Kew Gardens: Alluring Orchids

Each year, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew hosts an orchid festival as part of its winter public programming offer. Held in February inside the heritage-listed Princess of Wales glasshouse, the festival plays a critical role in sustaining visitation during a period when outdoor cultural venues are less appealing. I was contracted as Interim Engagement Executive to lead the development and delivery of the 2015 festival programme during a period of organisational change.

When I stepped into this short-term role, the existing orchid festival model centred largely on static displays and interpretive materials. I identified an opportunity to take a new creative and engagement-centred approach — one that deepened audience interaction with scientific content, broadened the appeal of the festival, and fostered stronger collaboration across the Gardens.

Leading the development and delivery of Alluring Orchids, I introduced a rigorous programming strategy built around a creative daily offer of live talks, participatory activities and thematic experiences. This approach created space for more meaningful engagement with Kew’s science and collections while continuing to foreground the visual impact of the orchids themselves. Realising this shift required significant relational labour. I worked closely with teams across science, horticulture, public programming, visitor experience and marketing, co-designing activities with specialist staff, advocating for new formats within established institutional structures, and negotiating shared ownership of programming outcomes. The resulting festival invited audiences to pause, wonder, reflect and interact with the living science of the Gardens in ways that were both accessible and intellectually rigorous.

Alongside this, I focused on building confidence and capability among scientists participating in the festival. I organised bespoke presentation skills training to support staff in engaging effectively with live audiences, including bringing in Stephen McGann (Dr Turner, Call the Midwife) to work with scientists on presence, clarity and audience connection. This investment not only raised the quality of on-site talks during the festival, but strengthened longer-term capacity for public engagement across the organisation.

A further innovation was the debut of Kew After Hours. Despite being well connected by public transport, Kew can be perceived as distant from central London, particularly by younger and evening audiences. Drawing on the growing popularity of late-night openings across London’s cultural sector, I adapted the ‘Lates’ model for the orchid festival, offering audiences a familiar format within an unexpected and spectacular setting. Working across Gardens teams and with external partners, I developed new content linked to festival themes and delivered events that brought the glasshouses to life after hours — including cocktail bars, perfume-making workshops and live music. This was the first time such programming had been introduced at Kew, and the format continues to inform public programming at the Gardens today.

Through developing a creative daily offer, launching Kew After Hours, and investing in cross-departmental collaboration and scientist-led engagement, I helped shape a festival that was more participatory, collaborative and reflective of Kew’s unique scientific culture — evolving both the visitor experience and internal approaches to public programming.