From Ballet to Big-Stage: Ross Wheeler on Imagination’s Live Event Magic
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Who is Ross Wheeler and what unique path led him to head live events at Imagination?
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Hello, everybody, and welcome along to the Event Industry News Podcast with me, James Dixon. Wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon, or evening, whenever or wherever you tune into today's podcast from. My guest today has had, on the face of it anyway, uh a unique journey um into the events industry to the point that they are today. Um we're going to be finding out a little bit more about them, the organization that they work for, the work that they do, maybe some of the clients that they work for. um on a global level. I'm delighted to say that joining the Event Industry News Podcast for the first time is the business director and head of live at Imagination, Ross Wheeler. Ross, a very warm welcome to the podcast.
Hi, James. Morning, afternoon.
Yeah, absolutely. You never know really. That's why we I kind of say I fell into the habit of saying it, because you can't take for granted that anybody's gonna l you know, anybody's gonna listen to it at what we would call a normal time of day. You know, people, you know, listen to these things all over the world. Indeed, when they're flying all over the world now, such as the the way of technology.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well it's nice to be with you.
Yeah, thanks very much. And you um you uh join us today from Imagination's base, um in London, but uh having just I think you said off air just before we started flown in from Canada recently for the job over there.
Just back in from Canada having a look at some stuff over there. So yeah, just good to good back to be back in London and actually yeah, sun's shining, so it's uh makes a change.
It's glorious over here at the moment. And I said in my introduction, Ross, um, that th that you had on the face of it anyway, uh a sort of a unique start to to your career uh and and the journey into events wasn't fr from perhaps what we would call a you know, s a traditional route. Um tell us a little bit about yourself first of all and that journey that I've alluded to and um uh and how you'll find yourself here today.
Well yeah, I guess if we wind the clock right back, um I actually started bizarrely uh training as a ballet dancer with the Royal Ballet. So back in my early early years, I think my sister was doing some ballet classes. I was sitting outside watching true Billy Elliott story and uh ended up just getting involved in sort of like the Saturday schools and then actually threw into White Lodge at uh at the Royal Ballet School where yeah, ballet was very much my life for uh Yeah. And at which point I had sort of several problems about, you know, back and knee and growth problems that anyone who's in that world will know about, which sort of took me out of it, took me into a bit more of the other side of performing, which I didn't particularly like.
And that took me into sort of backstage stage management, lighting, theatre, did some A-levels, ultimately ended up going to Lambda, London Academy of Musical Dramatic Arts, did all the backstage courses there, thought I was going to very much go into sort of like West End stage management, theatrics and all that kind of thing. but got sort of caught up in a bit of a whirlwind that is imagination, um, which is sort of, you know, incredible design communication agency, does stuff all over the world, turned up here twenty eight years ago, um, didn't think I was going to sort of like like it that much. They said, look, come on board, we do loads of production. And I joined as a junior production manager.
Uh with a lot of knowledge about theatricality. Um, having been on stage myself at the opera house as a junior member for quite a few hundred performances, but also now understanding the technical.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Who is Ross Wheeler and what unique path led him to head live events at Imagination?
0:01–11:42
2
How did Ross transition from training as a Royal Ballet dancer to a production manager?
11:42–22:53
3
Why does theatrical thinking matter for creating impactful live brand experiences?
22:53–26:51
4
How important are rehearsal and timing when delivering large‑scale events?
26:51–31:24
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Event Industry News Podcast
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