Today we’re excited to launch the first annual Hoop Awards, and announce (drum roll) the 2018 finalists!

The Hoop Awards 2018 celebrate and recognise the activity organisers and people that go above and beyond to entertain, educate and inspire children across Britain.

Our mission at Hoop is to help families discover new activities their kids will love. As part of this mission, we’re here to support the thousands of incredible family Organisers that make a difference in our children’s lives. We list over 70,000 family activities each month nationwide, and never fail to be amazed by the passion and energy that goes into the activities you’ll find on Hoop.

With this in mind, we thought it was long overdue to recognise the very best family organisers that never fail to wow children across the country.

The Best Family Organisers

The Hoop Awards 2018 recognise up to eight Finalists in twelve categories across our eleven biggest cities. These Finalists represent the best of Hoop in 2018, and were selected based upon their popularity on Hoop within their category.

Over 700,000 families use Hoop to discover new family activities. To create our shortlist, we looked at the number of people viewing, saving and sharing activities to identify the most popular and loved family organisers nationwide.

Big Fish Little Fish nominated as a Best Family Entertainment Finalist across three cities

Categories cover: Best for Babies, Best for Toddlers, Best Free Activities, Best After-School Club or Class, Best for Creative Fun, Best for Getting Active, Best for Learning, Best for Mini-Performers, Best for Outdoors Fun, Best Science & Technology, Best Live Performances & Family Theatre and Best Family Entertainment.

As you’d expect from such a broad range of categories we have an incredible and diverse range of Organisers nominated from national institutions and like the The British Museum and franchises like Baby Sensory to local gems such as Bee Spanish in Edinburgh and the Bulwell Community Toy Library in Nottingham.

Winners will be recognised as a leader within their field. To celebrate your contribution you’ll also receive an extensive package of marketing exposure to celebrate your win.

Mucky Monkeys nominated as finalist in Best for Babies in Liverpool

If you’re an Organiser, tell families to vote for you! Check out our Awards Badges and Banners webpage to access your Finalist and ‘Vote for Us’ badges, buttons and artwork to prompt your customers to vote for you.

If you’re not on the list, don’t worry. Families can still nominate your Organisation when they vote and you’ll still be eligible to win within your category. The Organiser with the most votes in their category and city will be named a Hoop Awards 2018 Winner.

We’ll be announcing winners on 16th April and over the coming weeks we’ll be showcasing some of the Finalists on social media and in the app.

As a final note, we wanted apologise in advance to those Organisers and families that live outside of the cities we’ve chosen for the 2018 Awards, we know there’s incredible people running family activities and events beyond the big cities, but for our first year we’ve limited the scope to the most popular places on Hoop. We hope to recognise more places in 2019.