On Sunday, 20th May 2012, Dara O’Hanlon (one of our J9 account managers), Jo Oliver (our Head of Ops) and Laura Wolfe (our MD), will take part in the Great Manchester Run in aid of the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

This is the first 10K challenge that Dara and Laura have both attempted and it has to be said they are a little nervous to say the least.

Jo will be leading the J9 team to victory!

We at Journey9 are pretty proud of them all and wish them the best of luck.  A large glass of Pinot will be waiting at the finish line!

Laura, Dara & Jo together with all their colleagues at Journey9 would like to thank you for your support raising valuable funds for the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

To donate to a fantastic cause and to support Laura, Jo and Dara in their cause, you can donate here

Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) is a genetic degenerative neuromuscular disease.  The Journey9 team has fallen in love with the captain of Team David, David Dee, a totally gorgeous little boy from Cheshire who has been diagnosed with SMA Type II.  He’s a bit too young at the moment to partake in any of the events, so he’s delegated all event planning to his willing and able team!

There are table packages and sponsorships available for the Ball.  Contact us for more information, to book your tickets or if you’d like to help in any way.

At Journey9 we like a bit of football and we also like raising money for charity.

As anyone who who’s met her will know, our MD is a mad Blue and Dara, our new recruit, is a Red!

We’ve laid our hands on a  Manchester City FC signed framed first team shirt (with certificate of authenticity) and a signed framed Manchester United FC  first team shirt, which was personally donated by Vidic himself.

Both items already have opening bids of £400 and the closing date for bids is 30^th April – bid for them by dropping us an email here.

The auction will raise money for Langdon College and the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital.

We’ve had quite a couple of weeks at Journey9.

Most importantly, we’ve been recommended by the people in the know, our clients, by RAR for another year.

We are also proud to a finalist in the RAR Awards for Best Events’ Agency 2012.  We’ve been shortlisted in the How-Do Awards 2012 for Best  B2C Marketing /Integrated Communications Campaign for ‘Jaguar in the City’.

If that wasn’t enough, we’re also very proud that our MD, Laura Wolfe, has been included in The 2012 How-Do Entrepreneurial 30 – in association with Baker Tilly as well as Downtown in Business’s DQ30 – The Manchester 10.

All that and some exciting new projects to boot!

We’re rather chuffed to announce we’ve a new Account Manager here at Journey9 – Dara O’Hanlon!

Dara has seven years’ experience working for dedicated events agencies.  She began her career working for Out There Events, where she worked with a number of prestigious accounts including the UKSPA 25th Anniversary conference, exhibition and awards, Business Link’s annual conference and roadshow, North West Football Awards, Big Chip Awards, and the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital Finale fundraising gala dinner.

In 2010, she moved to WRG, a large agency specialising in live events and global conferences where she was project co-ordinator for a number of major conferences and exhibitions, including the AstraZeneca Conference & Exhibition, the Swinton Annual Sales conference and Alcon & CIBA Vision Conference  in Barcelona.

In her spare time Dara enjoys shopping, fashion and also has recently developed a penchant for reading psychological crime thrillers.

If you’re an aspiring pop star and feel like testing your mettle against other business types here in Manchester then one of our latest projects, the ‘Bridge to the Stars’ – a talent content we’re running for the Bridgewater Hall Community Education Trust – could be for you!

Auditions will be held at The Bridgewater Hall in June with the final staged at a gala dinner at Salford’s Lowry Hotel on Saturday, October 20. The ‘X-Factor style’ judging panel will be led by Bridgewater Hall chief executive Nick Reed. Coronation Street star and singer Catherine Tyldesley and crooner Cole Page will perform at the gala dinner and will help choose the winning act. Bridge to the Stars is open to amateur singers, soloists and bands, from the managing director to the office receptionist. A fee of £95 per entry will be charged.

Sound good? Then find out more and sign up on the Bridgewater Hall site here

It’s not every day you get visited by a the famous mascot of a local footie team so today we were thrilled to have MCFC’s Moonchester in the office.

We also got to work with him around Manchester for an upcoming competition for our ‘Jaguar in the City‘ campaign – more news on this soon!

Great to see that last night’s event for Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital’s ‘Many Hand’s‘ campaign, which the Journey9 team organised and managed was a great success.

The event, which was presented by Gordon Burns featured a Dragons’ Den  style panel featuring Theo Paphitis involved the five main contributors to this years campaign being judged on the quality of their pitch.

Journey9 would like to say congratulations to the winner Gary Chaplin who picked up the winning prize this year for his hugely successful charity bike ride.

Today is a sad day for Journey9 as we’re waving a fond goodbye to Eleanor Bull, our wonderful account manager who leaves today for a new life in sunny Dubai.

Wishing you the best of luck from all at J9 Elle!