NHS Pacesetters

Pacesetters is a partnership between local communities, the NHS and the Department of Health. The aim of the Pacesetter programme is to deliver equality and diversity improvements and innovations across the health service. Keystone delivered 3 low production value, content driven events for the Pacesetter Programme in 2008; the first on Community Engagement, the second on Diversity. The third, Setting the Pace, celebrated the achievements of the West Midlands’ Pacesetters programme and was a mix of facilitated presentations, interviews and discussions, a poetry workshop and, to finish the day an award ceremony and celebration.

We were responsible for complete delivery of the event including design and production of a conference website and complete delegate management. We were also responsible for content development and provided Steve Day – Radio 4 presenter, and deaf stand-up comedian, to facilitate; he drew on his experience of ‘being a deaf man in a hearing world’ to engage with delegates. We also contracted Birmingham Poet Laureate, Richard Grant, who led an interactive session on diversity, talking about his experiences of ‘cultural confusion’, growing up as mixed race and worked with delegates to create a communal poem centred round diversity issues.

The event finished with an award ceremony, recognising achievement, with “balloon bombs” floating down from the ceiling to the accompaniment of steel band music to emphasise the celebratory nature of the day. This was a low production, low budget event, but our client had very high ambitions and our challenge was to design the content for the day in a way that would be both informative and celebratory; serious and fun, and achieveable on a modest budget.