Exhibiting at a party conference isn’t like exhibiting at a typical trade show or business expo.
You’ll still need a great stand, but the organisers set strict rules that you’ll need to build your plans around. Everyone involved must be registered and cleared, every vehicle must be approved, and the build must be completed in a fixed timeslot and pass stringent security checks. Get any of that wrong and you could be locked out of the venue or, worse, be left standing in the glare of the world’s media with a half-finished stand.
We’ve designed and built exhibition stands for clients at party conferences many times, for organisations as diverse as Specsavers, Electrical Safety First and the National Association of Local Councils (NALC).
In this blog, we explain how party conference season works, why your stand needs to work across different venues and how to plan around the enhanced security and logistics requirements of each event.
If you’re thinking about exhibiting at the party conferences next year, it’s worth starting your planning now.
What is party conference season?
Each autumn, the main political parties in the UK emerge from the Westminster bubble to hold their annual conferences, one after another, in different cities across the UK. The season usually starts in early September and runs to mid-October.
The conferences give each party a chance to set out its policies, debate motions and rally its members. They also put each party in front of the national, sometimes global, media for several days, which is why they get so much coverage.
For exhibitors, the draw is the people in the building. MPs, ministers, shadow ministers, party members, activists, special advisers and journalists are all in one place for days at a time, and many are open to a conversation. That’s a rare opportunity for the charities, trade bodies, campaign groups and businesses that want to be heard by the people who shape policy in the UK.
Each conference is its own event, with its own venue, rules, audience and character. So, if you’re taking your stand to all of them, it will need some thought about how it might translate from one to the next. Here are some of the things to consider:
Know who you want to talk to
The crowd at a party conference is eclectic. As well as party members, MPs and advisers, there are journalists, lobbyists, charities, trade organisations and other exhibitors, many of whom are there to find people to talk to, just like you.
That’s why it helps to decide who you most want to reach before you start designing your stand.
Are you there for policymakers? Members and activists? The press? Other organisations that could become partners?
It’s hard to appeal to everyone, and a stand that tries usually ends up saying very little to anyone.
Once you know your audience, shape everything around them.
Keep your main message short enough to read from the aisle at-a-glance and put it at eye level and above so the crowd doesn’t hide it. Keep the front of your stand open so people feel they can step in and chat without being pounced on.
Think about your team, too. Conference days are long, running from early breakfast briefings to late-night drinks receptions. So, you’ll need to have enough people on your stand to hold conversations but not so many that your space feels crowded, and rotate your staff every few hours.
One stand, several venues
The conferences are held in different venues, in different cities, on different dates. The hall layouts and ceiling heights vary, and each venue has its own rules on things like rigging, power and flooring. So, a stand built for one conference might not work at the others.
That’s why we often recommend modular exhibition stand systems such as t3 or beMatrix for clients exhibiting at more than one conference. The same components can be reconfigured to suit different spaces, so the same basic stand can be used across the whole conference season, with a little bit of tweaking.
However, if you’re looking for something truly unique and stand-out, we can also make a bespoke stand work for multiple venues. Going bespoke ensures maximum space use, optimal traffic flow and design elements that reflect your brand’s essence. The clients we mentioned earlier (Specsavers, Electrical Safety First and NALC) all chose bespoke stands, but because they brought us in early, we were able to plan and design their stands with all the party conferences in mind.
We prefabricate all our stands in our workshop, so there’s no cutting, painting or mess on site, which is essential where the build time is limited and the rules are strict. It also means we can fit any displays, storage and lighting to your stand before anything leaves our workshop, which saves time when your build window opens.
You should check each venue’s requirements early and design around them. It’s much easier to adjust your plan weeks before the event than to find a problem on the day.
Finally, tailor your message to each event. The main political parties all have different agendas, priorities and tones, and what lands well at the Labour Party conference might not resonate so well with a crowd of Tories or Reform UK supporters. You don’t need a new stand each time, as the graphics and messaging are usually easy to swap on a well-designed stand, which makes it easy to take a different message to each conference.
Security: plan it before you plan the stand
The enhanced level of security is the biggest difference between a party conference and a regular trade show or expo. Each conference has its own requirements, which makes planning well in advance essential.
Everyone attending the conference must be registered, including your staff on the stand and anyone involved in its delivery and installation. Each person needs a hall pass, which means applying early, submitting passport photos and allowing enough time for background security checks to be carried out.
All the party conferences are politically sensitive events, so these checks can’t be rushed. Any last-minute changes to your team are difficult to arrange, so choose your people early and register them all.
Every vehicle used to bring in the stand and equipment must also be registered well in advance. There are differences between conferences. At the Labour Party conference, you’ll be given a set window to build your stand, which will then be checked in a security sweep that includes sniffer dogs. At the Conservative Party conference, all vehicles carrying your stand and equipment must first go to a separate venue, where everything is checked and signed off before you can travel to the main hall to start the build.
Both approaches make sense, but they catch out exhibitors who haven’t done it before. Miss a registration deadline or arrive outside your slot and you could lose valuable build time or be refused access altogether. This is another reason why prefabricated stands are a good choice. Because your stand arrives ready to assemble, we can use the build window more efficiently and leave plenty of time for the security checks.
Under the media spotlight
All the major news outlets attend the party conferences, including the BBC, ITV, LBC, Sky News, GB News and all the national newspapers. Journalists, newspaper readers and a TV audience at home may see your stand as well as delegates. That puts pressure on both the design and the logistics. If your stand isn’t ready for opening, or a delivery is turned away at the gate, it could make for bad publicity at a time when you want to be seen in a good light.
So, build in some contingency time, agree who’ll be the main contact on site and aim to have the stand finished and ready for the security sweep well before your deadline. And if you’re running digital demos, interactive touchscreens or streaming video, order a dedicated internet connection, because venue WiFi can struggle when thousands of people are online.
How can Exhibit Interactive help?
We’ve helped our clients exhibit at the party conferences many times, so we know the rules, the people and the pitfalls at each one. That experience can save you a lot of time and worry.
We work directly with the event organisers on your behalf, handling everything from passes, registration and vehicle applications to build slots, venue rules and security checks.
We also keep track of the deadlines for each conference, so you won’t need to chase the paperwork on top of everything else.
We’ll look after the whole project from design and build to delivery, installation and breakdown. If it’s your first party conference, we’ll talk you through what to expect at each one, including the differences in security and build arrangements, so there are no surprises. If you’ve exhibited before, we can look at what worked and what didn’t and help you plan your next party conference season around that.
It means you’ll get a stand that looks stunning, arrives on time and gets through security without any drama, so you can focus on talking to the people you came to meet.
So, if you’re thinking about exhibiting at next year’s party conferences, get in touch now. The sooner we start, the more time there is to get your plans in place. Contact our team today to find out how we can help.
