Who Are Dancing Squirrel
Posted on 30th July 2024 at 11:27
The Creative Collective
We offer a wealth of creative talent and experience that offers a fresh perspective. We transform creative ideas into real solutions, delivering your company message with impact, engagement and creating lasting memories. We are your strategic partner that provides innovative and captivating stories to bring your brand to life, in either a live, hybrid or virtual event setting.
We immerse your audience in rich content that stimulates and excites, that is meaningful and unforgettable. And we do all this with you! So first up, we want to know your challenge. We then want to understand your company, your brand and key messaging. Finally, we want to know and recognise your audience, so we can unlock their potential, for maximum engagement!
We are committed to sustainability, diversity and inclusion in everything we do. Our collective is made up of communication specialists, all having worked in the “live events” sector across an all-embracing range of creative backgrounds, coupled with the highest degree of technical competence, our breadth of experience, unrivalled.
The possibilities are endless...
European Office
We are thrilled to announce we have established our European office in Barcelona, we hope this will not only facilitate our existing customers with the ability to trade with a European limited company and in Euros, but also offer opportunities to new clients.
Having fostered some excellent relationships with European hotels, venues and suppliers, we are partnering with a audio-visual production house based in Bilbao and Barcelona to provide local cost effective & high quality event solutions. We have already established an office and set up Dancing Squirrel Spain a Spanish Limited Company, we will employ locally as well as provide opportunities for staff in the UK to work from Spain as a base when their clients take projects internationally.
Dancing Squirrel are commited to SUSTAINABILITY, DIVERSITY and INCLUSION in everything we do
Environmental
Dancing Squirrel have always believed that creating environmentally sustainable events is not only desirable but essential. The future of our planet is a global priority and sustainability has become a key foundation of that goal. Hybrid and virtual events are now ubiquitous in our industry, which has contributed to a far lower carbon footprint, but more can be done, and we have targeted ourselves to focus our efforts in the following areas;
Renewable fuels
We pledge to use renewable fuels wherever possible and commit to ensuring our office, studio and workshop facility will have a fully renewable energy supply. Our current offices also make use of the latest Solar panel technology.
Greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiency
We pledge to halve our greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 and are pleased to say we are on target to achieve this.
Waste management and recycling processes
From limiting internal printing and then only using recycled and non-bleached paper, to the goal of creating a paperless office, each little step helps. We are also committed to the separation of all waste, including that created at events.
Ethical sourcing
We commit to the standards set out in the Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code where relevant to our organisation. We also commit to using local suppliers where viable.
Social
Diversity and inclusion
One of our founding principles was to create an inclusive workplace, we will continue to monitor the diversity of our workforce and commit to close the gender, disability and ethnicity pay gaps. We have signed up to the Mental Health Charter and have Silver membership, with one qualified mental health first aider and another due to undertake the training.
Impact on local communities
We understand that events can impact local communities, as such we will work towards minimising distribution and if possible, we will leave having created a positive impact. We will continue to engage and support our local community, businesses and charities especially where our skill set can offer real support.
The living wage, working conditions and fairer hours
We are committed to paying all directly employed staff including freelancers, as a minimum, the living wage as defined by the Living Wage Foundation, and we commit to not using zero hour contracts. We give at least two weeks’ notice for shift scheduling and pay for shifts cancelled at less than two weeks’ notice. We will develop clear, fair and transparent policies that support staff wellbeing.
Prompt payment
We are signatories of the government’s Prompt Payment Code, showing a commitment to paying our suppliers promptly.
Commitment to customers
We recognise our commitment to our customers, and we gather and monitor customer feedback.
Governance
Health & safety
We strive to continually develop our approach to health & safety to protect the wellbeing of our employees and freelancers, clients and event delegates. We will increase the training offered to all team members to include not only those required by law but those advised as a standard, and we will continue to develop strategies for pandemic resilience.
Management and company diversity
We actively encourage diversity at key stages of recruitment, selection and retention of employees. In addition to this we have put in place robust measures to prevent harassment or victimisation in the workplace with all staff having access to independent third-party support provided by Mentor Services.
Cybersecurity, data protection and privacy
Dancing Squirrel Limited is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and will continue to ensure that no client sensitive data is stored.
Commitment to paying taxes
We commit to paying our taxes, not engage in tax avoidance, and to be transparent in our relationship with HMRC.
Dancing Squirrel was launched on a dream to help companies better communicate, by embracing the very best of technology and creating a team of the very best people to support this, but at the same time to drive forward a culture of change within our industry.
Three key areas of change;
• The environmental impact of events. We will strive for three core areas; zero waste, 100% renewable energy and carbon emission reduction.
• The growth of our team by supporting both the collective and the individual.
• Mental health and diversity has been overlooked in the creative industries, but we aim to help change this.
Our Team
The reputation of our collective team and the individual members has meant we are fortunate that we have built up a profitable and growing business, with both long term and new clients.
Covid-19
The Covid-19 situation brought many challenges, but for us the focus was on how to deliver high quality content and engaging an audience who are already bored of online meetings, the tweet shown on the right, was from a delegate from one of the events we have supported.
Case Studies
MBDA Business Objective Meeting
We have been working with MBDA on their BOM project for the last 10+ years. It is an annual business meeting for over 230 of their senior executives where they review the year just gone and plan for the future.
Being in Paris (the heart of MBDA), it fell to our venue finding team to source an option that reflected Paris the city, the prestigiousness of the company but also keeping in mind the true purpose of the event.
With the perfect balance found at the Westin Vendome our production team produced a dynamic event, delivering a new & improved keynote format (with content created in house by us), consecutive sessions with multiple speakers and newly introduced team building activities. Topped off with our custom made & branded event App that provided fluid audience feedback, a platform for accompanying documentation for each presentation and note taking capacity.
With the heightened security state world-wide we had to supply some unique equipment here to ensure all event content was delivered securely across multiple networks & frequencies.
In and out in 4 days delivering above client expectations as always..
Manhattan Exchange
Our brief was to organise and manage the annual Manhattan Exchange conference.
The event aimed to bring together their key clients and prospects to explore change in working practices, new initiatives and future plans. We planned an event that would be engaging, inspiring and memorable.
The ideal venue for this EMEA event was The Kosmos in Berlin, as it offered 3,200 sqm of space for the main plenary & eight other event spaces.
We supported the entire event, from physical space through to all breakouts & main plenary sessions, provided all the required AV and lighting plus onsite event management. We also ensured a high level of interaction throughout the day, with surveys that provided immediate feedback to the presenters.
Recognition Awards
Our brief was to help organise our client’s annual Recognition Awards. We planned an event that would be exciting, unforgettable and a change from the normal formal dinner.
Our concept was to create a festival inspired event for 600-800 guests, plenty of space was needed and Knebworth House was ideal for the fairground fantasia we planned. We filled the grounds of Knebworth House with stretch marquees to have shade from the sun whilst having a drink at a container bar, thrilling fairground rides and a big marque that had a dancefloor. Informal street food is the perfect catering choice for a fairground event, and the guests enjoyed fish and chips, candyfloss, sweet van and an immersive food experience.
There was a drinks reception in the courtyard with a String Quartet, shortly after the guests were led to a dinner and awards ceremony. Once that was over the guests let their hair down and explored the fairground experience. Moving later into the evening guests were filling up the dancefloor, the DJ kept everyone dancing for hours and the guests didn’t want it to end.
Lucy Havercroft, MBDA said...
“Thank you so much for everything on this event. I know you had to work through some major challenges outside your control, but the team pulled it off and were excellent as always.
Dancing Squirrel – The Creative Collective
Please give them thanks from myself and the whole team here"
Georgia Leybourne, formerly Manhattan Associates said...
“From a production perspective Manhattan Exchange is quite a large event, we run a main stage environment, numerous breakouts and a full partner pavilion.
We were introduced to the team behind Dancing Squirrel some 14 years ago and we have been with them ever since, their production values are extremely high.
There are a lot of happy moments when we are working with Dancing Squirrel, they have a great ethos in their company, and they work with really fantastic people, individually characters, and when I see them interconnecting seamlessly and the way they work with each other - that’s so powerful.”
“We just wanted to say what an amazing job was done by all to make last night a hugely successful event. We have had positive feedback from so many which is all your doing.
It was a big ask to create this in the time and I know there is a large team involved so please pass on our thanks to all. ”
isla is an independent body founded by events professionals and industry leaders. It is an action-driven network focusing on accelerating the event industry’s transition to a sustainable future.
The Mental Health Charter is a social movement to change the way people think and act about mental health challenges..
Dancing Squirrel is committed to paying the real Living Wage. We ensure all our team including freelance staff can earn a wage which is enough to live on.
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