Happy Monday everyone! And welcome to February's Brand Spotlight! We thought we'd set you up for a great week by sharing our interview with the lovely Karen and Gemma of Little Atom Productions. Little Atom are based in our very own Liverpool and are in the business of creating wonderful and exciting events for their clients. We love these two inspiring ladies so we couldn't wait to find out more about the great brand they're creating...
Hi Ladies! Tell us a bit about Little Atom...//
Little Atom Productions is a creative event management company that will be 3 years old this Spring. We deliver memorable events for clients across the creative, charity and corporate sectors across the UK and we also produce our own commercial live music and spoken word events, including the Liverpool In Conversation series.
What inspired you to go it alone?//
We’d been working together since 2009, initially putting on a number of cabaret events in our spare time, it was really just a way to create the kind of nights out we and our friends wanted to attend. In 2010 we realised that our combined skills (Gemma’s background in theatre design and hospitality and Karen’s in film festivals, cultural event production and programming) would be ideal for forming our own creative event management company.
We held a launch event in September 2011 to let the city know we were in business, but we were also both in full time jobs, working all night and at weekends and using our holiday time to deliver events! In May 2012 we were working on events that were too big to manage in our spare time so we decided to take the plunge and manage the business full time.
Sounds great! How have you found the journey of launching your own business?//
We’ve faced all the challenges and ups and downs that any new business faces, but we’ve had so much fun. As soon as we went full time we wondered how we ever did it over evenings and weekends but we found it the best way to build our business, laying some foundations before we gave up our jobs. We were both very lucky in that our former employers both knew about Little Atom and were extremely supportive, they even came to our launch event.
We have very high standards where event production is involved and have been commended for the ‘personal touch’ that our customers and clients experience when they work with us or attend our events. Coming from backgrounds where customer service and audience experience is paramount, it was important to us that this translated over to Little Atom. If you look at our website, you’ll see that our brand identity features us, because we put everything we've got into our events and want everyone to enjoy the experience as much as we do.
Tell us more about the In Conversation Series, how did it come about?//
In 2009 we interviewed our friend, author and music journalist Paul Du Noyer (former editor of Q and founding editor of Mojo magazine) about his life and career. We were huge fans of his book ‘Liverpool Wondrous Place’ which features a list of his 100 favouriteLiverpool songs. As we knew and were working with a number of local musicians at the time, we asked if he would choose 5 songs from the list to be performed on the night. The event took place in the Hope Street hotel to an audience of 70 friends, local musicians and people who had seen the small amount of marketing we had done!
Not long afterwards we were approached by Liverpool Cathedral who had heard about the event and asked if we’d put on a couple of similar events there. It was a huge jump, size, tech and audience-wise, but who wouldn’t want to produce an event in such a magnificent building? In Conversation with Janice Long and In Conversation with Mike McCartneytook place in early 2010, and keeping the same format that featured their five favourite songs, we knew we were onto something special. Later that year we moved to the Concert Room at St. George’s Hall, which is now the home of the series.
We’ve since interviewed Ian St John, David Morrissey, Peter Serafinowicz, Paul McGann, Stephen Graham and Lynda La Plante, and have upcoming events with Jamie Carragher and Lord Michael Heseltine later this year. These are all people who are from or have a special relationship with the city, and our musicians are all local or have a Liverpoolconnection. We are passionate about the city and its talent and we work with a fantastic local crew and give work experience to students, both backstage and on our filming team.
We’ve been in talks about developing the series in Manchester and New York and have also had discussions about commissioning so it’s exciting times! One of our long term goals is to make the series available digitally for download and streaming so we have a lot of work to do.
What are the main differences between creating an event where you are essentially the client and bringing together an event for someone else? Do you enjoy the challenge?//
In a way, it’s harder when we are the client because it’s easy to get completely carried away and excited by the endless possibilities our commercial events have! We like to give ourselves at least a 3-month lead time to produce an actual In Conversation event, but issues regarding the development of the series as a whole are constantly ongoing and require a lot of attention. The growth and popularity of the series came about so quickly and organically that we have to be strict with ourselves about how much time we spend working on the series vs time producing client events. Although we know how much time and money we can spend on the series, when a new piece of equipment comes out that would make our AV more spectacular or an amazing guest is suddenly interested, we sometimes need to restrategise in order to make it happen.
Working with a client is much more structured, with set timelines and budgets. We love going into our first client meetings and working with them to get right to the heart of what it is that they need. We’re both from very visual and creative backgrounds so we treat the client journey as a story and we script the event to the finest detail. It can sometimes be a challenge because we’ll come up with concepts that the client has never even considered, but it’s a challenge we love! We believe very strongly in only ever doing what’s right for the client and what makes sense as part of their ‘story’ (using stilt walkers and fire-breathers just for the sake of spectacle has never been our style!) so we’ve been delighted that our events have always been well received and we’ve had some great testimonials.
And finally, how do potential clients get in touch?//
Thanks so much to Karen & Gemma for taking the time to talk to us, much appreciated ladies! We can't wait to see what Little Atom have got up their sleeves!
Svea & James xo
