isla has announced that four large-scale UK venues have taken up its bespoke venue membership offering in the first quarter of 2023.

ExCel, The Science Museum, The Business Design Centre (BDC) and ACC Liverpool have been added to isla’s diverse membership base joining agencies, brands, suppliers in accelerating their journey to event sustainability and net zero.

The news comes just four months after isla launched its sustainability guide for venues, Sustainability in Practice: A Pathway for Venues, created in partnership with Visit Britain and endorsed by three leading associations: the Association of Event Venues (AEV), the Meetings Industry Association (mia) and beam and represents a pivotal moment for isla’s position as a whole-of-industry body.

Venue membership includes:

• A dedicated exploration session for venues that will help broaden and deepen understanding of their own sustainability goals.

• Unlimited uptake of our bi-monthly 101 accelerated sustainability training for the venue team.

• Bi-annual venue roundtables, helping the venue sector collectively level up sustainability best-practice as we connect buyers with key stakeholders from major destinations to marketing associations for some of the UK’s most iconic venues.

• A Progression Pathway review and action plan at nine months into the membership – to assess how far venues have come on their sustainability journey and create a future-facing, actionable plan for their next steps.

Faye Dyer, Managing Director, The ACC Liverpool Group, said: “We are fortunate to work in an industry which is focused on people meeting to share knowledge, ideas and ultimately to make a difference.

“It is all of our responsibilities to consider how we can use this as a platform and to make the necessary measures needed to implement changes. 

“It is with this in mind that we launched our Social Value Impact Plan which focuses on five key areas – community; environment, sustainability and climate action; procurement with purpose; event industry impact and people.

“isla is very much aligned with our own commitments and we are excited to see how the team’s expertise will support our own environmental objectives, enable us to collaborate and above all make positive change in the industry.”

Kat Ing, Events Manager, Science Museum, said: “We’re really excited to join isla and experience the benefits associated with our membership. The event-specific training and education provided by isla will really benefit our team, particularly as the user-friendly learning is less overwhelming and more digestible making it easier for everyone in our team to retain and implement their learnings.

“We recognise the incredible importance of operating sustainably as a venue and want to be at the forefront of sustainability in the unique venue sector, so we’re delighted to be the first venue of our kind to join isla. Many of the suppliers and agents we regularly work with are already members and this collaborative approach is a big step towards making the events industry more sustainable and accountable going forward.

“By joining isla and becoming part of the community, we hope to be able to create a blueprint of sustainable events at the museum, which we can use moving forward and promote to new and existing clients. We’re also keen to pass our knowledge and learnings onto our clients to help educate them when it comes to making more sustainable choices for their events.”

Kate Vandenburg, Marketing & Communications Director, BDC, said: “Here at the BDC, we’ve been working on improving our environmental impact for more than some time, but this isn’t a journey any one business can take alone. In its venue guide Sustainability in Practice: A Pathway for Venues, which features the BDC as one of the case studies, isla demonstrated, in a no-nonsense way, a pathway to meeting net zero. 

“It’s their understanding of the stakeholders involved and their ability to bring them along on the same journey that made us want to be a part of their membership. The opportunity to better support our events and suppliers by understanding all aspects of the challenge is something that we feel strongly isla will be able to help us with over the coming year.

“By joining isla’s community, we hope to support others with what we have learnt so far and find ways to collaborate with those across the industry; playing a bigger role in making meaningful change happen.”

Natalie Sykes, Sustainability Manager, ExCeL London, said: “As a carbon-neutral venue, sustainability and our journey to Net Zero remains at the forefront of our agenda, along with our wider role in helping to drive positive change across the events industry. Through our membership with isla and leveraging their expertise, we can accelerate this together with our upcoming ESG strategy.”

Toni Griggs, Growth Lead, isla, added: “Venues have the opportunity to lead in the industry transition to net zero; what is and isn’t possible within a space shapes our events. I’m looking forward to pooling the knowledge of the UK’s leading venues to help drive critical change needed for decarbonisation.”

Find out more about isla’s hotel and venue membership here.