The sector was navigating a period of considerable change and increasing scrutiny, yet many of the people responsible for how universities engage with the outside world rarely had the opportunity to come together across traditional professional boundaries.
Marketing and recruitment, advancement, global engagement, communications, public affairs, research and innovation, strategy, civic engagement and partnerships are distinct disciplines, but they increasingly share many of the same challenges.
Together, Assemble and Favier saw an opportunity to create a new kind of forum: one that would bring senior leaders from across those areas together with Vice-Chancellors, academic leaders and voices from beyond the sector to have open, practical and sometimes challenging conversations about higher education and its relationship with the world around it.
So rather than waiting for somebody to commission it, we created it ourselves.
The inaugural Venn: University Leaders Forum took place at The Royal Society in London in 2025. Its second edition followed in 2026.
We were also clear about what we didn’t want The Venn to become. We knew it couldn’t feel like another higher education conference built around a succession of panels and presentations. It needed to create space for people to talk honestly, share experience across institutional and professional boundaries, challenge established thinking and develop relationships with people they might not ordinarily encounter.
The audience was deliberately senior and cross-functional. The opportunity lay in bringing together people with different responsibilities but overlapping interests and giving them a reason to look beyond their own area of expertise.
Getting the right people into the room therefore mattered as much as filling it.
Alongside this sat the challenge familiar to any new event: establishing an identity, building credibility, attracting partners and speakers, creating an audience and designing an experience strong enough that people would want to return.
For Assemble and Favier, that meant being prepared to invest not just delivery expertise, but our own reputation, relationships and knowledge of the sector in an idea we genuinely believed had value.
Assemble leads the event experience and operational delivery, encompassing venue sourcing and liaison, speaker management, logistics, catering, production, branding and signage, delegate management, registration and the run of show.
Partnership development and promotion are shared, with both organisations using their sector relationships to build a community around The Venn. Crucially, neither partner develops it in isolation.
A Circle of trusted Vice-Chancellors provides insight and challenge as the programme takes shape, helping ensure that the conversations remain connected to the realities facing institutional leaders.
From the outset, the experience was designed around participation rather than passive consumption. Roundtables, provocations, interactive sessions and informal exchange sit alongside carefully selected speakers and external perspectives. Networking isn’t treated as the space between the programme. It is part of the programme.
That combination of serious discussion, practical thinking and informality has become an important part of The Venn’s character.
Assemble manages the experience around that programme: working with the venue, coordinating speakers, overseeing production, catering and suppliers, developing branding and signage, managing participants and registration, and orchestrating the detailed run of show that allows a deliberately fluid experience to work behind the scenes.
But the character of The Venn is also shaped by its smaller touches.
At the end of the inaugural event in 2025, participants moved into a garden party with Pimm’s, lawn games and a jazz trio. It was deliberately different from a conventional conference drinks reception and created the right atmosphere for conversations and relationships to continue beyond the formal programme.
The second Venn in 2026 brought a rather different operational challenge: an exceptional heatwave. With temperatures creating uncomfortable conditions, the team adapted the experience around delegates throughout the day, introducing handheld fans, additional fans within the room and ice creams, alongside other practical interventions to make the environment as comfortable as possible.
It was a small but important illustration of something that underpins all of Assemble’s work. However carefully an event is planned, good delivery also means noticing what people need in the moment and responding to it.
Feedback from the Forum has repeatedly highlighted the energy in the room, the mix of people and perspectives, opportunities for networking and the value of practical, interactive and solutions-focused conversations.
That feedback is important because The Venn was never designed to succeed simply by attracting a senior audience. Its purpose is to make something useful happen when those people are together.
There is also something significant for Assemble in having created rather than simply delivered the event.
Most of our work begins with somebody else’s ambition. The Venn is different. Together with Favier Strategy, we identified an opportunity within a sector we know and care about, invested in developing an idea and created something we believed could make a useful contribution.
It demonstrates our understanding of higher education in a different way. We aren’t simply supporting universities from the outside. Through our work across advancement, global engagement, reputation, campaigns, alumni engagement and institutional events, we have become part of the wider community of people thinking about the sector and its future.
That evolution matters.
The value of The Venn lies in remaining close enough to the sector to understand the conversations that need to happen, while being independent enough to create the space for them to happen differently.
It also represents something important about the partnership between Assemble and Favier Strategy. Neither organisation is a supplier to the other. The Venn exists because two businesses with complementary expertise chose to invest together in an idea and share responsibility for making it work.
For Assemble, that makes The Venn different from every other project in this collection.
It isn’t an event we were asked to deliver.
It’s a platform we chose to help create for a sector we’re proud to be part of.
More from the project.
In their words
“Launching Here, it will happen in UCL’s bicentenary year was a defining moment for our university. We wanted to do more than announce a campaign. We wanted people to experience the ambition, optimism and sense of possibility at its heart, and to feel inspired to be part of what comes next. Assemble played an important role in helping us realise that ambition. Their creativity and production expertise helped translate our vision into experiences that were bold, engaging and unmistakably UCL, from our flagship launch at the British Museum to celebrations with our international community.
The response from our alumni, donors and friends has been wonderful. We’ve created real energy and momentum around the campaign, and Assemble’s contribution helped us begin this important chapter in a way that felt both ambitious and deeply human.”
“The U21 Annual Network Meeting and Leadership Summit was a cornerstone of the University of Glasgow’s 575th anniversary celebrations, bringing together global leaders to address the key opportunities and challenges shaping the future of higher education. Throughout the planning and delivery of the Summit, Assemble played a pivotal role combining strategic insight with creativity, professionalism, and exceptional attention to detail.
Their team integrated seamlessly with colleagues across the University, taking the time to understand our ambitions and helping us deliver an event that reflected both the University’s global reputation and impact, and the significance of our 575th anniversary. Their collaborative approach, expertise, and commitment to excellence were instrumental to the Summit’s success. I would not hesitate to recommend Assemble to any institution seeking a trusted and highly effective event partner.”
“We hired Assemble Events to manage the elements of our annual alumni weekend that required some real technical expertise. Emma worked tirelessly with our colleagues in the colleges and departments to ensure that they were up to speed with the technology and could confidently deliver a hybrid experience for their alumni. We couldn’t have done it without her!”
“Working with Emma and her team from Assemble Events is always a pleasure. Their calm, well-organised approach to their work and their planning is consistent, reliable, and reassuring. Their breadth of experience, operating nationally and internationally, is invaluable. We value our partnership with Assemble Events on the CASE Global Leaders Programme immensely.”
“Assemble Events came in to support our team during a really busy period. With their help, our whole new team was supported in taking on our summer graduation ceremonies for over 5000 students. Not only did they support the team, they upskilled them too. We were delighted with the support provided by Assemble Events. They provided us with expert guidance and advice, were reliable, efficient and always on hand in the lead up to the event and beyond. They helped us make sure each day of the event ran smoothly and that all stakeholders were managed beautifully.”
“Our longstanding collaboration with Assemble Events has been excellent and continues to grow year on year. The team plays a valued role in designing and delivering Alumni UK’s central online learning and development offer, particularly our Sector Spotlights, disability inclusion events and flagship annual festival, Alumni UK Live. Their professionalism, creativity and attention to detail, combined with a strong understanding of our objectives and global audience, help us deliver engaging, accessible and high-quality events. We greatly value their collaborative approach and commitment and look forward to building on this successful partnership.”
“We commissioned Assemble Events to help us map out the work required to develop our student recruitment events strategy. Emma took the time to understand the unique nature of our institution and through working with colleagues and existing data, Emma was able to synthetise our challenges and guide us through creating a realistic action plan to overcome them.”
“What sets Assemble apart is that they feel less like an agency and more like a trusted partner. They understand the higher education sector, they understand the audiences we’re trying to engage, and they care as much about the outcomes as they do the event itself. Combining strategic thinking, creative insight and exceptional delivery, they’ve built a reputation that makes them an obvious choice for universities looking to bring people together in meaningful ways. Quite simply, once you’ve experienced that combination of sector understanding, partnership and quality, it’s hard to see why you’d ask anyone else.”
“At LTU we have now had the absolute pleasure or working with Assemble Events for a number of key projects. We are looking forward to future opportunities to work with assemble and would recommend them to anyone who wants the highest quality of consultancy for all elements of the assemble portfolio.”
“It has been great to work with Emma on our campaign event planning. Her insight was particularly helpful whilst we were brainstorming ideas. We now have executive buy-in for an exciting programme of launch events that is tailored to our various audiences. Thank you Emma and Assemble Events.”
“Working with Assemble has been a genuinely collaborative experience. The Assemble Events team took the time to understand our objectives, our alumni community and the experience we wanted to create. They brought creativity and fresh thinking to the process, while remaining practical, responsive and focused on delivery. Their support helped us develop an event that felt distinctive, welcoming and right for the University of London and our graduates.”
“Working with Assemble Events, and Nikki specifically, not only provided the practical advice and logistical support that we needed during a busy time, but it was a pleasure to work with them. Communication was clear and the whole process was driven with energy and positivity. Ultimately, we had confidence in a well-planned trip, which ran very smoothly. Thank you!”
“Working with Assemble on the launch of UCL’s Here, it will happen campaign was a genuinely exciting experience. We had an ambitious creative vision and a complex programme to deliver, and the team brought the imagination, expertise and energy to help us realise it.
Throughout the process, Assemble combined brilliant creative thinking with impressive attention to detail, helping us translate our ambitions into engaging and memorable experiences. They challenged us constructively, worked incredibly closely with our teams and really understood what we were trying to achieve.
The result was a series of high-quality experiences that captured the spirit of UCL and created a real sense of excitement and connection among our alumni and supporters. We’re hugely proud of what we achieved together.”
“I had the pleasure of partnering with Assemble Events to deliver my university’s presence at a large international sustainability conference in Thailand. Assemble supported my project team by providing specialist event support and project management that allowed our team, operating across divisions and global campuses, to deliver a top-quality series of events engaging key cross-sector stakeholders.
Assemble brought both experience in overseas events management and a valuable network of international contacts that helped make a complex project run smoothly. Assemble helped us find excellent venues for in-person events, negotiate contracts with overseas vendors, manage online registration processes for public events, interface with conference organisers, and publish a sleek final report showcasing how the project met its KPIs.
The team was brilliant to work with, demonstrated consistent professionalism and kindness, anticipated potential obstacles before they arose, and calmly addressed and overcame challenges when they did arise. They were a delight to work with on all fronts.”
“The University of London has worked with Assemble Events and Emma over the past four years on a range of events, and Emma and the team have been fantastic to work with throughout.
Initially Emma and the team ran our graduations and associated events, working alongside a small team to deliver our graduation ceremonies as we recovered from the pandemic. This involved everything from strategic advice and planning through to the details and operational delivery of the ceremonies on the day – always with a smile, good humour and exceptional attention to detail to ensure the best experience for both our internal clients and our guests.
And Emma was then a trusted advisor as we developed our own internal events team, moving us from Assemble Events’ commissioned services to setting up our own in-house team, which is now flourishing. This involved guidance on the scope and help with interviews, and meant the new team had guidance and support throughout.
The service is fantastic, always customer focused, and I’d highly recommend Emma and the team to anyone who wants first class strategic advice and operational support to make their events shine.”
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