We shine the spotlight on FIRST’s winning entry at this year’s micebook Awards. The global agency picked up the award for Best DE&I Initiative for its work with Google on The Neu Project…
FIRST partnered with Google at IMEX 2022 to produce a meaningful video to help launch its pioneering movement, The Neu Project. The project is designed to create a more welcoming and inclusive world for neurodivergent communities, while inspiring change within the events industry by challenging event professionals everywhere to create more neuro-inclusive events.
FIRST’s approach was to celebrate the stories of the project’s team and community, many of whom are neurodivergent themselves. The agency wanted to ensure an authentic and emotionally rich video, while also adhering to the best practices for neurodivergent communities and ensuring that interviewees were given sufficient time to prepare beforehand, creating a safe space for them while filming.
Three hours’ worth of content was edited to create an impactful 3-minute video that highlights neurodiversity and calls upon event professionals to create a neuro-inclusive world, which is now hosted on The Neu Project website and YouTube. FIRST also released “How to Build Inclusive Experiences for All Brain Types,” a blog post supporting the Neu Project and detailing the best practices for building inclusive experiences, which touches upon how colours, communication, formatting, spaces, and content all impact on neuro-inclusivity.
The launch was a huge success, attracting 8,500+ unique website visits in the first four weeks, 100+ event industry subscribers, articles in industry publications, and partnerships with several DEI leaders and many top global corporations. One judge said they felt educated by this submission, while another praised the impactful video, which “raises the profile of an underrepresented aspect of events planning”.