City Girl Network brings community together with a new series of events

Last month, 60 people gathered at PLATF9RM’s North Road venue for the the City Girl Network’s first Brighton Business Connections event. The mission was simple: make it fun, varied and encourage as many people to talk as possible.

The event officially began at 6.30pm with informal networking – though a good 20 people arrived 15 minutes earlier to kick off the party even sooner.

City Girl Network Founder Pippa Moyle said: “With drinks flowing, people chatting, and my dog (Scruffy) high-pawing everyone who walked through the door, it was clear from the outset that we were in for a good time.

“Brighton Business Connections is a brand new series of networking events powered by the City Girl Network – my business, to be specific.”

The City Girl Network is a Brighton-born media and events company helping to connect over 110,000 women in 18 communities across the country. Locally, there is Brighton Girl (29,000 members), Worthing Girl (2,000 members) and, as of last month, Rural Sussex Girl (500 members).

Pippa added: “We help women find friends, business connections, jobs, housemates, travel companions and things to do in order to feel more connected to where they are. Every week we host multiple events across the country, publish online content and moderate thousands of posts in our Facebook Groups.

“Since March, we’ve been running a series of monthly panel events for the Brighton Girl community – covering numerous conversations about growing a creative career, running an ethical business and highlighting local Founders stories. Hundreds of our members have been able to grow business connections, find work and gain valuable professional development advice in a safe, supportive space.”

The majority of Brighton Girls who attend those events have never been to a formal networking event.

Pippa explains: “This inspired us to replicate our safe, supportive and energetic experience in an all-gendered space with networking at the very heart of it. Giving it the straight-to-the-point title: Brighton Business Connections.

“By 7pm, everyone took their seats for a 10 minute meditation by Emily at Revitalise (our wellbeing sponsor for the event). It gave everyone the opportunity to centre their intentions and shed any anxiety that was lingering. This followed a panel discussion with Sam Thomas, Anna Burtt and Maya Leftwick, discussing growth and management of a career in the creative industries.”

Each panellist came from a slightly different part of the creative industries: Sam from his experience running the Sussex Business Times, County Business Clubs and Firm Balls, Anna from her the publishing industry, and Maya from running the recent Brighton Book Festival.

The discussion was followed by a short networking break before coming back together for a lively Q&A with the panellists and a quickfire pitch round for five professionals chosen from a hat, including one from our charity partner, Together Co.

Another short networking break led into a speed-networking session for the second half of the evening. It was a lively session of multiple rounds, with everyone feeling that they’d met most people in the room in some form or another as the event drew to a close.

Whilst some left at the end of the event, a big group continued the conversation down at The Dorset afterwards, who’d offered a discount to our attendees – an unexpected tradition that the Network fully intends to continue at the next one.

Since that night, attendees have gone on to find new jobs, clients and collaborative opportunities, as well as investing in courses and services (i.e. accountants, marketing and legal representation).

These events will happen every other month, with the next one happening on Thursday 7th September and the main panel discussion focusing on utilising marketing, PR and branding.

https://citygirlnetwork.com/tickets/brighton-business-connections-creative-industries