If you’ve ever walked past the entrance to a Nipperbout crèche, seen us out and about or looked at our socials and seen smiling faces, lively activities and a team of Purple People gliding around with calm purpose… you might think, ‘Well, that looks straightforward enough.’
I promise you. It never is!
Because, while what we provide is childcare, it happens within an event environment, and that is rarely predictable!.
It means we face all the same complexities event organisers do – last-minute changes, logistics hiccups, unexpected curveballs, fluctuating numbers and the event organisers favourite, weather and travel disruption!
One weekend last month was the perfect example.
We had planned for set age groups… yet a somewhat different age range turned.
And when you’re talking about over 100 children, that’s not a small change! It meant completely reshuffling our plans with five sets of individual forms and compliance checks completed for each new group before we could even begin.
Safeguarding doesn’t pause just because we’re in event mode and like all childcare, and all events (!), the paperwork comes first!
Our Purple People handled it brilliantly as always, but it was a reminder that even the best-laid plans need flexible edges in events.
We’d planned outdoor movement sessions, a great way for children to burn energy, self regulate and get to know each other.
Then the heavens opened.
We’d booked taxis for staff transitions.
Then the taxis simply… didn’t arrive.
Thankfully 34 years in this world has trained us better than anything else in what to do!
We adapted activities, reorganised teams, communicated in real time and kept our focus where it belongs, on the children’s experience and safety.
And then… in between the reorganising, replanning and reshuffling… something lovely happened.
We asked the children, across all ages, what they would most like to receive and experience at a Christmas party.
Their answers were brilliant. Thoughtful. Practical. At times hilarious.
The children have directly shaped our gift purchasing and planning for one of our biggest annual events, the Tullett Prebon annual corporate party where we create a magical world of panto scripts, set design, costumes, games and festive sparkle… and helped tick that job straight off our list!
So, while we juggled logistics, rewrote forms and reworked groups… the children helped us design Christmas.
This is why event childcare is different
And that is just one example of why we love it.
