14 Academic Venues

Jacqui Kavanagh will be a judge for the inaugural Academic Venue Awards, held at The Great Hall, Queen Mary University, London, on 22 November 2017.

Jacqui Kavanagh, CEO of venue finders Trinity Event Solutions gives her view of working with academic venues

cademic venues by their very appearance portray a feeling of seriousness and importance; they offer the perfect setting for content that needs to be delivered in the surroundings of a seat of learning where great innovations, inventions and achievements have taken place. An academic venue can add weight to any event if planned well and orchestrated with care and diligence to the delegate experience. Academic venues have amazing sporting facilities – which could be a major consideration for a particular audience or event, or they could even help shape the event content. They also offer lots of parking and have good links to public transport. The meetings rooms are varied and plentiful, and always have good AV built in, so they lend themselves well to presentations of a serious nature such as in a medical or technical industry. While they offer a lot of positives to the delegate experience, there

is also the challenge of satisfying the more contemporary expectations of the modern day delegate who may not feel like roughing it in students’ quarters or competing with rag week in the bar during the very little down time the typical conference gives to their delegates. There is also the challenge of availability; events are not their core business so the venue could only be available during the students’ holiday periods. This in turn can mean that the facilities are in use all the time and therefore leaves little time for upkeep and renovation; many academic venues are not well maintained and look a little tired so they may not be ideal for a discerning corporate audience more accustomed to a 4-star hotel. The venues that get it right take

these challenges on board and manage the experience from start to finish, from excellent detail in the joining instructions, to planning the delegate experience from arrival right through to departure. This is where a real expert venue planner comes into their own marrying the mix of expectations, group dynamics and communication; getting buy-in from internal stakeholders is just as important as working with the client and thus providing an appearance of seamless professionalism from start to finish. The academic venues that get it right are a joy to work with and they get to reap many rewards, but for those whose role is a daily battle it’ s just a chore which rarely gives either party involved a very worthwhile experience.