With a relationship stemming from an ACC Liverpool tender, Kimpton has teamed up with Wirral’s Future Yard CIC, the Birkenhead-based community music venue – creating a vibrant and sustainable partnership that supports grassroots music and industry skills across Liverpool City Region.
Kimpton is the facilities management services provider to The ACC Liverpool Group, which has a commitment to influencing and supporting the wider events industry and ecosystem as part of its social value strategy.
Kimpton first came across Future Yard whilst it was tendering for ACC Liverpool’s facilities management services contract. The tender asked potential suppliers to outline how they would work alongside ACCL to support its social value plan – Kimpton saw the potential to support the live events industry at a grassroots level, by offering its support to Future Yard if it won the contract.
Experts in developing and delivering decarbonisation schemes for businesses across the region, Kimpton partnered with Future Yard by offering to service and maintain its heating, ventilation and electrical equipment. This includes servicing the boiler and heating systems, carrying out water temperature checks, emergency lighting, fire alarms and maintaining all the kitchen equipment. Kimpton’s Service Director worked with Future Yard’s team to develop a preventative maintenance schedule and identify ways to increase efficiency and minimise its carbon impact.
Kimpton also supports Future Yard’s corporate partnership scheme NEIGHBOURHOOD with a £1,000 cash donation each year. This goes towards funding free and subsidised tickets for local young people, families and community groups to access cultural events at the venue including live gigs, Mosh Tots (weekly gigs for kids and their families) and giving teenagers the opportunity to learn instruments, form a band, and perform on stage for the first time.
Mika Haasler at Future Yard said “As a community music venue, partnerships with institutions such as the ACC and their commitment to social value are vital in sustaining culture and regeneration at grassroots level. Together we are working to create opportunities for young people at the start of their careers – both on stage, and backstage through our production training programme Sound Check, which offers hands-on experience in sound, lighting and event management.
“This commitment has also led us to our vibrant partnership with Kimpton, whose support creates opportunities for local young people in live music across our programmes, as well as managing the facilities in our venue.”
Matt Breakwell, Kimpton’s Business Development Manager, says “Working with The ACC Liverpool Group to extend our social value efforts to also support Future Yard, could not be a better fit. We’re working with them to ensure the equipment at the venue operates as efficiently as possible so that they can spend more of their money on supporting young people to develop careers in the live events industry and nurture talent at a grass roots level.”
Peter Hughes, senior facilities maintenance manager at The ACC Liverpool Group, said: “One of the reasons we appointed Kimpton was due to the organisation’s social value commitments which are very much aligned with our own.
“Legacy is a key focus for us and we are pleased that Kimpton has already connected with the local community through its work with Future Yard which provides opportunities for young people in the events industry – from grassroots musicians to technicians. This underlines and complements our own objectives and our procurement commitments in our social value plan.”
For 60 years, Kimpton has been at the forefront of renewable technology. It installed its first heat pumps back in the 1970s for Walkers Crisps and Golden Wonder and has delivered two UK firsts in sustainable technology – the UK’s first water source heat pump in open sea at Plas Newydd, Anglesey for the National Trust and one of the UK’s first Transpired Solar Collectors at the SBEC Building on Deeside with TATA Steel.
Delivering social value in the communities it works in is at the heart of everything Kimpton does, working with clients including ACC Liverpool, Liverpool Hope University, LIPA, Unilever, Walkers, Daresbury Laboratories, Hilton, Radisson Blu and Liverpool Philharmonic, alongside NHS Trusts, local authorities, and central government.
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About Future Yard
Future Yard is a multi-purpose, non-profit community music venue, using music as a tool for social change in Birkenhead. It comprises a 300-capacity indoor and 400-capacity outdoor performance space, five music studios, a bar/café and social spaces. So far, it’s welcomed over 50,000 visitors and 450 artists since opening in 2020, despite the impact of the pandemic.
Future Yard reimagines a music venue as a learning resource, a space for young people to embark on career pathways in the live music industry. This is delivered within a working live music venue, programming touring artists from around the world alongside local emerging talent. It’s striving to become the first carbon-neutral grassroots music venue in the North of England – and one of the first in the UK – realising a positive environmental impact alongside its social impact.
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