Fairs, Festivals & Biennales
StART art fair
Since launching in 2014 , StART art fair has helped springboard the careers of a wealth of exciting young talent and is now arguably the most international of contemporary art fairs.
With galleries and creatives from every continent, the event is widely known for showcasing tomorrow’s international stars. The fair acts as a snapshot of new art from around the world in an intimately sized venue - Saatchi Gallery, on London’s King’s Road - with the aim of helping critics and collectors navigate the ever-growing geographical expansion of the art world.
Running annually during ‘Frieze Week’, we promoted the 2021 and 2022 fairs.
Saudi Arabia Pavilion
Theresa was appointed to manage the global communications campaign for Zahrah al Ghamdi’s installation “After Illusion”. Working closely with the client MiSK, the brand identity team at Prophet and the Risk Management team at Mullen Lowe Salt, we generated press material, collaborated on event ideation and management and manned the event on the ground.
The Pavilion was extremely well received, garnering praise from international critics and curators, notably The British Museum and the Kochi Biennale.
Brompton Design District
Since 2006, Brompton’s cluster of iconic design retailers and global brands have joined forces with local cultural institutions - including the Royal College of Art and the V&A - to foster a space where new design can flourish. Thought-provoking exhibitions by both emerging and renowned designers quickly established the District’s position as a seedbed for some of the world’s most exciting and free-thinking designers.
We handled press for Brompton Design District in its 10th anniversary year (2016) and again in 2017, covering events, installations and talks at over 20 venues, with the overriding brief to promote South Kensington as a design destination. Our work included making brand partnerships to both increase audiences for and help raise the profile of the events.
London Festival of Architecture
Theresa Simon & Partners launched the inaugural London Architecture Biennale, a ten-day celebration of London’s architecture and built environment initiated by architecture marketing company Wordsearch in 2004. Following the success of the PR campaign, TSP was retained to promote the next two iterations of the event, working to help its scope grow and to widen its audience.
In 2008, the Biennale became The London Festival of Architecture, which has now become the world’s largest annual architecture festival, attracting a vast public audience – well over 800,000 people in 2019 – and a global media audience of millions.
Our brief was to:
Achieve press coverage across a broad spectrum of consumer media, architecture and design press
Co-ordinate key messages, ensuring the event was represented correctly by stakeholders, event organisers and in the media
Drive visitors to the 200 plus events over the festival period
Create a strong profile for the event so that it could attract future funding, becoming a regular event in the international and national architecture calendar
Activity
We identified key messages, stories and spokespeople in consultation with the client and co-ordinated individual event organisers’ press activity, managing brand usage
We organised press launches with key spokespeople
We created press material and placed features on key events and themes
We promoted and managed media interest in the inaugural cattle drive down St John’s Street and the 2006 sheep drive across the Millennium Bridge, with spokespeople including world famous architect Renzo Piano
We worked closely with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Arts Council England’s press offices to coordinate publicity
We negotiated and managed partnerships and advertising campaigns with: BBC London, Evening Standard, Architects’ Journal, Building Design magazine, Blueprint, Icon, RIBA Journal, MyHotel and The Zetter hotel.
Outcomes
In 2006, 75,000 people attended events over ten days
Over 6,000 tickets sold
Print reach: 37m+ Broadcast reach:10m+
Double page features in The Guardian, The Independent and The Times; Time magazine; Reuters TV, ITV London, BBC1, BBC4, BBC London, BBC Radio 2,3 & 4, LBC.
In 2008, the visitor numbers increased to 1.5million.
Coverage Highlights