about 8pm the venue was filling up and people were mingling, buying their raffle tickets and enjoying their free welcome drink. Eventually as more and more people arrived, we moved everyone into the back room to enjoy a speech from the founder of Childs I Foundation, Lucy Buck, and then the entertainment began. From then onwards the event ran smoothly and everything went to schedule, with people enjoying their evening which by the looks of things was spent mostly on the dance floor!

Being able to produce my own event from start to finish and treat Childs I as a client, even though a very easy going one, gave me an insight into how to manage a client, manage people, manage suppliers and manage pressure to make sure that everything went to plan.

The event raised over £3000 for Childs I Foundation, a great achievement for them and it was a great experience for myself and our Stepladder volunteers to be able to get involved and see the event from start to finish, coming to life.

What I would do next time is manage the schedule of the evening more. I was lucky in that this event was very flexible and did not have to run to exact timings.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this project and can’t wait to put more together!

Finally, check out the July-August issue of Access All Areas, we managed to sneak a little article in there about the event!