Café Momentum on the Road
If You Can’t Take the Heat…
In early 2019, juvenile justice program and Dallas restaurant darling Café Momentum contacted Ensemble to help take its brand on a national road show to start building, well, momentum toward replicating the model in new communities. Since opening its doors to the landmark Dallas restaurant in 2015, the program has garnered a national reputation as a replicable, sustainable model to help break the incarceration cycle for system-involved youth.
As an early step toward national growth, Café Momentum and its umbrella organization, Momentum Advisory Collective, set out to create pop-up restaurant experiences in target markets across the country. The concept played on Café Momentum’s origin story, gaining support (and funding) through Sunday night pop-up dinners prior to opening the first brick and mortar restaurant.
We came alongside to facilitate the experiential design and created restaurant experiences in a ballpark lounge in Nashville, TN; an indoor/outdoor restaurant in Los Angeles’ Fashion District; and in partnership with the NFL, Players’ Coalition, and Stand Together the night before the Miami Super Bowl in iconic South Beach, FL.
Ensemble worked to ensure these dinners delivered the incredible Café Momentum story in ways that moved NFL players to tears and left them talking on social media long after the actual event. Every detail — bespoke décor, detailed programming, high-impact gifting, security, brand management (especially with so many partners at the table) — was important to making sure guests left understanding the potential power of a Café Momentum in their neighborhoods.
SCOPE OF WORK
Event Concept and Execution
Program Development
Stage and Production Management
Graphic Design Management
Sponsor/Partner Benefit Fulfillment
Gifting
Texas Women's Foundation Events
Beyond Ballroom Walls
Dallas has a hefty list of must-attend philanthropic luncheons each fall and Texas Women’s Foundation’s annual luncheon has reigned supreme on that list for advocates of women and girls. Formerly Dallas Women’s Foundation, Texas Women’s Foundation (TXWF) invited Ensemble to produce the luncheon for the first time in 2016.
Our challenge? Buck the norm. Get outside of the traditional way of thinking about a rubber chicken luncheon and drive impact and connection.
Since 2016, we have worked closely with the TXWF team to explore themes and messages inherent in the keynote speakers’ messages and we’ve found ways to further those messages to reach beyond the in-the-room audience.
2016 saw New Orleans artist Candy Chang speaking on her community-based art practice, featuring her “Before I Die…” walls. In response, we built and installed “A Better World Is…” walls in the lobby outside the luncheon ballroom and in malls around town.
2017 featured botanist and STEM advocate Hope Jaren. We complimented her talk with limited-edition custom trading cards (inspired by baseball cards) featuring fierce women in STEM fields.
As the years have progressed, we have continued to evolve and push boundaries with TXWF, including helping the organization launch its new statewide brand at its 35th Annual Luncheon, and in the past year, pushing to reach audiences across Texas through a virtual luncheon and supportive content like podcasts.
SCOPE OF WORK
Event Concept and Execution
Stage and Production Management
Video Production
Graphic Design Management
Exhibit/Special Project Management
Going the Extra Yard for Teachers
Leveraging the reach of the College Football Playoff National Championship to celebrate and empower educators
In 2015, college football’s annual championship game moved away from the BCS Bowl Game to a brand-new playoff model: The College Football Playoff National Championship.
The board of directors of the newly minted championship game allocated the proceeds of its merchandise sales to fund the College Football Playoff Foundation (CFPF): an entity dedicated to elevating the teaching profession by inspiring and empowering educators.
As the CFPF considered its first steps, the leadership team approached Ensemble to ideate, strategize, and build a signature event to celebrate educators in the host cities where the National Championship Game would be played each year. The evolution of those conversations led to the creation of the Extra Yard for Teachers Summit.
The Summit has evolved from market to market, from TED-styled talks, to serving as a community hub for teachers and their families, to celebration, and more. In six years, we reached more than 6,500 teachers across Dallas (2015), Phoenix (2016), Tampa (2017) Atlanta (2018), San Jose, CA (2019), and New Orleans (2020) – and thousands more with online content posted from the conferences. We’ve worked with hundreds of speakers, entertainers, artists, and community partners to build out programming to make the teachers the real winners of the CFP National Championship Game weekend.
At the Summit, we’ve flash-funded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of DonorsChoose.org teacher projects, facilitated classroom makeovers, helped connect teachers to down payments on homes, produced music videos, and had so much fun along the way!
SCOPE OF WORK
Event Concept and Execution
Speaker Curation and Program Development
Stage and Production Management
Video Production
Graphic Design Management
Sponsor/Partner Benefit Fulfillment
#moveafestival
a project of
#moveafestival
What started out as an opportunity to work alongside The Dallas Morning News, The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, and several other partner institutions to produce the annual Dallas Festival of Ideas turned into a logistical tour-de-force at the 11th hour when weather threatened to implode the outdoor festival. This was our second at-bat with the Dallas Festival of Ideas, and our role had expanded to include all artistic production, speakers and stage production, as well as to oversee the team responsible for vendor and community partner exhibits.
The Festival steering committee had a vision to host the event on Dallas’ front lawn: the sprawling plaza in front of Dallas City Hall. When the weather reports painted increasingly grim pictures of the weekend forecast, the team made the hard call to move the entire Festival inside the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center. Within a 72-hour period, our team re-conceived sites plans and space usage, reformatted performance and art installations in the new confines, worked with dozens of community partners to revamp their schedules and plans, ate a lot of pizza, chocolate and coffee (and wine) in our war room, and moved a festival. While the weather didn’t ever materialize to quite the level we were fearing, it was about 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity, so we were all grateful for the air conditioning. And for the dance party we had with the Polyphonic Spree as the Festival’s closing act!
SCOPE OF WORK
Event Concept and Execution
Speaker Curation and Program Development
Stage and Production Management
Art and Performance Curation and Installation Management
Sponsor/Partner Benefit Fulfillment
Exhibitor Management