Cutting Edge Heritage at Tobacco Dock
The historic timber beams and vaulted brickwork of Tobacco Dock London have seen much in the past 200 years, from the bustle and pitch of ships delivering wines, animal skins and tobacco from the early 19th century until the 1950s, to the redevelopment of the London Docks in the 1980s. But the rebirth of this extraordinary Grade I building as a destination venue for the most creative events and immersive experiences has been its most exciting incarnation yet.
One of London’s most iconic venues, there’s more to Tobacco Dock than heritage and distinctive architecture. Beyond its York stone floors and brickwork vaults, there’s a very modern surprise. While the venue’s historic setting makes for a unique and impactful backdrop to events from conferences to consumer shows, it’s the cutting-edge tech infrastructure combined with award-winning client service that sets the venue apart for prospective clients.
‘Clients are clear in their feedback. Overseas organisers and attendees in particular love the authentic “London” feel of our venue and the fact that we have so much history built into our spaces. However, it’s the unique combination of old and new, historic and forward-thinking, that is the biggest draw,’
‘When we launched in 2012, our aim was to be the producers’ venue of choice. We wanted to provide the spaces, infrastructure and suppliers to catalyse the imaginations of the world’s leading event professionals.’ - Jonathan Read , Tobacco Dock’s Co-Founder and Joint CEO
Most recent clients who have capitalised on the unique setting and provision Tobacco Dock offers include Google , MongoDB , The AI Summit and the Breakthrough Energy Summit who have all drawn inspiration from the juxtaposition of characterful historical architecture and pioneeringly modern event solutions. Tobacco Dock’s stripped-back interiors provided a sense of provenance and place for Breakthrough Energy Summit’s showcase of developments in the innovation pipeline of the world’s best brains’ solutions to climate change.
Meanwhile Google Cloud NEXT’s takeover made use of the multiple spaces to deliver its streams of content in varied ways, from the main keynote space, Little Gallery, being transformed into breakout spaces, to developer lab sessions in two of Tobacco Dock’s smaller spaces and a showcase ‘art-gallery’ space which allowed attendees to walk through browsing screen-based content. There was even a government-led security hackathon that took place in the Quayside spaces.
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In the fast-moving field of tech, the venue needs to be constantly innovating its offering to ensure it can support its clients to deliver extraordinary events in a compelling and reliable manner.
Their WiFi setup is one of the most capacious and secure in London, with an increase to 10Gb bandwidth in its latest expansion and an upgrade to WiFi 6 which makes the streaming and sharing of content faster than ever for up to 8,000 devices at a time.
For Read, this generous provision is a key element to Tobacco Dock’s success. ‘The immense bandwidth we can offer has terrific implications for our many tech and cloud software clients. Ideal for international conferences and product launches which need immediate and reliable global streaming, it’s also a great asset to bolster hybrid elements within events, allowing clients to share their content and reach audiences in more ways than ever.’
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Looking and Sounding Great
World-class AV is another string in Tobacco Dock’s bow. A scalable lighting and audio system across all the ground floor and exterior spaces streamlines the event delivery process and ensures outstanding quality as standard. Their new audio-visual partners Creative Technology are industry leaders in delivering ahead-of-the-curve solutions and as well as working on events at Tobacco Dock, have masterminded the displays at everything from the Paris Olympics to Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage.
‘Creative Technology share the Tobacco Dock vision of constant forward innovation and are always offering creative solutions that place our provision at the forefront of event delivery,’ says Read. ‘Their newest acquisition of the largest collection of Holoplot devices in the UK adds an extra dimension of sound design for our clients, allowing them to deliver sound content with pinpoint precision. Clients will be able to deliver multiple strands of content to clients depending on where they are positioned – ideal for translation or for breakout sessions without the need for separating spaces.’
Heading towards Net Zero
A Zero to Landfill venue since 2018, Tobacco Dock is also making strides in helping clients deliver sustainable events. A recent audit with ecollective helped them calculate their carbon footprint, and this is now the benchmark against which they are working in their pledge to reach Net Zero by 2042.
Key partnerships with OLIO and City Harvest have allowed Tobacco Dock Food to deal with food waste in a positive way, benefitting those in the local community at no extra cost to clients. Meanwhile, Tobacco Dock’s branding partner Moss offers closed-loop solutions and has its own recycling storage onsite. Even delivery pallets don’t go to waste. NuKleen, Tobacco Dock’s cleaning and waste service partner has multiple recycling options, including repurposing the pallets for a new life as bee hives in their very own apiary.
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‘We’ve been bowled over by the energy and vision of many of the creative agencies we’ve worked with over the past few years. For events such as Google Cloud NEXT and the Breakthrough Energy Summit, it has been fantastic to see organisers work with the spaces’ character and challenges to build unique and unforgettable events,’
‘Perhaps we’re biased, but we think our spaces and team are second to none, and to see organisers lean into the challenge and opportunity of our unique venue to deliver visually stunning, effective and engaging experiences and unexpected results inspires us immensely. We have some exciting events in planning, including some through to 2029, so we’re very much looking forward to seeing more incredible innovation and extraordinary events.’
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Photography © Tobacco Dock