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Interim Engagement Executive, Kew Gardens

The Royal Botanic Gardens’ mission is to unlock the potential of plants and fungi. In addition to their world leading scientific work, they welcome millions of visitors to their sites each year.

Each year the site at Kew hosts an orchid festival as part of the public programming offer. Held during the winter month of February inside the heritage listed Princess of Wales glasshouse, it is vital in maintaining visitation during a time when going to an outdoor venue might not be so appealing. In late 2014 the organisation was undergoing a restructure due to funding cuts, and I stepped in on a short contract to lead on the development and delivery of the 2015 orchids festival, Alluring Orchids. This included the research and development of original content, programming of the month long festival, and project management of festival delivery.


I brought a fresh approach to the festival, seeing opportunities to add to the existing program to bring in new audiences, and promote more in-depth engagement in existing ones. Highlights included:


Developing a creative daily offer

The format of the public program for orchids festival at Kew Gardens had previously been presented as a traditional flower display with interpretation boards, and accompanying educational activities. I took a more creative approach to the festival program, integrating more activities that boosted engagement with existing and new audiences, without detracting from the main attraction - the spectacular orchids. Through developing a rigorous programming strategy, I was able incorporate a series of simple, but high impact, activations that allowed people to have more in-depth interactions with messaging, or simply pause to reflect on the beauty around them.


Debuting Kew After Hours

Despite being located just outside of Central London, and easily accessible by public transport, Kew Gardens can be perceived as 'far away'. At the time I led on the Orchids festival, the late night opening of cultural institutions around London, the 'Lates' model, was gaining a lot of popularity. I used this model during the orchids festival to entice this more diverse age groups to the Gardens; using an event style they were familiar with but offering them something different and spectacular within this format.

I developed relationships across the Gardens teams and with external stakeholders that hadn't existed before, created content linked to the festival themes, and delivered events that brought the heritage listed glasshouses to life after hours. There were cocktail bars, perfume making workshops, music and much more. This was the first time this had been done as part of the public program, and the format is still used to this day.

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