Events & Lead

Shrewsbury Prison, The Dana, Shrewsbury, SY1 2HP

The purpose of this role is to lead the creation and delivery of outstanding events and experiences that enhance visitor engagement, support commercial growth, and strengthen our reputation for quality across all attractions. By combining audience insight, creative vision, and operational excellence, the Events & Experiences Lead ensures we offer compelling, relevant, and revenue generating experiences for both B2C and B2B markets.

As the Events & Experiences Lead, you will be responsible for designing and delivering high-quality, audience-led events and experiences across our UK attractions. You will drive the development of a commercially sustainable programme that appeals to a wide range of current and future audiences, ensuring our events portfolio is engaging, innovative, and operationally robust. The role also includes close collaboration with our Sales team to create tailored experiences for private, corporate, and group clients.

This role covers multiple sites across the UK, so some travel will be required. Flexibility is essential, including working evenings, weekends, and bank holidays as needed, along with any other reasonable duties to support successful delivery.

The role is hybrid with an expectation of being based at an attraction approximately 3 days a week. This could be based at Shrewsbury Prison, Shropshire or Shepton Mallet Prison, Somerset.

This section outlines the key areas of accountability for the role and the standards expected in each area.

• Develop and deliver a clear events and experiences strategy for the Attraction Division aligned to organisational objectives, vision, mission, and values.
• Lead the end-to-end creation and delivery of high quality, audience led events and experiences across all attractions.
• Identify and maximise commercial growth opportunities through new and existing events, experiences, upgrades, and add-ons.
• Drive idea generation, content development, planning, execution, and evaluation for all B2C and B2B events.
• Trial and embed innovative, creative, and digitally enhanced approaches that elevate the visitor experience while respecting heritage and operational constraints.
• Plan and coordinate a range of events including conferences, corporate bookings, exhibitions, professional B2B events, and seasonal programmes.

• Create engaging, immersive, and experiential visitor offerings that meet the needs of diverse audience segments.
• Develop a cross-attraction programme of audience led events, identifying opportunities for shared themes as well as attraction specific experiences.
• Continuously review, refine, and enhance existing events and experiences based on insight, feedback, and performance data.
• Conduct post-event evaluations, gather feedback from multiple teams, and identify trends to improve audience engagement and satisfaction.
• Build positive relationships with customers, clients, community groups, local authorities, tourism partners, and other stakeholders to drive engagement and satisfaction.

• Oversee all operational aspects of event delivery, including logistics, floor planning, staffing, scheduling, vendor coordination, and on the day management.
• Ensure all events comply with health and safety legislation, safeguarding requirements, licensing conditions, and organisational standards.
• Produce risk assessments, method statements, and other required compliance documentation.
• Address operational challenges proactively, finding practical solutions and mitigating issues effectively.
• Produce financial proposals and business cases for events and experiences, ensuring opportunities for income generation are maximised.
• Manage budgets efficiently, monitoring costs, resources, and revenue contributions.
• Conduct market research and competitor analysis to identify new commercial opportunities and inform decision making.
• Prepare post event reports summarising outcomes, attendance, revenue, and feedback insights to evaluate commercial success.
• Foster strong working relationships with managers, department heads, and attraction teams to support effective planning and delivery.
• Collaborate closely with the Attraction Managers and Team Leaders to identify new opportunities and maintain high operational standards.
• Work with the Marketing Manager to develop and implement press and promotional plans for events and experiences.
• Work with the Sales Manager to shape and develop new B2B and group offers.
• Maintain clear, timely, and transparent communication with senior management and internal teams to support smooth delivery and informed decision making.

Performance in this role will be measured through a combination of quantitative and qualitative indicators aligned to the Cove Group’s PDR framework.

These include:

• Event revenue & profitability
• Event cost control
• Post event satisfaction scores
• Quality of event delivery and operational…