The Bristol Hippodrome announced 2025 charity partners: Why an iconic venue is helping bristolians

Last year alone, the Hippodrome raised an impressive £14,817 for its 2024 charity partners—and this year, they’re aiming even higher.

Transcript

00:00So I am here today with Jenny who is the communications manager here at Bristol Hippodrome

00:05and they have announced some very exciting charities that they are going to be supporting

00:09this year. Bristol Hippodrome is the biggest theatre in Bristol but it's also one of the

00:15biggest outside London. So what do you think it's going to do for these charities, these local

00:20charities you've selected to partner with you guys and obviously get more exposure and hopefully

00:26more kind of help? Yeah well I think we're really lucky that we have such a great platform

00:30to be able to advertise people and really sort of highlight what they do. Yeah we've got

00:38massive followings on social media so even just that is like a massive benefit to these charities

00:43that they can reach a massive new audience. I think some of these charities people would

00:49have never heard of before and some of them are Bristol based charities so hopefully people

00:55from Bristol will feel passionate about helping them. So I am here today with Naomi who is the

01:00sales and development manager and we're going to be finding out all about the charities and

01:05why they are important to Bristol Hippodrome. Tell me a little bit about why you have chosen

01:09these five charities this year then. Well we put, we obviously get contacted by a lot of charities

01:15which is amazing and we'd obviously, we'd love to help everybody but we have to do a fair process

01:19so we get all the kind of applications together and then we put it out to the whole venue and say

01:25have you got any you know preferences and basically everyone has to vote and the top five were chosen

01:30from that vote. So you have announced these five charities that you're going to be supporting

01:35as a theatre this year. What are you going to be doing to support them?

01:41So we're going to try and do all sorts really. We're going to carry forward with what we've offered

01:46previously which again the VIP box mentioned on our socials. Bucket collections is a big thing that

01:52we do here as well so the volunteers from the charities will come in for selected performances.

01:56We try and make sure that it's a performance that kind of links with the charity but it doesn't

02:01always go that way. But yeah it gives them an opportunity to get donations from people here

02:07and we also let our staff know about the charity in a bit more detail the front of house members so

02:14that they will feel a little bit more obliged to sort of upsell it if you will at the bars and

02:19everything like that. But something we really want to do this year is a bit more sort of the

02:24fundraising side of things. So we're already talking to In Hope about potentially getting some of our

02:30staff to do like a sponsored sleeping out rough. I can't remember exactly what he called it but

02:37there's a particular name for it and it's not we'll literally grab a sleeping bag and sleep outside

02:42somewhere because that's not safe but it's all managed through the charity. So things like that

02:47and then maybe helping out by doing some like corporate volunteering. Just trying to raise their

02:53profile through again like our platform and things to bring our staff members together as well.