DanellsandBewleyConsultants

Discover Tai Chi

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 07:14:54 -0800

Working alongside Rich Sutcliffe and Agency for Good we have been working with Discover Tai Chi to secure coverage for the business, which uses new evidence-based approach and teaching methods to deliver wellness and wellbeing workshops and online sessions.

Our aim was to position Phil and Helen as experts in their field and we were aiming to secure coverage in local, business, HR, health professionals & wellbeing media, with Phil and Helen identifying a number of key publications they wanted to reach.

Phil’s story is a powerful one: he lost his leg in an accident and has used Tai Chi to help him cope with the emotional and mental health impact of life changing trauma and is now working to support others reduce their feelings of anxiety, frustration and depression.

Being outdoors and having a connection with nature played an important part in his recovery, as Phil explained to me when we were pulling the campaign together

“Green spaces, even a view out of a window onto a garden area, can help people cope and manage better. I often encourage people who take part in our classes and workshops to see if they can find a little private space, a garden if they have one, where they can practise their tai chi form outside.

The lockdown rules still allow people to exercise outdoors and so finding a quiet corner in a park to practice is an ideal way of combining the benefits of nature and Tai Chi.”

Over a 3-month campaign from November 2020 we have been delighted to have success with both pitches and press releases written and distributed for Phil and Helen from Discover Tai Chi.

Take up of their story has been positive and we were particularly pleased to secure coverage in Happiful magazine – one of the target national publications for the campaign.

Now in the latter part of the campaign, as the UK is once again in lockdown, we are now focussing on workplace wellbeing and how tai chi can have a direct impact on...Read More

Schools Out Digital Comms Campaign

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 06:19:23 -0800

Working in collaboration with Agency for Good we support a number of social enterprises, charities and not for profit organisations, with a wide range of marketing services.

One of these is Kirklees Youth Alliance (KYA) who work to provide a strong collaborative community youth sector providing high quality youth work across Kirklees, Yorkshire.

The coronavirus pandemic meant that KYA’s summer ‘Healthy Holidays’ project, activities to help children keep active and entertained during the school summer holidays, had to look a little different; instead of the usual clubs based in buildings, their ‘School’s Out’ programme had to be delivered gone on-line.

Every day of the week new activity videos were posted, one for primary and one for secondary ages, including cookery workshops, fitness sessions, creative challenges from LBT, art classes and music sessions.

In addition to the online activities the team delivered over 1000 packs to those families needing additional support due to Covid-19. These included family cooking and growing packs with ingredients for the online cooking sessions as well as seed growing kits put together by Juniper Foodwise and Grow to School with support from the Council’s FINE team. They also distributed KAL Activity Packs and Art Packs produced by the Children’s Art School.

To kick the project off we planned and executed a short campaign of 4 emails to launch the project to key stakeholders, such as youth workers, schools etc.

We also assisted with PR writing and distributing of media releases to secure coverage locally.

Our main role, though, was to plan and deliver a vibrant social media campaign to support the delivery of the ‘Schools Out’ project online. This included collating information about each activity, writing, scheduling and posting content including 7 posts, per age group, over a week for each of the 4 platforms for 7 weeks,...Read More

Keighley Creative Digital Campaign

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 05:55:59 -0800

Keighley Creative is a volunteer-led arts organisation, providing exciting projects and fun activities for their local community in the heart of West Yorkshire.

We worked with the Keighley Creative team, in collaboration with Agency for Good and Out of Place Studio as they launched a new website, re-branding and an exciting on-line project.

During the pandemic, Keighley Creative needed to find new ways to work with their creative communities, whilst keeping everyone safe. They knew they needed to work digitally and non-digitally during Covid 19, and so The Drawing Box Project was born!

Funded by Arts Council England the project involved 500 drawing boxes with sketch books, pens, pencils and other art equipment being distributed to residents, workers and artists of Keighley. Twice weekly online challenges and downloadable worksheets were posted, and people invited to share their work across a number of social media platforms.

Our role was to support the Keighley Creative team, Gemma and Naseem, helping them to plan and explore how best to use a number of different digital media to bring the project to local residents and artists.

Working with closely with Out of Place Studio we also assisted with writing copy for the new website which was launched at the beginning of the summer.

The next stage was to take the Keighley Creative marketing strategy and comms guide, and support Gemma and Naseem with a plan their content for the Drawing box project. It was also important that they were both comfortable with posting content and engage directly on their different platforms, and we were able to offer training sessions in planning,...Read More

Hope Park digital campaign

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 05:30:35 -0800

Working in collaboration with Agency for Good we support a number of social enterprises, charities and not for profit organisations, with specialist knowledge of marketing and a wide range of skills and practical support.

One such organisation is Hope Park Workspaces, the only flexible workspace provider that reinvests all of its profits to charitable works.

Based in Bradford Hope Park partners with the national charity Transforming Lives for Good (TLG) to support struggling children and their families and during 2020 wanted to raise its profile and highlight this element of its activities.

6 Week social/PR/Email campaign

We worked up a tactical plan to deliver a campaign that focused on Hope Park’s key businesses objectives and sought to keep stakeholders engaged with and informed about the ‘Hope for…’ projects. Our key objective was to engage with stakeholders across a number of digital platforms as well as to secure coverage in local and regional media about Hope Park and the work they do with TGL.

The six-week campaign included social media management: writing, scheduling and posting content in line with key messaging and is strategic, consistent and creative. Alongside this we planned and executed a short campaign of 4 emails to specific target audiences, which also involved writing short case studies around Hope Park residents.

A short media campaign included 4 media releases to secure coverage across traditional print, broadcast media and digital channels. This resulted in Hope Park being featured on BBC Radio Leeds and in several local publications.

Rich Sutcliffe from Agency for Good says “Amanda was our lead on this project to help Hope Park Workspace raise awareness of their work. As the Covid-19 crisis unfolded she worked closely with the Hope Park team to adapt the campaign we had originally worked up early in 2019.

We were...Read More

Discovering Hidden Ilkley

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 09:35:56 -0800

The Ilkley BID is a business-led and business funded body, that aims to deliver a brighter future for Ilkley by helping businesses to flourish, attracting visitors and ensuring that the town prospers by working together.

Ilkley is nestled on the edge of the moor made famous in the song 'On Ilkley Moor Baht'at'. Originally a spa town this popular tourist destination it has a bustling, busy high street, known as The Grove, with lots of independent shops, restaurants and the famous Betty’s Tea Rooms.

We were commissioned to write up a series of six case studies to support the BID’s Hidden Ilkley campaign which aimed to build awareness of the town’s often ‘hidden’ business and how they support the local economy.

The resulting interviews featured some of the fascinating businesses, including yarn suppliers to the international fashion world and classic car specialists, talking about their business’ history and links with Ilkley.

Helen Rhodes, Ilkley BID Manager explains “The BID’s work is often focussed on supporting retail and hospitality businesses, but we actually support and work with diverse range of businesses in the area.

With the Hidden Ilkley campaign, we wanted a set of case studies that would really help the general public understand the very varied range of businesses that are based in Ilkley, their history and the role they play in our local economy.

Having worked with Danells and Bewley since the summer of 2019 I knew that Amanda would be able to tell the story of these Hidden Businesses in an interesting, informative way. I was confident that she would quickly understand where the story lay with each individual company and be able to capture the tone and style, we use across all our communications. We are really happy with the series of case studies that she has written that that our team can now use...Read More

ATCRE National Conference

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 09:23:37 -0800

The Association of Teachers of Catholic Religious Education (ACTRE) serves those teaching RE in Catholic schools by providing high quality professional development and numerous opportunities for networking and collaboration.

ATCRE approached Danells and Bewley in September 2019 to support them with a conference exhibition at their national conference due to take place February 2020 at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.

We put together a package of exhibition and advertising aimed to add to the whole delegate experience and bring revenue to the event. The aim was to build a portfolio of exhibitors and advertisers, securing sales of exhibition places and conference programme advertising. In addition to this we also dealt with the management of conference programme production.

Matthew Dell, Chair of ATCRE explains how D&B’s support was key to this event “In preparation for our first conference we are floundering, but once Amanda was on onboard, we were able, with her support, to deliver a professional conference.

As volunteers, our organisation benefited from the experience Amanda and her team were able to give us. Through Amanda, we were able to complete fill all our stall holder slots. This was significant as this brought in much needed revenue. We encountered a number of unforeseen problems that Amanda was able to help us with.

We are very grateful for working with Danells and Bewley Consultants. We highly recommend them.”

The ATCRE event is just one of the conferences D&B have supported within the RE and education sector. These events are and ideal platform for organisations to showcase resources or products within their sector and over the years we have built a wealth of experience in both event management and conference sales.

If you are looking to build revenue, and maximise coverage for your next event, why not have a chat with Amanda and see how we can work together on your next conference event?

Celebrating social enterprises

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 09:05:25 -0800

SEHY supports existing and developing social enterprises in the Yorkshire and Humberside area, who are driven to tackle important social and environmental issues. As well as promoting and raise awareness of the sector SEHY supports existing and developing social enterprises: helping organisations be a force for good, tackling social problems, improving people's life chances and helping the environment.

The Annual SEYH Awards recognise and celebrate these organisations and showcase the breath of work being done in the social enterprise sector in the region.

In early 2020 SEYH contacted D&B to assist with promoting the event in March at the Corn Exchange in Leeds.

We were tasked with raising awareness of the awards, finalists and social enterprises in the region, planning a short PR campaign including creating media packs and the writing and distribution of press releases.

We also created resources to assist with ‘ask’ for goodie bags for event. On the night of the awards, we supported the SEYH team, liaising with the official photographer and with Dexter Media to secure to camera interviews for broadcast.

Ali Ward, SEYH’s General Manager, explains “Amanda was amazing, she brought so much more to the table than I expected. She kept me calm when I was stressing, she wrote templates that I could use and adapt, and she was invaluable.

Amanda went above and beyond what was required as on the day, she rolled up her sleeves and was brilliant!

The event was a massive success, and I would definitely recommend Amanda in the future."

Need some help with event management? Give Amanda a call on 077 177 57 381 to see how we could work together.

Collaboration promotes postive change

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 08:57:19 -0800

Working in partnership and collaboration between charities and businesses is something I have been passionate about for years.

As a fundraiser, for many years I know that for charities building relationships with companies can not only lead to increased revenue, but also boost volunteering and offer expert professional support. For businesses these partnerships can bring benefits such as building brand value, reputation or more engaged communities.

Closer to home collaboration has bought a host of new projects to the D&B office as we have worked alongside Rich Sutcliffe and Agency for Good.

Rich is all about helping others who need it the most and helping those who are needing trusted advice but don’t have a lot of funds. Our shared values and passion for giving organisations creative, workable solutions to deliver more impact in their communities and to society as a whole, means that we can do something worthwhile together.

Rich says “We have worked on numerous projects together for our charity and social enterprise customers and will be working together on lots more in the future. Amanda brings a wealth of experience along with creativity and enthusiasm and is one of our key partners in helping our customers tell their stories. This ultimately helps them to help lots more people and promote positive change.”

Want to find out more about how we could work together? Why not give me a call on 077 177 57 381?

Amanda Danells-Bewley

Comms Support for UVAC

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 08:44:30 -0800

Comms Support for UVAC

A not-for-profit membership body, University Vocational Awards Council (UVAC) represents and supports higher education providers who deliver high level technical and professional learning programmes including higher and degree apprenticeship.

We began working with UVAC in early 2019 to support them with their communications marketing, social media and digital campaigns. During that time, we have also worked alongside the team to build and launch a website for their new Centre for Degree Apprenticeships, and assisted in marketing and managing communications at their 2019 conference.

Mandy Crawford-Lee, Director of Policy and Operations at UVAC, explains the impact of D&B's work on UVAC’s communications;

“Working with Danells-Bewley has revolutionised our approach and the speed by which we can promote the achievements we make on behalf our members. Amanda quickly understood and interpreted rightly our organisational needs and has supported our wider and more effective use of Twitter, web and other social media platforms, giving lift to old and new content and doubling down on our user experiences.

Amanda was also instrumental in giving sound advice around the creation and functionality of a new website as part of a launch of a self-funded research and think-tank network convened and managed by UVAC and supported the planning, development and running of our national conference. She was an invaluable and crucial part of our 'team'; without her we would not have achieved the creativity needed to promote the benefits of what we do."

If your organisation is looking to strengthen your communications with your stakeholders, including members, donors or volunteers, then we would love to have a chat about how we could work to support you.

Writing for Everyone

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 03:31:31 -0700

It’s not often that we put actual pen to paper but many of us write everyday: reports, creative briefs, blogs, social media posts or emails to colleagues. The rise of digital communications, websites, social media, white papers, means that we are all writers in some capacity.

I recently delivered a training session ‘Writing for Everyone’ presentation which aimed to help a city based not-for-profit organisation give all their team members confidence in writing. There were lots of different levels of experience and abilities in the room but it was great to see everyone working together to complete the tasks, designed to get them thinking about their writing. Here are the 6 quick take aways from that session:

Who are you talking to?

Marketers and fundraisers are experts in knowing their audiences but when it comes to writing up evaluations, reports or testimonials, how many of us actually think about who is going to be reading our content?

Take a moment to consider about all the different people you might communicate with in your organisations, both internally and externally, I bet its quite a few.

You’ll need to tailor your writing to each different audience adapting sentence length and your use of jargon or specialist language. You may want to have a look at the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests which indicate how difficult a passage is to understand, and look at word and sentence length. If you have a tendency to write long, complicated copy it’s a very valuable tool to make your content more accessible.

If writing for a specific audience isn’t something you are familiar with try this trick I was taught by a BBC producer: imagine you are talking to someone specific, maybe your nan, or kids, I always imagine it’s my brother!

What platform are you writing for?

It seems pretty obvious but writing digital content is very different from producing a research paper or...Read More