MAR23084610 – SHR6E037P~002 Portfolio: Event Evaluation

Event Evaluation – (2,008)

Introduction:

In this evaluation, I will critically reflect on my role in planning, organising, and managing our event at The Key Club. Our responsibilities included overseeing aspects of promotion, marketing, artist liaison and overall event delivery. This report analyses how effectively me and my group contributed to the success of the event, supported by photographic and film evidence. The overall turnout for our event was solid, however, there were a few mishaps which was either out of our control or could’ve been avoided. There were a few things, largely communication based, that held the event back which I will explain in this evaluation.

Sound tech Issues:

We did have some confusion about the sound tech. Initially, we were told that we would have to source our own sound tech unless we wanted to pay extra for a sound tech from Key Club. We managed to find another student who could do the sound for our event, and we planned to have him do it on the night. We were informed last minute that we would have the sound tech at Key Club do our sound instead. This wasn’t an issue by any means, and if anything, it made me more comfortable to have an experienced professional handle the sound. The issue was that we had our own sound tech show up to our event for no reason as he was no longer needed. This issue, like some of our other issues, was based on communication. I feel we had an issue with communication as we only had one person in our group who was in contact with Key Club. Everyone in the group should have had the contact information as it would’ve made commutation much easier. Adding some of the people at Key Club to our group chat would’ve been optimal for communication as it meant everyone in the group would have direct contact.

Promotion:

Ultimately, I think our promotion was particularly lacking, especially online. Instead of making an Instagram account for our promotion team, we decided to have the bands post about the event directly from their pages and do a collaborative post for the gig announcement. In theory this was a better idea because it meant we didn’t have to promote our event with a new Instagram account with no followers. If the bands posted about it directly from their accounts as a collaborative post, then it means it’ll directly reach their larger following and would have better engagement through the algorithm. A couple of the bands didn’t accept the collaboration post invite until a lot later which held back potential promotion online. If all bands accepted the post invite on the same day, then it would have had a longer time to get wider reach from viewers. What we could’ve done better as a group is we could’ve assigned roles to create some more online content around the event. Simple things like reels and edits introducing each band and using their gig footage compiled into a promotional video would have been a good example. The algorithm favours consistency so if we posted even a few more times, it would’ve had a greater reach and likely could’ve resulted in more people attending. For other means of promotion, we printed off many posters and stuck them around the conservatoire. Me, Ben and Oliver worked on a poster with a QR code to the ticket link. We also printed these posters out as flyers to hand around to people. Me, Ben and Oliver setup a desk in the cafe and offered free cookies for every ticket sale we made. This was fairly effective as it meant people had more of an incentive to buy a ticket and while we did make around 5-8 sales by doing this, it was time consuming as we had to sit around for hours for only a few sales. I feel that if we branched out and did this in places outside the conservatoire then we would get a better reach. For example, some of the band members at the event were from Beckett and the university of Leeds, so it may have been worth setting up a table and promoting around their student union to get a different demographic of people. I also felt that the promotion side of things in the group was rather one-sided and that we would’ve had a better turn out had everyone helped.

Scheduling:

We had slight issues with the event scheduling which resulted in the whole schedule having to be pushed back ten minutes. The first issue was with one of the bands soundchecks taking longer than expected. There was a slight delay in getting the bands in ear monitors working, however, the main issue was with the sound tech having to redo one of the bands levels which made the song check a lot longer than expected. Since we had thirty minutes between the last sound check finishing and doors opening, we had about an hour of contingency time prepared before the first act started. This meant despite the issues, we had scheduled accordingly for contingency. The main issue in scheduling was that the first band played 10 minutes over schedule despite being told to exit the stage by the front of house. This resulted in the next band having to cut a song from their set. This issue wasn’t severe overall and was largely out of our control, however, this could’ve easily been avoided had everyone followed the set times.

Venue Accessibility Issues:

We ran into a few issues with the venue on the night of the event. One of the more important issues was that the venue didn’t have disabled access for one of band members who was in a wheelchair. The venue is underground, so the only options of entry were two sets of stairs from the front and back of the venue. Although this wasn’t ideal, they still managed to get in and play their set. This could’ve been avoided if we were all informed so we could then tell the venue to make entry more accessible.

The venue parking was a logistical issue. Behind the venue, there is a private car park for all the shops in the Merrion centre. This is where goods are shipped and stocked and it is also where key club performers can park. Due to lack of communication, we ended up parking in the wrong areas. In the chat we were given coordinates and were told which bays to park in. After parking up in the bays we were told, we were then told to move our cars by the security on sight. They showed us where we were supposed to park, although they weren’t very happy with us. Since this car park is for deliveries to the merrion centre, it is important to not block any potential delivery trucks by parking in the correct areas. Thankfully, there was no interruptions and no delivery trucks got blocked off, however, if there was no security to tell us to move, we could’ve potentially gotten a fine. This issue was caused by communication errors. Despite being told to park in bays 3 and 4 by the venue, the risk assessment said to not park in the loading bays to avoid obstruction of vehicles. Overall, this was both an error in the venue’s communication and an issue within the group. If we had read through the risk assessment more rigorously, then we could’ve avoided this. On the other hand, a risk of this degree ideally should be reiterated by the venue staff before the day of the event to ensure there is no confusion.

Potential Hazards:

One main flaw in the venue was the piping along the top of the stage. Apparently, there was a pipe leaking water the whole time during the event. This is supposedly an issue they have had for years. We were not made aware of this when planning the event. I never saw the pipe that was leaking, it was reported back to us by one of the band members. This hazard wasn’t mentioned in the risk assessment which is surprising as it poses many risks to artists equipment and Key Clubs equipment and tech. Thankfully, this issue didn’t pose any problems during the night, and no bands gear was damaged. In hindsight, every member of the group should’ve been informed on this issue as this could’ve been mitigated. If we were shown where the leak was then we could’ve taken precaution by providing temporary solutions such as taping the leak and mindfully avoiding the area in which the stage was affected. There was also a hazard onstage when someone spilled an empty cup with ice on the stage. It was during one of the bands set where a cup of ice spilt and started melting on the floor. I only noticed this after the event when we were tearing down the stage, and I saw a cup near the front that had spilt over. Since it was only ice that spilt, there wasn’t much water spillage on the stage, and it wasn’t too close to any power sources or wires so thankfully nothing bad happened. This was a tricky risk to foresee as it solely depends on the band members performing.

Conclusion:

Overall, I think the event was a success despite some of the issues we faced. All the bands put on a great show without any technical errors, and we managed to pull a decent crowd. We did not break even on the venue hire cost as we made £211.60 in revenue and spent £321.55 on venue hire. This left us with a loss of £109.95 which split between us all came out to around £21.99 each. The all-round loss that we faced could’ve been worse; however, it could’ve been avoided if we chose a smaller venue that costed less. In retrospect, somewhere like Santiago would’ve been more appropriate for the size of the turnout. Their venue hire is also free so we would only have to be paying for a sound tech, although Santiago’s backline and sound system isn’t nearly as good as Key Clubs so we would be sacrificing quality over the venue hire. We were all set on hosting the event at Key Club as it’s a better venue and we were more concerned about the quality of the night and the atmosphere rather than the profits. I think the main problem regarding the functionality of our group was the lack of communication and delayed response times. For example, our gig poster took longer than expected simply because of delayed response times. Issues like these could be easily resolved if everyone had completed their tasks in good time and if everyone had put in equal efforts. While this didn’t drastically affect our progress, it did hinder it and it meant we had less time for promotion meaning we would have to pull our 50-cap audience threshold in less time than intended.

We needed at least 40-50 people to breakeven on the venue hire and we sold 31 in total. Based on the typical audience pull from each band, we estimated that we would be able to break even and sell at least 50 tickets. This is why I think some of the bands didn’t bother promoting the event as much since they seemed to rely too heavily on their estimated audience pull. In our role as promoters, I feel we did a good job in promoting the event through word of mouth as this seemed to be the best option for us since we were promoting a smaller event. This meant, however, that our online promotion was lacking since we relied mainly on the estimated pull of each band and promotion through word of mouth. At the time, this seemed like the best path since online promotion felt like our weakest option. Retrospectively, this wasn’t the case as we likely would’ve benefited from at least posting some promotional reels on social media to cast a wider audience reach.

Event Evidence Video

https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=247a16b1-8746-4e13-9e59-b422012e56e3 https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=70294228-ba9a-4cbf-9b84-b422012e81b0 https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=2d5faae5-29c5-4657-b2ad-b422012e96a1 https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=89c7e123-fa11-4cd5-855c-b422012ebf1e https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=40dd5640-e17b-4741-a311-b422012edf56 https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=955d7665-320e-4bf0-91f2-b422012f0ba6 https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=fcfd30b6-e9b2-4244-af67-b422012f2b7d https://leedsconservatoire.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=52e29afd-f4f2-4683-ba61-b422012f59c4