AN EVENTS specialist which has diversified to help businesses communicate with their audiences throughout the pandemic is set to compete for a national award.
Jimmy Birchmore Events, based at Stoneleigh Park, is on the shortlist for the Best Rural Diversification Project in the Rural Business Awards after winning the Midlands regional final.
The award category recognises rural initiatives that have gone above and beyond to offer something different to its customers.
The company will now go head-to-head with other regional winners from across the UK in an online national final tonight.
Jimmy Birchmore Events, established in 2009, specialises in agriculture, environment, food chain and land-based events.
Despite being hit significantly by Covid-19, already losing eight months of work by the time the first Government lockdown was implemented in March 2020, the business looked for opportunities to adapt and innovate to support its clients.
It launched a virtual events service, offering clients everything from running enhanced webinars to large-scale virtual events, which involved a fully branded studio production and were attended by hundreds of people.
Jimmy Birchmore, owner of the business, said: “Covid-19 has put immense pressure on the events industry and I’m exceptionally proud of the team which has overcome the huge challenge we faced with a 99 per cent reduction of our usual live events for 18 months.
“But the whole team worked incredibly hard to research the needs of our clients who we would normally support with in-person events, take part in additional training and develop a whole new skill set to enable us to launch this arm of the business.
“Not only have we utilised and strengthened our audio-visual skills, we have also worked with trusted partners to deliver events in fully-branded studios.
“We have held a number of incredibly successful, high-quality virtual events which have enabled our clients to continue communicating with their audiences in a professional manner.
“We’re now seeing an upswell in demand for in-person events once again which is excellent, but we will continue to innovate and adapt and are also looking at what elements of virtual events can be retained.
“Streaming virtual speakers and hosting a live question and answer session with them at a face-to-face event is not only possible, but very achievable, now we have the technology at our fingertips.
“We were delighted to win the the Best Rural Diversification Project Award for the Midlands which was testament to the hard work of the whole team, and we are now looking forward to the national finals. It is wonderful to receive this recognition from the industry.”
