When Last Year's Event Set the Bar Below Zero: A Company Summer Party at Battersea Park
SERVICES DELIVERED
CONTEXT
A corporate client came to Stacked Events with a specific brief and a specific context. The previous year's company summer event had not landed, and this year's had to be better — by a measurable margin. They needed a full-day outdoor event for employees and their families, designed to work across a genuine range of ages. The venue was Battersea Park Bowling Green — a blank canvas where everything would need to be brought in.
Blank canvas venues place the entire operational load on the event team. There would be no in-house bar, no catering, no shade structure, no furniture. Everything from mobile bar to soft play had to be sourced, transported, and installed on the day. A venue with no permanent infrastructure gives creative freedom, but leaves no margin for planning gaps.
The multi-generational brief was the other core challenge. Adults, older children, and toddlers would all be attending. Activities that worked for one age group could actively exclude another. A layout was needed where different age groups could be active simultaneously without competing for the same space.
The redemption context added pressure a standard brief wouldn't carry. Employees had experienced a disappointing event the year before. A day that was simply adequate would not move the conversation. The bar was set at noticeably better.
Stacked Events planned the event around a central hub and a zone-based layout. A large stretch tent was positioned as the central anchor, providing shade and seating. It pulled the different activity areas into a coherent site rather than a field with things scattered across it.
The activity programme was age-layered rather than age-mixed. A dedicated soft play area gave small children their own contained space. The inflatable structures — assault course, pirate slide, and Last Man Standing — were positioned for older children and competitive adults. Garden games and outdoor furniture created a lower-energy zone for adults alongside the bar and street food.
Street food catering was selected over a fixed menu to cover a wider range of tastes across a family audience. The mobile bar ran through the day as the adult social anchor. Picnic benches, deck chairs, and beanbags around the tent gave people somewhere to settle in rather than stand around.
The event ran across all zones throughout the day, with structured activity and informal social time used by employees and their families simultaneously. The age-layered layout meant the soft play and inflatable areas ran without conflict at the same time. The client noted the improvement over the previous year directly in their feedback.
Stacked were brilliant from day 1. They listened to our brief and came up with options that fit perfectly within our budget. They kept in constant contact throughout the process, sourced all the suppliers and was on hand all day on the day of the event. It made our job very easy. Would 100% recommend Stacked and we will be asking them to arrange our summer party next year too.
IF THIS FEELS RELEVANT
Planning a company summer party or employee family day?
Stacked Events designs outdoor company events from the ground up — including blank canvas venues where every element needs to be brought in. Tell us about your brief and we'll come back to you within 24 hours.