For partners
Not a logo on a banner. A room full of people who wouldn't be there without you.
We are building the partner group for the 2026 relaunch. Here is what you would get, what we would ask of you, and an honest account of what you would be buying into at this stage.
The proposition
Three things you can point at.
A proof case
Financial capability and enterprise are easy to fund and hard to show. Most of what gets funded produces an attendance figure. This produces a public, ticketed event that teenagers costed, priced, sold and delivered — and a profit-and-loss account they wrote themselves.
The age nobody reaches
Most creative and employability programmes start at 16. By 16, the decision that determines whether a young person is available to them has already been made. We work at 13 to 17. If you already fund a 16-plus programme, this is the feeder that fills it.
Content that isn't a case study
Sixteen weeks of young people doing something genuinely interesting, ending in a live event. The participants are the ones telling it, which is the only version anybody believes.
Structure
A group, not a single funder.
Our working model for a region is a headline partner, a small number of supporting partners, and a wider group of local businesses — designed so that no single withdrawal stops a cohort.
Beyond money
The partners who get most out of this send people, not just budget.
- Mentors. Two or three hours across the sixteen weeks, from someone who does the real job. A finance lead explaining margin to a fifteen-year-old who is about to price a ticket is worth more than the slide.
- Access. A venue, a rehearsal space, a meeting room, a supplier introduction, a piece of kit.
- A door. The most valuable thing a partner ever gave this programme was introducing a talented fifteen-year-old to people who could book him. That is still true.
Who is behind it
Twenty years of putting on events for people too young to get into them.
Marmalade JAMS was founded by Aaron Emmett, an entrepreneur and former event producer who spent years running one of the UK's largest under-18s event operations — including MTV Hits under-18s nights and the Dance2k events — and who was part of the production team for Capital FM's Party in the Park in Hyde Park.
Alongside that, he produced corporate events for Xerox, Deutsche Bank, HBOS and Audi, and holds written commendations from all four for that production work.
The honest part
What you would be buying into at this stage.
An early partner is not buying a proven programme. They are buying a place in the one that produces the evidence.
Nothing is incorporated yet
Deliberately. The structure will be built to fit the partnership that carries the relaunch. If your funding requires a registered charity, tell us early — it is a decision we are making now, and it is one you could shape.
There is no cohort running today
The curriculum, safeguarding, evaluation framework and school materials are built and in use. The cohort is the missing piece, and it is the piece a partner most directly unlocks.
We are not quoting impact figures
Percentages circulated in earlier versions of our materials that were never formally gathered. They have been withdrawn from everything. The first relaunch cohort produces the first numbers we will stand behind.
The ambition, stated plainly so you can judge it
A cohort of young people producing a 10,000-capacity event in Hyde Park by 2030.
That is a long way from a community centre in High Wycombe, and we know it. But large sponsored summer events already run in that park with the infrastructure in place, and the case for putting a young people's production team inside one of them gets stronger with every cohort that delivers.