Event Communications


Event Communications, or Event, is one of Europe's longest-established and largest museum and visitor attraction design firms; it is headquartered in London.

History

The firm was founded in 1986 by businesswoman Celestine Phelan and design partner Steve Simons. In 2008, a new management team took over the running of Event, led by museum design consultant James Alexander, and creative director Esther Dugdale, which saw the firm expand from its European base to an international focus that included the Middle East, and latterly Asia.
Event projects have won the major European Museum of the Year Award a number of times, including for the Riverside Museum in Glasgow in 2013, and for the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in 2016. Event projects have also won other EMYA awards such as the Silletto Prize for the :da:Strandingsmuseum St. George|Shipwreck Museum St. George in Denmark in 2019. The firm was also notable as the exhibition designer for the Titanic Belfast visitor attraction which opened in 2012, and which has also won several major international visitor attraction awards including the 2014 THEA award.
Event projects have won notable cultural tourism awards, including the World Travel Awards Europe's Leading Tourist Attraction for the EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum in 2019, for the Titanic Belfast in 2016, and for the Guinness Storehouse in 2015.
Since 2016, Event became associated with "immersive" and "technology-driven" experiences, such as the Meet Vincent Van Gogh Experience, a traveling exhibition created in 2017 with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and which also won a 2017 THEA award. Another example being the overhaul of the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense in Denmark, into the House of Fairytales concept, a collaboration with Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, that was set to open in late 2020. Event's EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum was described by the Irish Times as "the world’s first fully digital museum", and was also shortlisted for the European Museum of the Year Award in 2018.
Event has designed attractions for corporate exhibitions and landmark buildings such as The Shard: Viewing Gallery in London, the KAPSARC in Riyadh, the Siemens Crystal in London, and the Expo 2020: Opportunity Pavilion in Dubai.

Selected works