Eventia launched a consultation for its members at its AGM last night (2 July).
Over the past year , with members of both bodies attending each other's events.
Simon Hughes, who took up his new role as chairman of Eventia at the AGM, told Event: "Because of the similarities in our areas of interest, particularly in delivering content and live activity through film and interactive media, we're now at a point where we've put a proposal out to both memberships as part of a consultation process.
"We think there is a lot of benefit for bringing these two organisations together, and if everyone is happy we propose we will merge. We're campaigning to do that by the autumn of this year."
He added: "We've worked out that if we combine the interest of our membership and the IVCA membership we're probably talking about a £36 billion industry sector."
Hughes told Event a merger would reduce fragmentation in the industry: "There are too many industry trade associations. Since our first senior advisory council event around two years ago, one of the big issues that came up from across the industry is there are simple too many trade associations working in our space and it creates a very fragmented industry sector and lots of disparate voices. Something needs to be done about that."
The IVCA is holding its AGM tonight (3 July) and will present the consultation to its members.
The consultation period will continue until the end of August and a formal proposal is expected to be put forward in September.
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