Member Article

National spotlight placed on Durham touring exhibition business

Blue Tokay, a Durham-based touring exhibition company which specialises in natural history displays, has been showcased to a national audience of potential customers including museums, galleries and stately homes, following marketing consultancy and mentoring from Newcastle Science City.

The brainchild of Nicola Newton and Pip Strang, Blue Tokay creates dynamic and enticing national history displays using taxidermied animals. Each exhibition tells its own story and portrays aspects of the animals’ behaviour, its habitat and surroundings, to make it more engaging to audiences, particularly school groups and families.

Established in 2011, the company has enjoyed steady growth through the founders’ combined network of contacts in the arts’ sector. However, Nicola and Pip felt they needed help to better market Blue Tokay and turned to Newcastle Science City for support.

Nicola explains: “Pip and I are scientists with specialist expertise in biology and zoology; the PR and marketing side of things were a bit alien to us!

“We knew from the business growth we’d already enjoyed and the conversations we had with museum curators and schools that our business was interesting, but we weren’t sure how to communicate that. When we heard that Newcastle Science City had a team of mentors available to support businesses like ours, we got in touch to see how they could help; they identified an external marketing agency for us to work with.

“The agency helped us to create a marketing plan, refine our press materials and announce the touring exhibitions we had in the pipeline such as ‘Sssnakes Alive!’; our most recent exhibition which took centre stage at the World Museum in Liverpool.

“This support not only showcased our brand to key trade and regional media titles, read by decision makers at the leading galleries and museums across the country, but it helped to build our confidence to better understand how we should be positioning Blue Tokay to potential customers.”

As well as touring exhibitions such as “Sssnakes Alive!” which far excelled the expected visitor numbers, Blue Tokay has developed additional permanent exhibitions and interactive displays, at stately homes and gardens across the North East.

Glen Kemp, Business Support Manager at Newcastle Science City, concludes: “Blue Tokay is revolutionising a very traditional sector. Using their expert knowledge and passion, Nicola and Pip are creating enticing and engaging displays that are aligned to the national curriculum and most importantly, compelling to young people. We provided them with a helping hand to help share these achievements nationally and we are really pleased to see how well the brand is flourishing.”