This summer, IE Brand & Digital opened the doors to our sustainable new studio premises in Birmingham.
IE is a values-driven business, like the charity, health and education clients we serve. This new studio enables us to offer our clients a better experience for creative collaboration with our award-winning team, all under one eco-friendly roof.
IE is proud to be a Birmingham agency, but we serve many clients in London and right across the UK and Ireland, like the ACO itself, plus its members Clergy Support Trust and the Bank Workers Charity. Our consultants regularly travel to our clients or increasingly deliver successful projects remotely.
The whole team worked from home throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, delivering some of our best work. And we continued to add to our impressive client list with names like Relate and Mind.
Now that we’re back, we’ve adopted a flexible, hybrid-working approach. Staff still have the option to work from home up to four days per week, but our beautiful and inspiring new environment is helping us to rediscover the joys of face-to-face collaboration.
We’re embracing being back in the city more regularly and welcoming our clients and creative partners into the studio.
Sustainable, eco-friendly premises
I’ve purchased the property for the exclusive use of IE Brand & Digital, as a significant long-term investment in the agency and its people.
For the interior fit-out we’ve focused on sustainability. The Kettleworks site is part of a key regeneration area and reuses the original superstructure of the factory it replaces.
We’ve added bicycle storage and a shower to encourage staff to walk, run or cycle into work. And we’re minimising our carbon footprint and environmental impact with renewable electricity, LED-only lighting, triple-glazed windows, and oodles of insulation.
Other features include carbon-neutral carpets and acoustic felt panels made from recycled plastic bottles.
It’s all part of our ongoing efforts to balance purpose with profit, and a cornerstone of our aim to become a Certified B Corporation.
Bringing nature indoors
We’ve taken care to create a space that’s beautiful and inspiring for our team and our clients. We installed a fabulous hanging plant gantry to bring a bit of nature indoors, so we now have over 200 plants in the studio, plus a wall of living reindeer moss and dried bun moss to help with the acoustics in the main meeting room.
We also bought 4 Briiv air purifiers to create safe, clean air. They use 100% natural and renewable materials like reindeer moss and coconut coir fibre.
We’re confident this improved studio environment will make us even more attractive as an employer. That means we can continue to support our clients with the industry’s very best Consultants, Creatives, Web Developers, and Project Managers.
Shared values
Unlike so many of our clients, IE is neither a charity nor a membership organisation. But we fervently believe that staff and clients choose us because of shared values, and we delight in our communal sense of purpose, value and belonging.
This is brought to life through the studio’s crowning glory: a beautiful mural with IE’s mission statement: Make a Difference, Enjoy the Ride.