At Native Events, we believe that the energy, expense and effort that goes into programming and delivering a successful conference should be exceeded by the value participants receive and the positive impact the conference has on evolving the wider system it is part of.
Otherwise we are making inefficient use of the limited resources we have on our living planet, not to mention running the risk of wasting people´s valuable time.
To round off our production cycle in 2024, we had the opportunity to deliver two conferences with very diverse audiences and needs. The first being the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) annual conference, held at the Mount Errigal Hotel in Letterkenny, Donegal. And the second being Sustainable Finance Week Ireland, an international conference inviting leaders, innovators, and changemakers to come together to accelerate sustainable finance and the transition to a net zero economy.
¨Working Together for Nature¨ was the underpinning theme of the NPWS conference, which meant our role was to support employees to connect deeply with their colleagues and with their collective vision for nature. For this reason, buses were arranged to take participants on an outdoor field trip exploring the Donegal area to ensure the conference was authentic to the NPWS´ work. To highlight the incredible projects the NPWS have enacted, 27 key project posters were displayed at the venue, with time given to digest these and connect with colleagues throughout the days.
From the conference programming down to the minor details, including the creation of the ¨Working together for Nature¨ banner, sustainability was embedded in every aspect of the conference. The banner was purposely designed by Nicola (Event Manager, Native Events) to be re-used. This meant logos, dates and locations were kept off the printed design and adapted into digital elements that were displayed on the screens. We’ve held this fabulous banner in our stores, as the NPWS is planning to continue its life in a new interpretative centre in the new year.
The conference provided value to the NPWS through increasing engagement and connection to the organisations’ purpose; allowing time for cross-pollination of ideas across departments; and translating the vision into tangible experiences and action, which embeds vision deeply in an organisation’s culture.
The scale and international reach of Sustainable Finance Week Ireland (SFWI) meant that the value for participants was generated by the high-end production quality of the week-long conference. Organised by the International Sustainable Finance Centre of Excellence and taking place online and in unique venues across Dublin such as the RDS, the Central Bank of Ireland, AIB, An Post, Iveagh House and the Museum of Literature Ireland, expert technical skills and co-ordination was needed to ensure all events were seamlessly integrated.
The programme for SFWI invited international guest speakers to showcase cutting-edge strategies and solutions that integrate sustainability into the financial system. This high-level conference was an excellent opportunity for Native Events to support the evolution of the financial system in transitioning to a just and sustainable economy.
With around 4,500 participants this year learning and sharing on topics such as measuring and disclosing nature data; linking investor returns to impact through outcome bonds; and advancing gender and social equality in sustainable finance, conferences such as this one are essential to shifting an extractive, capitalist economic system to a regenerative circular economy.
Short-term and profit-at-any-cost thinking is undeniably what has led to the climate crisis we find ourselves in, as the last IPCC AR6 Report (2023) found that ¨Human activities… have unequivocally caused global warming…with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy use, land use, land use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, between and within countries, and among individuals¨.
The resilience of societies in countries in the Global North currently rests on the monetary value of their currency and their people´s productivity, which has, for almost a century, been separated by fragmentation and technocratic rational thinking from the ecosystems we are embedded in. This gaping blindspot and avoidance of the interconnectedness of ecological systems with economic or human activity, is the dangerous place we now find ourselves in.
Here at Native Events, we understand the potential a conference has to activate positive change within the wider system it is part of. The long-term lens of sustainability is interwoven into every pragmatic detail from programming and planning right through to facilitation and conference delivery.
If systems activation and positive impact is what you are looking for, speak to one of our team to work with you on your conference in 2025! You can reach us at info@nativeevents.ie or call us directly on +353 (0)83 020 4525.
