FOR Cardiff recently moved offices, the resultant conversations about the rearrangement of furniture sparked a fiercely contested debate – should we buy an awards shelf or fully commit to the situation and buy ourselves an awards cabinet so that we can really show off. There was some brief discussion of a professionally lit and rotating display case but obviously we would never squander our levy payers money in such a way. That said our collection of silverware (or rather glassware and pieces of 500 million year old slate) has been growing considerably recently.
In our business plan we commit to actively seeking recognition for what we have achieved through awards – it’s a relatively unusual commitment for a business improvement district to make but what we really mean by this line is that we are holding ourselves to a high enough standard to mean that if we aren’t winning awards then we aren’t being good enough.
In our two and a half year tenure so far we’ve racked up:
- Association of Town and City Management Awards 2018 – Best Marketing & Branding Scheme. This was for our work on the Give DIFFerently diverted giving campaign which achieved UK nationwide coverage and helped raise thousands of pounds to support people moving away from homelessness.
- Give DIFFerently also scooped two honourable mentions as we were highly commended in The Drum DADI Awards 2018 in the Technical Innovation category and achieve a silver commendation in the Pride Awards 2018 (Cymru Wales) in the Community Relations Campaign Category
- PRCA Dare Awards 2019 – Event, Launch or Stunt of the Year. This one celebrated our delivery of The Daff Trail inflatable daffodils hovering over the skies of Cardiff in celebration of St David’s Day an event which has gone unrepresented in Cardiff for too long.
- Cardiff Business Awards 2019 – ICAEW Community Business of the Year. We’re particularly proud of this award because it doesn’t celebrate one project in particular but rather everything that we do as a business. We are here for Cardiff (hence the name) and it’s wonderful to be acknowledged for everything we do for the local area.
- Association of Town and City Management Awards 2019 – Runner Up, Best Safety, Security and Resilience Scheme. This award recognises our crime reduction partnership Cardiff Against Business Crime as one of the best in the industry despite the fact the partnership is still less than two years old! We think this is a clear sign that CABC will go on to deliver great things.
We’re proud to be an award winning BID, one that can win against other BIDs but also against other organisations too – we think our members deserve to know that their BID is delivering at a high standard and this is one of the easiest ways that we can show that we are doing just that. That said we don’t always bring home the gong – we’ve been pipped to the post by our own levy payers in the past, for example Creative Cardiff taking home triumphing in the Civic category at this year’s Cardiff Life Awards. We use that as evidence of the fact that we need to keep improving so keep your eyes peeled for more awards news in the future, we’ve definitely got a few more tricks up our sleeve.