See below some signposting, and ideas from our members

VisitBritain Business Events Legacy and Impact Toolkit

Destination management organisations and professional conference organisers are having to expand their expertise to demonstrate the wider value and influence in hosting successful business events. Whilst being a vital contributor to the visitor economy and regional sector growth; it is now becoming increasingly important for PCOs/DMOs/CVBs to demonstrate the importance of these events to wider communities and stakeholders, whilst minimising the impact on the environment.

Alongside this, our leading event venues are increasingly highlighting the wider impact and leadership they have on their communities and city business ecosystems across their annual CSR reporting.

This new toolkit and guide, written by VisitBritain in partnership with #MEET4IMPACT, is designed to support PCOs/DMOs/CVBs and large event venues to agree, plan and create the greatest possible impact through business events working in collaboration with their clients.

Download this toolkit to grow knowledge and understanding of legacy programmes for events, identify legacy opportunities, and understand the pathway for developing legacy projects.

Invisible Cities Walking Tours

Invisible Cities is a social enterprise that trains people who have experienced homelessness to become walking tour guides of their own city.  

They offer alternative tours to locals and tourists.

ABPCO used them at the Festival of Learning in Glasgow - please find out more about them here

Updates from the Impact and Legacy Taskforce

Before Christmas (2024), the Impact and Legacy Taskforce came together to discuss what these concepts mean for us and how we can collectively contribute. Our goal is to create a quick-reference “cheat sheet” that provides pointers on what fellow members have been working on or are currently exploring.

As a taskforce, we’ve agreed to meet quarterly to share ideas and insights with you. If anything on the cheat sheet sparks your interest or if you’d like more information, please don’t hesitate to reach out—we’ll happily connect you to the right person.

Thank you for your engagement and support!

Cambridge:

Meet Up & Make A Difference

A positive impact campaign to raise funds and supplies for those in need in Cambridge. Initiatives include:

• Pass on the pastries (pass on the cost of arrival pastries to a local charity)
• Foodbank Collection
• Add a Fourth Course – For anyone hosting a lunch or a dinner, the opportunity to add a 'fourth course' to the menu card by way of a QR code to encourage delegates to make a donation a local charity.

We’ve also included downloadable logos & copy for event professionals to use to highlight what they’re doing to their attendees

CSR & Volunteering Activities

This is a page from within our Sustainable Events Toolkit. It gives event planners ideas on things they can do to leave a positive impact such as volunteering, planting trees, offering funded or discounted conference places to local charities and students etc

Meet Cambridge Client Event: Shaping Sustainable Events

Marina Bradford, Putting People at the Centre of Sustainable Events (00:7:36)

Marina talks about leaving a brain print rather than a footprint (https://youtu.be/1vlern-wlPA?si=1CNilVZv5gad3K4c)

Mosaic Events

As part of our BritSpine Conference we delivered a Back Health Day in Glasgow for the general public to benefit from.  This was a partnership between UKSSB, Mosaic Events, Glasgow Convention Bureau and Versus Arthritis who worked together to create an event which meaningfully engaged with the public in the city centre, with the interactive programme for the day divided into information provision, physical activity taster sessions, workplace health demonstrations and ‘myth-busting’ mini-Q&A sessions with a spinal health expert.

Local charity Versus Arthritis were fundamental in delivering the day, with their staff and volunteers leading sessions, creating materials and follow up opportunities.   Glasgow Convention Bureau provided local promotional support, arranged a representative of the Lord Provost of Glasgow to attend and captured images and videography of the event in action.  The team engaged with 55 members of the public, while also giving people the opportunity to sign up via QR code for further information and advice.

Having rejuvenated a public engagement event as part of the BritSpine programme, the conference has incorporated this into planning future conferences including our forthcoming event in Manchester in March 2025, therefore continuing this legacy and impacting citizens in other UK cities.

Manchester Central

My name is Jemima, and I am an Account Manager at Manchester Central looking after Associations and the Public Sector. I'm just beginning my journey exploring Legacy and Impact, and there's so much more for me to learn. I'm eager to speak with others who share the same passion for driving positive change through our events.

Manchester Central Convention Centre are passionate about the value of live events and their ability to create positive impact and lasting legacies, economically, socially and environmentally.  

We’re here to support your legacy objectives; ensuring the success of your event in Manchester and the lasting positive impact it has on your audiences, your industry, and locally in your host city, Manchester. 

We can facilitate connections and outreach into the local business and academic community, share event best practice and help you to create a memorable experience for all your stakeholders.  

We are now working hard as a venue to ensure we’re considering our impact, environmentally, socially and economically, whilst exploring ways of sustainably improving every step of the way, through detailed measurement and reporting.  

TFI Lodestar

• Meet4Impact are trying to launch an app to help tracking the legacy projects and provide a way to measure their impact 
• Recently we supported the legacy programme of another society, offering Year 7, 8 and 9 school pupils taster sessions in robotics at their schools in the months prior to the congress, providing a significant amount of equipment (sponsored by OK:do Technology Ltd) and giving opportunities for students to attend the event afterwards and participate in a robotic challenge – all helping promote the world of robotics and automation to future generations. We also teamed up with London & Partners to run a ‘give a hand’ workshop, where students built robotic hands to send to children in disadvantaged countries.
• A satellite event held in the city centre of Krakow, entitled ‘Science and Art’, with the objective of illustrating advances in biotechnology through paintings, sculpture and drama. Staffed entirely by local university students throughout the duration of the conference, this event attracted significant publicity and interest from the local community at very little cost. The objective was to promote science amongst the population and younger generations.

AUGIS:

AUGIS Legacy Project

The Association launched this initiative in 2024, and the inaugural event took place at the ASM in Manchester this September. We recognised that Upper GI surgery, and indeed Medicine as a whole, often remains a career that is simply not considered by large parts of society and our local communities. Many schools do not have the expertise or confidence to prepare students for medical school applications and the Legacy Project aims to improve this for communities across the country.

We approached local educational authorities to help us reach out to local schools who have low numbers of students applying to medical school or from deprived areas. These schools have bright, enthusiastic and committed students but they don't always have the experience in preparing their children for medical school applications.

We then prepared a programme of events to partner sixth form students with junior surgeons, medical students and surgeons to help them learn about a course and a career in Medicine. Key to the programme was a combination of teaching methods, from lectures to group-work and of course the opportunity to learn new practical basic surgical skills. We also paired teachers with experts in widening access to Medicine from local universities; whilst it is valuable to teach students themselves, we understood that to leave a genuine and sustained legacy, we should teach the teachers and provide long term expertise and resource so that multiple future generations of sixth-form students can benefit from the teaching and experience from a single iteration of the Project. Finally, students then had the chance to attend the first day of our ASM and see first-hand the innovation and inspiring talks delivered by our increasingly diverse and committed surgical teams.

The feedback from students, teachers, parents and Faculty was incredible and extremely rewarding and we are now planning to expand the Project nationally