Cause UK – 2017 Highlights
It’s been another busy year at Cause UK. We’d like to wish all our friends, who we’ve worked with in the last year a very Happy Christmas, and relaxing break. Here’s to more great things to come in 2018! Check out a few Best Bits from 2017!
A Sir and a Dame…
We began working with The Civic, Barnsley at the start of 2017 to support their ambitious £5m fundraising campaign. This year we’ve engaged with patrons Sir Michael Parkinson, Dame Jenni Murray and poet Ian McMillan to name a few. We also interviewed everyone from ballerinas to Our Dancing Town’s, Steve Elias, in support of Barnsley!
The B-word
Clair led a media call for the world premiere of a Brexit-inspired piano composition at Besbrode Pianos, featuring 28 Steinway pianos. A live debate on what Brexit means to the Leeds region was broadcast on the Yorkshire Post social media pages with deputy business editor, Greg Wright, Natalie Sykes from the IoD, and Labour councillor, Neil Walshaw. It also featured on the BBC Music classical website, Pianist magazine and BBC radio.
Egg-static
Clair began work on a new ITV advert for James Potter eggs, after providing PR support the previous year for their ethical eggs, including helping land a Yorkshire Air Ambulance near their farm for a media call with a difference! We also wrote a series of bespoke features for the family-firm for magazines and regional press.
Relight My Fire
2017 featured the charity album launch of Hidden Wounds, working with Grammy award-winning songwriter, Eliot Kennedy, with singer Joanne Heselden-Edwards.
It built on the success of the charity concert, Hidden Wounds – one of our biggest fundraising challenges to date. Cause UK did everything from event management, to ticket sales, marketing, sponsors and PR, helping raise £65k for Help for Heroes. The concert featured a star-turn from Gary Barlow, a video message of support from Bear Grylls and tweets from Kensington Palace. The story featured on ITV, BBC, Psychologies magazine, and Forces TV. We continue to work on exciting charity music events with Eliot…watch this space!
Festival Fever
We continued to support client, Harrogate International Festivals, as the exuberant Oz Clarke appeared on BBC Radio Four’s Saturday Live to help promote his appearance. The annual crime wave was as epic as ever. We were thrilled to get the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in a wealth of media including the Guardian, Waitrose magazine, Daily Record, Express, LA Times, Mail on Sunday, The Radio Times and Independent, as well as welcoming Sky News, BBC Radio 4, 5, and documentary makers from BBC Inside Out and regional BBC broadcast news. It was picked by Harper’s Bazaar as a top literary festival. Music also featured in BBC Music Magazine, and as a classical pick in the Guardian festival guide.
The festival reported that in 2017 it was featured in over 1200 pieces of press and garnered a print press value of over £5.3 million, with online and audience reach in the millions.
Bear Grylls to the rescue…
Clair worked with the Archbishop of York’s Youth Trust to provide strategic and operational support to expand its leadership programme in schools across the North, achieving targeted coverage in TES, alongside regional media, and organising a Christmas Gala at Swinton Estates in aid of the Youth Trust, with celebrity support from Head Scout, Bear Grylls.
Outstanding Beauty…
We’re not talking the Cause UK sisters, but Nidderdale’s Area of Outstanding Beauty. We have loved working with the Upper Nidderdale Landscape Partnership and recently began work on the AONB’s The Wild Watch citizen science project. We’ve helped organise a press trip for the Financial Times to feature the Nidderdale Way, liaised with BBC Countryfile for programme ideas next year, and have an exciting PR campaign planned for The Wild Watch with some famous faces from BBC Springwatch for 2018!
A Hack-a-What?
Clair put her supreme event management skills to the test once more, 
with an epic Hackathon (a codefest) hosted over a long weekend in London, working with Railsbank, a Fintech company in London. The event attracted 120 registrations; 75 people took part over 48 hours. #OpenBankhack17 attracted hackers from Brazil, Italy, France, Latvia, India and from across the UK, plus entrants from the University of Hertfordshire and University of Coventry. Clair was also tasked with attracting more women who code, and invited a former NASA engineer, Gen Ashley, to judge the category for best female hacker.
It Has to be Harrogate
We welcomed a new client, Visit Harrogate – the official destination management organisation for the Harrogate District, hitting the headlines with a story on the Top 50 British retail centres, and taking Harrogate around the world with a destination feature in JetWings in-flight magazine.
A Gorge-ous View!
Cause UK got a head for heights hosting the media launch of a spectacular new glass floor at How Stean Gorge for Visit Harrogate.
We secured filming by BBC Look North and the Press Association, whose cameraman braved the via ferrata – a high wire course of cables. Stray FM brought a drone, and BBC Radio York broadcast live from the venue for their Breakfast Show.
As well as a busy broadcast schedule, we helped secure coverage in the Sun, the Telegraph, the Guardian, Yorkshire Post, Northern Echo, Darlington and Stockton Times, York Press, and BBC Online. The PA film went to major online sites, including AOL and BT.com.
Best for Books
The Festival work continued into autumn with the Raworths Harrogate Literature Festival. Ticket sales were up by 20% on last year’s Festival as a stellar line-up of names from the world of politics, stage and screen descended on the Crown Hotel, including Baroness Joan Bakewell and Victoria Hislop.
Cause UK set up a feature in the Sunday Times with Festival author, Amanda Owen. Other media coverage included the Daily Express, the i newspaper and Daily Mirror, History of War magazine, and Psychologies online. Ann put her feature writing skills into action, interviewing Dame Jenni Murray for the York Press, Yorkshire Living and Yorkshire Life magazine, and Denise Welch for the Northern Echo and Yorkshire Post.
This year, we helped secure a media partnership with BBC Radio York, who broadcast live from the event. Psychologies magazine editor, Suzy Greaves, did a Facebook Live film on the popular Psychologies page with authors Jem Lester and Keith Stuart.
What the Dickens!
And finally, to end on a festive note, the Malton Dickensian Festival, organised by Clair, returned this December with a movie star, a Big Sing, theatrical shenanigans, and an exclusive screening of a Christmas blockbuster, The Man Who Invented Christmas. Clair established the Malton Dickensian Festival as an arts and education charity, with patron Selina Scott and the late Stephen Joll in 2015. BAFTA winning actress, Miriam Margolyes, the much loved star of screen and stage, best known for her role as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter movies, will be in Malton this weekend. We can’t wait to see her.
As Tiny Tim said in A Christmas Carol, God bless Us, Every One!
Onwards 2018!