Delivering the first fully-hybrid Conservative Party Conference

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  • Hosted from Sunday 2nd to Wednesday 5th October 2022
  • Full site let for the event, with 14,000 delegates
  • Secure island-site with attached hotel access for high-profile attendees

The Objective

To deliver the annual Conservative Party Conference (CPC) to engage with all members and to announce policies through key speeches. It was the first fully-hybrid CPC too, broadcasting to audiences online.

The ICC also became the first venue to host two CPC events in the same parliamentary year, hosting both the full-scale event in October and a spring conference in March.

The Results

As well as the traditional key sessions with ministers and MPs, the venue helped deliver more than 300 events streamed to audiences online, in addition to hosting 456 fringe events.

The ICC has upgraded its technological capabilities to help facilitate this, with over £3million invested in its infrastructure following feedback from clients and delegates.

For this specific event, the venue team brought in extra fibreoptic cables to help support the streaming provision, while investing in upgrades to allow Internet Protocol & Network Device Interface video.

Allan Boyle, ICC General Manager, said: “Our technical and production teams were proud to deliver the Conservative Party’s first full-hybrid conference, showing how our facilities can flex with client needs as they change and as the sector evolves.”

Ben Prior, Head of Technical Production, said: “In terms of the technical capability, this has been our busiest conference to date. We brought in extra fibre optic cables to support the huge streaming provision required for the event, which runs over four days. We managed multiple events which require streaming and broadcast abilities, as well as cable support to the media hub.”

Why the ICC?

On why Birmingham, and in particular, the ICC, is crucial to the event, the client said: “The venue itself is a big draw - we love the ICC. It has enough halls and additional space to accommodate everything we need. There’s so much versatility in this venue. The team is fantastic to work with as well – there’s just nothing that they can’t do; they are so flexible and they have worked with us to accommodate everything we need.

“They can always be reached and despite everything they have going on and all the other events throughout the year, they still make us feel special and answer all our requests - no matter how big or small. They are completely focused on our event and are just a great team to work with.

“The ICC has been so supportive and we have been led by their immense experience on putting on great events within their venue. We are looking forward to more successful conferences.”