The Welcome Building - A proper Bristol welcome for an iconic new space
Creating a truly Bristol launch event for one of the city's most exciting new office spaces in the heart of Temple Quay - The Welcome Building.
The Welcome Building
Welcome by name, and welcome by nature - standing tall above Temple Quay, The Welcome Building is an impressive new office space boasting a stunning entrance foyer, panoramic views over the city and its very own Bristol crocodile in the form of a permanent art installation by local artist Dorcas Casey. After several years of building work, the owners wanted to throw a thoroughly Bristol launch party to celebrate. Enter…Duchess!
The team at the Welcome Building came to us at the eleventh hour with a brief to pitch an event that encompassed food, drink, music and entertainment which was truly ‘Bristol’. We’re sure they won’t mind us saying, and we DO love a bit of pressure, but we needed to turn the brief around within 24 hours, so it was time to dig out our little black book of our best Bristol contacts!
They were planning on inviting 100 guests from across the country to showcase the space, hosting building tours followed by an afternoon soiree in ‘The Street’; their incredible entrance foyer. They were keen to highlight local suppliers and things which were intrinsically Bristol, from the food and drink to a band, DJs and additional entertainment.
What they needed
What we did
After a whirlwind proposal and pitch project, we received an overwhelmingly positive response from the team on our presentation, so it was all systems go to turn the event around in five weeks.
A lot of the legwork with events is researching contacts and suppliers, and we’re really lucky to have a vast network of amazing local legends who we’ve built great relationships with over the years. The brief called for ‘a celebration of Bristol’, so we jumped on the phone to round up some of the city’s best, including:
Street food from Picnic Catering
Local beers from Bristol Beer Factory
Cider and cheese tasting from The Cider Box
Cocktails from The Bartender
Live painting from Inkie
Music from The 45’s and Room Two DJs
Doughnuts from Small Goods
We also took on all guestlist management, working through the invite hitlist provided by the team, sending out invitations and managing all RSVPs, dietary requirements and event queries, as well as conducting several site visits and creating detailed management plans, risk assessments and health and safety documents.
Andrew Clarke, Vice President
Duchess Media were amazing! Meg and Clem turned around their response to our Welcome Building launch event brief in record time, with a professional, detailed, dynamic and imaginative proposal that massively impressed us by completely encapsulating the spirit of our development and event aspirations. They led from Day 1 and simply made the whole process so enjoyable and easy for us, ensuring that the Staff, Band, DJ, Street Artist, Food and Drink offers were all locally sourced and just fantastic. The Duchess Media team rose to every last-minute challenge and were on hand at our launch party to ensure that everything ran smoothly, resulting in an event to remember for all our guests. Most importantly Meg and Clem were so much fun to work with – bags of enthusiasm with amazing Bristol connections!
Trammell Crow Company
On event day we had a fully subscribed guestlist, with just shy of 100 guests. Having spent the afternoon at the venue the day before to supervise all of the set up, including the bars, stocking the fridges and setting up DJ kit, event day is the easy bit - after all, all of the prep has been done in advance!
The event ran like clockwork - guests arrived promptly to the sounds of our DJs, before they were welcomed with a glass of fizz and whisked up the high speed elevators to admire the panoramic views of the city from the top floor. Once they’d had the grand tour it was back downstairs to the event space for beers, wine and cocktails before speeches, stopping off to admire Inkie’s live painting of a huge bespoke mural, created specially for the building. After speeches The 45s kicked things off with their first set as Picnic’s plates of tacos, sliders and falafel bowls were served up, and there was a queue for the Cider Box’s local cider and cheese pairing!
The event couldn’t have run smoother, and the feedback from both the clients and attendees on the day all centred around how well the event had captured the spirit of Bristol and the building itself - something we’d always worked towards.
We can’t wait to work further with The Welcome Building and their beautiful event spaces - if you’re looking for someone to add a touch of something really special to your next corporate event then get in touch!