(menu)

Venue Focus Magazine Feature - 'A Major Venue’

Address:	National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road SW3
Tel	020 7730 0717
Fax:	020 7823 6573
Email:	Contact by email
Website:	Visit their website

Venue Focus Magazine Feature - 'A Major Venue’ Information:

The refurbished National Army Museum ranks with the best, says Astrid Mannion

With fascinating exhibitions on everything from the battle of Agincourt to WWII, the National Army Museum is already an established visitor attraction, but did you know this Chelsea site, just up the road from Gordon Ramsay’s eponymous restaurant, is also a great events venue? Not only does it offer lots of space at affordable rates, but the restrictions so often associated with museum venues are not in evidence here and events can be accommodated both during and after public opening hours.

‘The space is extremely flexible and can be used in lots of different ways’, says Nikki Green, the museum’s hospitality officer, and while you may think that’s just sales blurb, it’s actually the honest truth. Take the museum’s Atrium, for instance. By day, it’s a pretty ordinary reception area and souvenir shop, but at night the shop can be wheeled out to create a blank canvas reception space that’s easily transformed into a funky dance area with its own bar and outdoor space for BBQs or smokers (we know we said no restrictions but there’s no avoiding the no smoking policy).

Also onsite is the 120-seater Lecture Theatre and stunning Art Gallery, which can accommodate anything from theatre-style meetings for 300 to stylish dinner parties of 140 guests. Add to that the exhibition galleries and you’re spoilt for choice. A birthday party in the Swords Gallery is every schoolboy’s dream (it’s certainly in many a Chelsea mum’s little black book) and the Special Exhibition Gallery is currently (until 3 October 2004) showing an exhibit on the Crimean War, perfect for Russian-themed parties.

It was this variety that made Nick Hartwell, a marketing manager from Lloyds TSB Registrars, organise an industry conference here last December. ‘I wanted to try something different and the cost of hiring this venue was quite reasonable. The great conferencing facilities provided a very interesting backdrop to the event,’ he explains. Georgie Neubauer, a marketing manager from Tullo Marshall Warren, who recently arranged a company do at the venue was equally impressed: ‘We chose the venue because it was different and close to our office, and it turned out to be the most successful event we’ve ever held,‘ she says.

The in-house team’s favourite jobs to date were the catwalk shows they hosted during London Fashion Week last September, as Green explains: ‘A number of areas were booked and used to the full. The Art Gallery was transformed into a white catwalk tunnel with seats down the sides, while the Lecture Theatre was used as exhibition space. We had to put in a lot of extra hours but we had lots of fun and it was great to see that we could take on a big project and deliver.’

Still not convinced about holding an event in a military museum? We’d advise you to pop round and check this one out nonetheless. ‘There are always going to be preconceptions about the venue, but once people come and see it for themselves, they walk away thinking it’s fantastic,’ ensures Green. We couldn’t agree more.

Military manoeuvres Why not exploit the army connection with a full-on military theme? The museum can provide red-coated soldiers to greet guests on arrival and it’s easy to dress rooms in camouflage nets. Private exhibition viewings and war games can also be arranged.