Cause UK's work for culture, the Art's and tourist destinations

About us

Based in Harrogate, Cause UK is recognised by the Arts Council as an infrastructure support agency for the sector.

Cause UK has won numerous awards, including Prolific North’s PR Agency of the Year 2021 (& finalists in 2023), and recently were awarded B Corps certification.

A sister-run agency, we have over a decades’ experience delivering high-impact marketing and PR campaigns, designed to inspire, raise awareness, foster collaboration, and engage stakeholders.

We have a strong network of media contacts, built across a decade’s experience representing the public sector, the arts, good causes and ethical business.

We have worked extensively across the Arts sector, alongside ethical business, the public sector, charities, and social enterprise.?

Our clients

A full-service PR, events, film, and marketing agency, we currently represent a number of arts organisations, including Ilkley Literature Festival, the Northern Aldborough Festival, CrimeFest, North Yorkshire Open Studios and the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA).

We represent (and programme) concerts for the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra (YSO) and Paradox Orchestra, and support a new classical music venue: the Wesley Centre. Successes in 2023 include a sell-out Proms at Halifax Piece Hall for the YSO, and two sell-out gigs for Paradox Orchestra at Leeds and Manchester cathedral.

Cause UK has worked too for many years with numerous tourism/destination bodies, including Destination Harrogate (securing major press trips for the Sunday Times, Hello! and Time Out for its health and wellbeing campaign last year), the Pendle Hill Landscape Partnership, and Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (now Nidderdale National Landscape).

We have also done various campaigns for key attractions, including Stockeld Park, the Himalayan Gardens and Sculpture Park, and How Stean Gorge.

Cause UK prides itself as an agency of creatives.

We have programmed our own cultural events with Chris Packham, Steve Backshall, Miriam Margolyes and Brian Blessed, hosted a screening with Ken Loach, and even commissioned and produced a new play in collaboration with the actors, Freddie and Edward Fox.

In September 2023, we produced a new short film for Sky Arts celebrating a young working-class classical pianist in Leeds, which included commissioning a new soundtrack from composer, Ben Crick. We have plans to expand our film work.

Celebrity engagement is a part of our work for charity clients, and we’ve ran successful fundraising and awareness campaigns with Marco Pierre White, Rosemary Shrager, James Martin, and many others.?

Case Studies:

Film: Working Classical Heroes

Cause UK pitched and produced a new short film for Sky Arts, celebrating a young working-class classical pianist in Leeds, 23-year-old Ellis Arey, and commissioning a new piece from composer, Ben Crick.?

Working Classical Heroes?premiered at a screening at Leeds Everyman cinema on 14 December, and was broadcast to the nation on Sky Arts on December 19, 2023.

Ellis Arey star of the new Sky Arts short film

We told the story around this special project in a feature we wrote for the Yorkshire Post, which you can read?here. On the back of this, Ellis was invited to Decca records and interviewed as a preferred session musician for the recording label, met Lang Lang, and was filmed for the 2024 series of the Ch4 show, The Piano. You can view the trailer for the Sky Arts commissions, here.

PR: Visitor Attractions

We’ve organised dozens of press trips and media launches to promote places, events, and attractions with stories on BBC and ITV news, and splashes in the Telegraph, Sunday Times, Marie Claire, Mail on Sunday, The Sun, National Geographic, Guardian, Financial Times, Daily Mirror, Psychologies magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Stylist, Women’s Weekly, The Oldie…you name it, we’ve placed a story in it!

We’ve engaged with bloggers from as far afield as China and film crews from Japan.

Green Tourism: Blooming Marvellous

Launching the spring opening of the Himalayan Gardens and Sculpture Park near Ripon, ITV Tyne Tees, and ITV Calendar broadcast from the gardens as we launched its new sculptures. Drone footage was trailered in the morning regional news broadcasts during Good Morning Britain.

The gardens were featured in the Sunday Express gardening pages and the Sunday Telegraph, as well as part of a four-page feature in Period Living magazine. The Guardian included the gardens in their travel feature on the Yorkshire Dales. Extensive local and regional features included spreads in Yorkshire Living and Yorkshire Life.

Newspaper and photo-led stories hit the Yorkshire Post, Northern Echo, Ripon Gazette, and the Harrogate Advertiser. Cause UK also commissioned a film with the Yorkshire Post to showcase the gardens. Online stories ran on thebusinessdesk.com, On Magazine, Kitchen Garden blog and the Yorkshire Times. Cause UK invited a celebrity patron, Joanna Lumley, who described the gardens as “a slice of heaven” to boost further coverage. We then secured prime time TV with BBC Countryfile, pitching and co-ordinating filming in the gardens for its autumn special, leading to being shortlisted for BBC Countryfile Magazine’s ‘Garden of the Year’ Award.

The gardens reported a huge 75% increase in visitor numbers.

Gorge-ous Views

Over the years, we have hosted successful media launches for tourism attractions, such as How Stean Gorge in Nidderdale.

Launching a new glass floor overlooking the gorge, coverage included broadcast and video with BBC Look North, MSN and Yahoo, the Press Association, BBC Radio York. Photography reached the pages of The Guardian, Telegraph, The Sun, and regional print including the Yorkshire Post and BBC Online. It even featured in National Geographic magazine.

The client said: “The winter months can be very difficult for an outdoor attraction. The media work by Cause UK created a real buzz. We gained national and regional coverage in both digital and printed press, which resulted in a 50% rise in visitor numbers over the winter, and an impact from which we will no doubt be reaping the rewards for months to come.”

Our most recent campaigns included profiling its health and wellbeing offer, launching its new chalets, and announcing new caves. This work resulted in organising a press trip for the Guardian, who ran a positive feature on the destination: The kids go into the cave like superheroes: a family adventure in North Yorkshire | Yorkshire holidays | The Guardian

During Covid-19 we were tasked with coming up with an idea to mark Landscapes for Life Week (Sept 2020) for Nidderdale AONB’s activity with the National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (NAAONB).

?We worked alongside Visit Harrogate (providing them with film, a blog, photos for social media), and the NAAONB press team, and liaised with the National Trust to put a white grand piano on the iconic Brimham Rocks to showcase the beauty of the landscape and the power of nature and the arts to help people through the pandemic.

The concept was rooted in the nation’s renewed appreciation for the great outdoors, its importance on well-being and our need to escape into nature. As all live performances closed, we put the attention on this stunning natural stage; an iconic beauty spot in the AONB.

As well as our own film using a drone for social media, we invited the Press Association’s videographer and photographer, resulting in coverage online via MSN, AOL, and Yahoo, achieving coverage as far afield as Australia, as well as photo-led features in The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The I newspaper, and on BBC regional news; BBC Look North filmed on location.?

Cultural Tourism: Dickensian Legacy

We told the story of Charles Dickens’ links to Malton, reclaiming this important literary legacy for tourism.

Clair at Cause UK also hosted a Dickens’ festival with Miriam Margolyes in the market town for a number of years, and secured TV including BBC Songs of Praise, ITN news, and a BBC prime-time special, Christmas in the Country, with Ellie Harrison.

Miriam Margolyes said:

“The combination of intelligence, ferocious work ethic, massive creativity and utter loyalty make Cause UK my top choice. Thank you for all you do.”

Literary Love

We’ve built a reputation for putting books on the media agenda.

Cause UK run a bespoke three month campaign each year for Ilkley Literature Festival.

Work includes interviewing authors/writing features directly for the Yorkshire Post, Telegraph & Argus, Yorkshire Life, Yorkshire Living, Ilkley Gazette etc. and placing features in wider media, such as the Daily Express, as well as securing profile in The Times and consumer magazines, such as Country Living magazine. Broadcast includes Gyles Brandreth for ITV Calendar on his love of poetry, tying in Ilkley’s remarkable legacy with poet laureates, including Simon Armitage.

For the festival in October 2023, we achieved 140 pieces of online coverage (excluding print and broadcast) with 1.71m estimated views, across three months. Highlights include a feature in the I newspaper, placing authors on Times Radio, and numerous magazine features, with extensive support from the Yorkshire Post and BBC Radio Leeds.

The festival director said: “Thank you so much for doing phenomenal job on the PR once again. The regional press – broadcast and print – definitely helped to keep ticket sales strong across the whole of the sales period. It’s probably been the most consistently strong ticket sales we’ve experienced since I’ve been here. You are creative, tenacious, and brilliant and it’s a joy to work with you.”

Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival

Cause UK was the PR agency for the festival from 2013 to 2019. PR work over these years has helped position Harrogate as the hottest crime writing festival in the UK, if not Europe, with it featuring in the pages of national and international press, including iconic magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar.

We achieved coverage worth ￡3m in the 2018 festival, which was filmed by Sky News and ITV Calendar. 2018’s event saw meaningful features in The Spectator, several pieces in The Times, fixing up interviews with authors Charles Cumming and Lee Child, and pitching author Gregg Hurwitz to write a blog for The Guardian on ‘toxic masculinity’ which had over 1,000 shares on social media. We also pitched the theme to Telegraph journalist Jake Kerridge, featuring Gregg and Lee Child.

We positioned colour pieces on authors Lee Child and Peter Robinson in The Sunday Times.

Features also ran in the Saturday Telegraph, The Express, the Mail on Sunday (who we had secured a media partnership with), the Daily Mail, Yorkshire Post, and Harrogate Advertiser.

The Crime Novel of the Year press release was covered in the Guardian, Yorkshire Post, and Mail on Sunday in print, as well as syndicated to regional press via the Press Association, and in book trade press.

As well as media around the event, year-round press work included Cause UK interviewing Lee Child for Yorkshire Living magazine and a feature in the Independent on Harrogate wearing the crown for the UK’s bookiest town.

Press releases announcing John Grisham as special guest and Lee Child as chair appeared in the Mail on Sunday, and syndicated to regional media across the UK via the Press Association.

The Financial Times picked the festival as one of the best book events, as did Country and Town House magazine, the Mail on Sunday chose it as one of the ‘Hottest Festivals of the summer’ and The Times picked it in its ‘summer’s hottest tickets’ cultural highlights. Author Sophie Hannah picked her favourite books for Good Housekeeping magazine.

We also helped gather author contributions for a major feature in the Guardian, which featured crime writers’ perfect books to celebrate the news the genre has outsold literary fiction, plus pinned down interviews for the BBC on the story.

Coverage included how to write a bestselling crime novel in Marie Claire magazine, an exclusive interview with John Grisham in the Mail on Sunday, a Great Drives travelogue in the Saturday Telegraph with Lee Child, and a feature on Denise Mina in New Zealand news.

Blowing the Trumpet for Yorkshire

Last year we handled the storytelling behind the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra’s reformation, staging a media launch at Harewood House.

We scripted and produced a beautiful film showing off Harewood House as an incredible visitor attraction. Part of our work included securing high-profile patron, Alan Bennett, with quotes of support. Cause UK is now a Special Advisor to the orchestra.

Our story featured in over 138 pieces of press, not including radio and broadcast, with interviews on BBC Radio 4 Broadcasting House. Highlights included a full-page feature in the Guardian, with print coverage in the Times, Daily Mail, Telegraph, the Independent and others.

Coveragebook put the readership at a staggering 1.72 billion, with 3.35 million estimated coverage views.

The Wesley Centre, Malton

Cause UK supported the Project Lead behind the restoration of this iconic church since the very beginning of the project in 2018.

Work including organising and evaluating public surveys to establish the need for the venue, to collate evidence for various funding bids.

Following an overwhelming positive response, we launched a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign to gain backing for the restoration, alongside a fundraising appeal, securing the support of a high-profile patron, Selina Scott.

Media work included profiling the unique history of the church, and engaging with target outlets in the Methodist community to garner support. We also told the story of bespoke projects in regional magazines and the Yorkshire Post, such as restoring its historic organ.

Alongside stakeholder management and public engagement activities, we secured and event managed a series of concerts/talks with well-known artists to trial the idea of it as a new events space, with acts including Julian Lloyd Webber, Lesley Garrett, and Miriam Margolyes – all sell-out shows.

Recently, Cause UK invited local school children to contribute to a time capsule to be buried in the new church, supporting the local community to engage with the building and to mark its historic restoration.

The project has been hugely successful, securing over ￡2m funds for the restoration, and has huge public support as a result of the campaign. The Wesley Centre plans due to launch as a busy events and community hub next year; Cause UK will deliver a high-profile launch event, alongside a PR campaign, then lead on its future events calendar, and PR, exploring partnerships with other local arts organisations, such as Ryedale Festival.

Harewood House Picnic Proms

In the summer of 2021, we managed the PR for the Harewood House Picnic Proms on behalf of Vivo Entertainment, attracting visitors from across the UK to a three-night extravaganza, featuring Alfie Boe, Aled Jones and Sir Willard White.

Click here, to see the coveragebook

Tasks including drafting, issuing press releases, and organising media interviews for the stars of the show, as well as managing the green room.

Cause UK has 14 years’ experience promoting large scale events across the district, including: the Invictus UK opening concert in Sheffield; a charity concert with Gary Barlow in Doncaster; a major photographic retrospective on Mohammed Ali in Bradford, and this month supporting the Yorkshire Asian Young Achiever Awards, to name a few!

Our marketing services

We script and make films, TV adverts, leaflets, brochures, social media assets, annual reports and accounts and regularly provide copy writing for case studies, social impact reports, websites, and funding bids.

Our evaluation

We use Coveragebook to evaluate the impact of our work, which gives clients a dashboard of metrics. Client testimonials, visitor footfall and economic impact figures also provide useful methods for evaluating impact.

We also use the latest PR software, Cision, which provides extensive media monitoring and reports.

Testimonials

We have consistent five-star Google reviews. Find more client testimonials on our website .

Alexandra Balazs, Head of Operations at Prolific North on Cause UK’s win for PR Agency of the Year:

“This entry blew the judges away. The judges fed back that Cause UK, which supports the arts, ethical businesses, and social enterprises, doesn’t do things by halves and has done fabulously. They do commendable work and have stood up for what matters.”

?Below shows the Cause UK team (Far left: sisters, Clair, and Ann), with our Sky Arts project team.