Barcode Festival
LS Events successfully delivered Barcode Festival in partnership with GroceryAid in its new location Kenwood House. LS Events and GroceryAid worked together to reimagine Barcode Festival as a contemporary fundraising event, blending live music, food, entertainment, and community in the stunning grounds of Kenwood House.
GroceryAid is THE industry charity, providing relief for colleagues in tough times by providing free and confidential support via a wealth of online resources, financial grants and a 24/7 helpline managed by qualified counsellors. The charity just launched their Impact Report for 2024/25 which continues to show growing demand for their services, and highlights the impact they make to thousands of colleagues across the sector. GroceryAid spend more than £6.5m across the year which, as well as providing more than 139,000 incidents of colleague support (a 76% increase on the previous year), included helping 6,667 children go back to school in September 2024 with the right equipment and clothing through the School Essentials Grant.
Barcode is GroceryAid’s flagship fundraising event, this year raising over £1.4m with the help of over 5000 colleagues and 100 sponsors in order to help them continue providing free and confidential support to colleagues across the grocery industry.
LS Events' expertise in delivering large-scale festivals supported GroceryAid’s ambitions for Barcode Festival, taking our client on a journey that transitioned the event from a corporate ‘festibition’ event to an immersive outdoor festival environment.
LS Events' expanded services for the Barcode event, including stage production, artist liaison, and hospitality and stage production, which involved managing content changes from DJs to larger acts like B*Witched. Our lead on technical production required careful stage design, artist advance work and securing necessary permissions for creative elements like haze and lasers due to the presence of a Henri Moore sculpture.
Event Layout and Guest Experience
LS Events led on the scoping of a new venue that would futureproof the ambitions of Barcode Festival, allowing it to grow into its new identity. Kenwood House provided a unique sense of place and identity for Barcode, with the stunning natural, outdoor environment and extensive space allowing for a more immersive and experiential guest journey.
The event layout included 127 brand activations, two stages, a wellness area, and complimentary food and drink provided by sponsors. LS Events expertise in site design focused on creating dwell spaces to prevent sensory overload and ensure a consistent flow of visitors to all sponsor stands.
The larger venue of Kenwood House allowed for a more thoughtfully curated guest journey, where sponsors could be strategically placed based on their offerings, such as wellness brands near the wellness area and louder activations near the main stage.
Thoughtful site design by LS Events prevented overcrowding and enhanced the overall guest experience, ensuring visitors could easily navigate and engage with different areas, nurturing emotional connections to the event and its sponsor partners to make it feel less like work and more like a premium festival experience.
LS Events' high standards of operational excellence were central to delivering a premium Barcode guest experience from the moment of arrival to exiting the site and returning safely to central London and beyond. Practical examples include meticulous site design for efficient entry lanes, sufficient staffing to prevent queues and successful taxi marshalling which saw 186 black cab pickups. The event opened at 2:00 PM for VIPs, allowing them an hour for networking, with general admission starting at 3:00 PM and the event concluding at 11:00 PM
Kenwood House was highly satisfied with the event, and positive community relations were maintained with park users, due to effective communication about the event's purpose and its charity status.
The Role of LS Partnerships
LS Events offered extensive support on health and safety, site design, and structural elements, ensuring proposals were safe, and involved A&D Health and Safety in the consultation process. This collaborative approach alongside the GroceryAid sponsorship team helped sponsors adapt their activations - in some cases exhibition-style stands - to the outdoor setting, turning them into true partners.
Major brands like the National Lottery and Cadbury sponsoring main stages set a high standard, encouraging others to innovate and stand outbranding can be subtle and impactful through experiences, with the wellness area as an example where brand association was achieved through a experiences rather than overt posters
The Role of LS Bites
LS Bites has curated a diverse group of premium food traders to ensure Barcode guests enjoy a thoughtfully curated culinary experience. The aim: deliver variety, quality, and creativity in every bite, reflective of the event excellence LS Bites is known for.
With small-plate formats and a limited number of traders, the food offer was carefully designed to cater to a wide range of dietary preferences — including vegetarian, vegan, halal, dairy-free and gluten-free options — ensuring that every guest feels considered and included.
By working with traders we know and trust, LS Bites guarantees consistency, professionalism and flavour. These strong relationships allow us to deliver premium, flexible offerings that meet the needs of both the client and the crowd.
LS Bites understands the importance of value in a charity-led event and strategically partnered with traders who could deliver multiple high-quality options, helping manage budget without ever compromising on taste or guest experience.
LS Bites also provided F&B hospitality for VIP, Artists and crew. Reducing the need for multi food production areas when space is at a premium.