Rick, 50, oversees the strategy of Smyle Group. It owns leading creative agency Smyle, www.smyle.co.uk employing 180 full time staff that delivers live and digital experiences across the world for some of the top global brands. It has won UK Event Agency of the Year award a record 13 times in the last 15 years.
Rick adopted a clear mission and mandate from across the industry evolving through 2022 to answer the question: Where’s the one place you can go to gain better understanding, value and respect for the UK Events industry? This developed into a not-for-profit organisation - The Power of Events.
It launched a unique digital platform in February 2023, to effectively deliver for the first time a map of the industry’s now defined seven core sectors, to benefit all current and future event professionals – including profiling the principal trade associations, support organisations, industry media and 10 leading universities. It is supported by an unprecedented level of over 700+ organisers, agencies, venues and supplier partners from across the industry, with the numbers growing weekly. It also launched an Insight App in October 23 as tool for the industry to use to collate advanced data to support insights and research projects, a new Careers Hub section of the platform in Feb 24, alongside a UK wide Schools Engagement Programme aimed at engaging with all the 4210 secondary schools in the UK within 5 years - starting with a pilot to 50 schools in the East of England region - see www.thepowerofevents.org