Parties for the likes of Netflix can cost up to £100,000 , but corporate events company Camm & Hooper say they’ve nailed the model for throwing the best parties
If you feel the arches above your head rumble, don’t worry: it’ll just be a late night commuter train trundling above your head as you clink your champagne glass. The subterranean tunnels of Leake Street were originally used for railway storage, but now these graffitied spaces have replaced Mayfair members’ clubs as the coolest place in London to host an event.
Until last year when landlords threw them out to prioritise more commercial offers, England’s biggest arts festival Vault Festival put these underground spaces on the map, and the labyrinthine rooms host trendy pop-ups, like the Humbug Christmas event this December. There’s just nowhere in London that has the otherworldly feel of Leake Street – Fashion Week events and film and TV production companies use the spaces for their atmosphere.
The latest firm to have made the arches home is Camm & Hooper. The events company has moved into the 26 Leake Street arches and have already thrown events for Netflix and Disney in the space. Camm & Hooper has unique positioning in the events space, owning the leases to their venues, unlike the more traditional competitor companies like CH&CO that rent out venues for clients on a case-by-case basis.
“They don’t take the risk of leasing their own venues,” says Natalie Sykes, CFO. Owning venues means amplifying creativity and taking risks, they say, helping the firm throw what they hope are outstandingly good parties. “We’ll allow clients to do things in our venues they wouldn’t in others,” says Sykes, including painting part of the famous Banking Hill in the City of London for filming of The Crown. They removed it “before anyone saw,” she laughs.
Artists should get in touch with us even if they haven’t got loads of cash. If they can bring the people we may be able to partner up
For their Camm & Hooper launch party they employed local graffiti artists who paint in the tunnel to create art in their venue and had live Instagram walls; events for TV and film might have immersive themed areas to get lost in while you drink and dance. “You can’t throw people into a room and give them canapés and a glass of warm prosecco anymore,” says Derick Martin, CEO. “It has to be something very different now.”
So who spends the biggest money? TV and film, but there are surprises too. “It’s not always the big names, some of the start up fintech companies actually invest a lot in bringing their people together in interesting environments,” says Martin, who confirms he’s thrown one-night parties that have brought in over £100,000.
Martin, who formerly worked at CH&CO and has decades of experience together with Sykes, also manages more traditional spaces like Banking Hall in the Square Mile. Leake Street earmarks the beginning of the brand’s growth into the cultural space. Camm & Hooper want to “support the creative industry” which they see as adjacent to their events business.
They seem aware that Leake Street is a different proposition to their rosta of more traditional venues, and that the cache and reputation of the arches will inevitably invite more local and returning customers to a more diverse range of events than perhaps they’re used to throwing. It’s easy to say all this but perhaps Camm & Hooper do have the credentials. They are the only events company to employ an in-house creative director and a former MTV and Ministry of Sound promoter is helping with music and cultural programming.
“Leake Street is known now and you see the London tours coming down here, the bike rides coming down here, somebody created that and we should be part of that,” says Martin. “We should be part of that community.”
“I think the ability to be known more as a creative events company, that’s what we want to be,” he adds. They’d like to run food festivals, theatre productions, and club nights are also “all on our radar” with the precursor that “it comes down to reputation. If we were to do something we have to do it really really well.” London creatives may not have the big budgets, but they desperately need the space.
Two major LGBTQ venues have closed in the past few months due to redevelopment, and Leake Street in particular has always welcomed that crowd through cabaret, drag and theatre events. There is a desperate lack of late night venues in Zone 1 and Martin and Sykes say that because most of the corporate events are Tuesday to Thursday, they end up having time at weekends available to explore other cultural events.
They’re already in conversation with Secret Cinema but they say they’ve “got to learn” about how to move into this field well, creating “safe environments, a nice night out, where at no point could people feel uncomfortable.”
I mention the former plight of the Vault Festival (which has gladly found a new home) and Martin says: “I wish they’d come and talked to us – the people doing the festival. We’re open for business and we’re very creative in our mindset. June, July and August you’re looking to put other things into venues. We’re already talking to independent cultural events companies, we want to use this space for those kinds of events as well.”
Martin imagines a world where his corporate events company and arts organisations in need of centrally located spaces align: “If you say you havent got a stack full of cash but you can bring people, can bring production, can bring authenticity and a great time, we can do the food and beverage, the bars… Somewhere in there there is a great partnership.”
Find out more about London corporate events company Camm & Hooper online, call 020 3763 7429 or email events@camm-hooper.co.uk. 26 Leake Street, Waterloo SE1 7NN
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