Time-Management

Effective time management was essential to ensure that all stages of planning, booking, marketing and production were completed within the time we got together as a group and announced our event. Once we formed our group we started brainstorming the type of event we wanted to put on. My initial idea was to put on a club night which is what we are doing. There are multiple reasons why we chose this compared to having a band night. Firstly, my experience in events comes from club nights involving DJs and secondly, doing so there were fewer logistical and personnel demands. Choosing a club night allowed us to manage our time more effectively, as it involved fewer personnel to manage and technical requirements, reducing risks and last-minute changes (Routlege, 2012). We then talked about what we wanted our event to be about, if it were to have a theme or be a charitable event, etc. As many of us knew ‘up & coming’ DJs who are great and haven’t really hit the limelight yet, we chose to dedicate our event to emerging artists, with the genre of the night being ‘Garage’ (also known as UKG). 

We initially chose Belgrave Music Hall as it appeared larger than Headrow House, with a 350 capacity. However, after further discussion, we decided to opt for a smaller venue and chose Headrow House. As a team, we drafted an email to express our interest in hosting an event in their event space. After creating our budget, we realised that with an initial 150-ticket capacity our artist budget was limited. However, after further discussions with Andrew, we learned that as a club night the venue capacity would be 350, allowing us to increase our artist budget. Once we had discussed and set on a date kept on hold, we researched artists and created a spreadsheet of potential bookings, prioritising three key artists. Holding a date with the venue early in the planning process helped us shape and structure our timeline and allowed us to set deadlines for bookings, marketing and artwork, before we announced the event (Wiley, 2020). The first artist we contacted no longer played shows and recommended Jae from the same agency. We then contacted Jae, who referred us to his booking agent, Ed, and negotiations began. Once the full lineup was confirmed, we finalised contracts, confirmed Jae, and paid the deposit. We then created the artwork and confirmed with the venue. Prioritising the bookings early was essential for time management as confirming the headline act allowed us to finalise artwork before sending it off to the venue, confirming the date and announcing the event (Break Through, N/A). As well as this, all artwork that included Jae had to go through his agent, so making sure that the artists were confirmed early, meant that all of this approval could be done quickly instead of adding delay to the on-sale of the event.

Through this process we progressed well as a group and talked through each step together. We do all our communication via a WhatsApp group chat and have the occasional call when we need to discuss something of importance or finance-related for clarity. We created a Gmail account which we used as our business email to contact venues and agents so that we looked as professional as possible. Using this means of communication allowed us to make quick decisions and avoid delays that could occur through slower forms of communication. As well as that, we also created a separate Lloyds bank account so that all funds and payments are in one place and not confused with other payments if they were in someone’s personal bank account. We also created a payment tracker to track who has paid what and when. For this event we had to come up with a brand for ourselves and settled on ‘Eclypse Events’. Using this gmail we stored everything on a shared drive folder and organised it so that the rest of the group could understand what was where. Within the drive we kept all our admin documents such as our budget sheet which I set up to automatically calculate numbers and totals when imputed into the cells. This made it easy for the group to understand what money was going where from just a glance instead of having to work it out every time.

We created a shared timeline outlining all tasks from initial planning to post-event evaluation, helping the group visualise deadlines. Although we had this timeline, we mainly worked through tasks progressively, one by one, to ensure each stage was completed to the best possible standard before moving to the next task. By doing this, it helped prevent mistakes and the potential for time-consuming corrections later. 

In terms of roles, we chose a flexible approach to roles and worked on everything together and always asked for feedback/approval from other members of the group. I spent most of my time creating the artwork which included status artwork as well as animations and edits which will be used for marketing and promotional purposes. I also looked after bookings, liaising with Jae’s agent mostly. As we were working with a third party company to book Jae, we regularly talked on the chat, if not called, to make sure the decisions we were making were viable and agreed with the rest of the group before going ahead. While the roles were flexible, it allowed us to work to our individual strengths, streamlining processes and ensuring deadlines were met.

We had roughly 3 months from getting into our groups until we announced our event on Friday 19th December. We chose this date as it was one of the universal pay-days before Christmas meaning people were likely to buy tickets around that time especially as they had just been paid. As we had to announce this event around Christmas, this has reflected in the poor ticket sales so far. This 19th December being our main deadline, it meant that artwork had to be done, approved, artist and venue booked plus an allowed week for the venue to process our confirmation and create our event page on their website and on DICE. Ultimately there was a lot of work and stages of this planning process that went into the organisation before announcing the event.

Overall, working within a limited timeframe like this meant we had to make decisions efficiently as a group in order to move on to the next stage of putting this event together and avoid unnecessary delay, especially as we had to liaise with third parties such as the venue and agents.

Production

For this event, due to it being a club night only accommodating 4 DJs, not much equipment is needed. It is a case of 4x CDJs and 1x DJM mixer, a LiteDeck table and 2 booth monitors. We will be using the in-house sound system for ease and budget as well as the in-house lighting rig (Amplified Production Group, 2024). Even though it’s not very spec’d out, it still does the job and is used for all events that go through Headrow House. We have created a technical rider for the event which outlines all gear we need. As we are also having a hybrid act, AJ, we have also requested an SM58 microphone and a mic stand. The DJ equipment and microphone will be up on the raised stage in the event space, and the crowd on the main floor. Depending on how ticket sales go closer to the time of the event, we may hire a floor package of 4 DMX strobe lights placed behind the DJ on the stage floor. We have created renders in Vectorworks of what it would realistically look like on the stage. This would cost a bit so we want to make sure that we are clear of the break even point before doing so. The microphone will be routed to FOH, which will be placed at the back of the room, from an on-stage patch box instead of through the mixer on the CDJs, to give AJ room to move on the stage.

In terms of tech riders, only Jae provided us with one, whereas the other artists didn’t as we had agreed with them on specification before confirming them to play. In terms of transport, all artists have a flat fee which includes transport, for example Jae, whereas some artists have a performance fee plus travel. Some artists we are providing transport for, such as Greenhouse, whereas the others are sorting it themselves. We are not providing any flights as all artists are UK based and only are providing petrol and Ubers for some artists.

For the day of the show, we will get to the venue in good time for a 10pm changeover for a 11pm start. We will introduce ourselves to the Venue Manager and get ready for the changeover for a sharp 11pm start, so that no sets are cut. We will have roles during this changeover as there are many jobs to do. For example, someone will be on production and helping the sound techs with the setup. Someone will be on setting up the box office/explaining to the door staff regarding ticket scanning/on the door ticket purchases. Someone will be on artist liaison which includes setting up the green room, getting riders ready and greeting the first artist when they arrive. Someone will be the event manager which means that they will have the responsibility of meeting the venue manager and attending the security briefing to which they will also show our wristbands to security. Finally, this is still to be decided but we may have decorations, which means that someone will be in charge of putting these up within the hour that we have. On the night the event manager will be in charge of ticket platforms which means that they will need to turn online ticket sales off at the time of last entry. As well as that, they will need to upload the guestlist to RA. Even though we haven’t used roles previously, it is imperative that we do during the night of the event so that jobs aren’t being done by more than two people unless needed.

For the load in/load out, unless we have an external floor package for lighting, we don’t have to worry about this as all other equipment will be sorted by the venue. If we do, we will liaise with the hire company and the venue on when the best time is to pick these up the next day.

In terms of budgets for the event we are not having barriers or hiring extra security. For the moment it seems quiet with ticket sales and unlikely to sell out meaning I don’t think that the need for ‘pit barriers’ is essential. There will be security placed by the stage if anyone were to step up onto the stage.

About a week or two before the event we will start advancing the show (Ari Herstand, 2023). Within the spreadsheet it will include offers so that it shows the artists and their offer, inducing how many guests list spaces they have, contacts, tech riders, set times, hospitality riders, staff contacts and roles. We will advance with each artist individually, whereas Jae has an advancing team who we will advance the show with nearer the time. The day before the show, the artist liaison will create group chats with each artist and introduce themselves and ask if they have any questions. On the day of the show, the artist liaison will send them a message a few hours before the show to ask for their ETA. We will do this communication on WhatsApp. As well as that the Event Manager will be in charge of liaising with the venue and crew and will create a Whatsapp chat with all working personnel (excluding security) such as Venue Manager, Sound Tech and the rest of the Eclypse team so that there is a point of contact if anything were to go wrong. Due to the venue being small, radios will not be needed. 

For hospitality, only Jae has provided us with a hospitality rider. Due to him being the headliner, we will fulfill this rider and will provide a selection of drinks and snacks for the other artists and their guests. Any food such as fruits will be bought the day of the show to ensure that they are fresh. We will also buy a few crates of bottled waters pre-event and, during the advance, ask the venue if they are able to provide cups, ice, lime and lemons. Depending on budget and costs we will try to get canned water as it can be recycled.

Health and safety is a very important part of putting on an event. Taking precautions against anything that goes wrong removes you from liability for any accident(s) (Bowdin, 2021). We took out a risk assessment by going around Headrow House and highlighted any potential risks such as electrical equipment, trip hazards, fire escapes, etc that we saw from entering the building, to being in the space itself. It is very important that the Event Manager does a walk around to make sure that all fire exits are unblocked and clear and that queuing lanes are set up properly so that no risks are posed. On the risk assessment, we assessed the risk and provided remedies for each risk. We also spoke to Andrew, who took us round, advised how much security there will be and where they will be stationed on the night. We also asked if there were any common issues with events that occur in this space, but he assured us that there weren’t any. We checked with the venue that their liability insurance was in date and that it would cover us for our event.

Contingency Plans

We have a few contingency plans if things were to go wrong before or during the event. In terms of the venue, let’s say having to shut down for example or cancel our event, we would see if the sister venue, Belgrave Music Hall, would be available. If this were the case, we would get in contact with all ticket holders and artists and update them on the new location. If Jae were to pull out due to illness, etc we would contact his agent, Ed, and see if there was an artist of similar interest/genre who could replace him, subject to cost. If a support artist were to pull out, we would find another artist in the same genre and price range. After having gone live with this event, we have seen multiple interest from other DJs who have asked to play at future events, so this wouldn’t be too hard to do. In terms of DJ equipment, if it were to break before the event, we would look at potential workarounds such as using equipment from Belgrave, subject to availability, or look for local hire. We would discuss this with Headrow House due to it not being our fault at the last minute and see what costs can be covered on their end. If equipment were to fail during a set, we would make sure that before the event there are spare CDJs and Mixers ready to go in the event of this happening.

With tickets and ticket sales, if ticket sales weren’t great before the event, we would put the tickets on high discounts, give more guestlist spaces to the artists and as a last resort, give out multiple free tickets to the team’s friends and families so that we still fill out the room.

Finance

Our finances are very tight and well organised. As mentioned, we have a budget sheet and a bank account where we keep all information/funds for this event and the company  Our budget spreadsheet works out the total costs, revenue, profit and even minimum ticket sales to break even (Julie Haddix, 2026). Firstly, we created the template and put in all our estimated costs for each part of creating, promoting and running an event. Once we had spoken to all the artists and had rough costs for each, we plotted them into the spreadsheet so that we could get rough costs and profit numbers before confirming them. As we kept our costs low, we were able to spend more on artists. Keeping our costs low meant that we could aim for a certain amount of tickets and if we were to sell more tickets than the break even point, we would look to spend some of the excess on extra production or take it as profit. We also offered every artist a £150 sell-out bonus to incentivise them to help promote the event and sell tickets (Jeri Goldstein, 2016). If the event wasn’t to do very well our maximum loss would be around £990. As well as that, we would need to sell 36% of tickets to break even.

Marketing

For marketing, we are using multiple apps and platforms to do this. Firstly, we have tickets listed on 3 ticket platforms: DICE, Resident Advisor (RA) and Fatsoma. We have to use DICE as they are partners with Headrow House. We chose to use RA because a lot of similar events are listed on there and it’s a very popular ticketing platform for events in general where you can discover events in your area, and Fatsoma because Leeds being a very student city, we want to target students for this event and Fatsoma is mostly used for popular student events throughout the week, especially on a Wednesday. We also plan to market this event to people who weren’t able to get tickets to the popular night, Mischief, which sold out months ago. In terms of social media, we are using Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube (shorts). We have created accounts for ‘Eclypse Events’ on all of these platforms and completely set up the page to look as professional as possible throughout all platforms. We created a hoo.be smart link to put in all our accounts’ bios so that it is easy for customers to find ticket links to the event. For promotional ads we are using Meta Ads which allows us to advertise our event across Facebook and Instagram which are the most likely place people find out about events rather than TikTok or YouTube (Oren Sharon, 2025). In our ads we are targeting an age group from 18-35 year olds who are based in Leeds and have an interest in EDM, raves/clubnights and festivals. With our first run of ads we have seen good engagement with other 200 landing page views, however it hasn’t converted to any ticket sales yet. We have created promotional material to a professional standard using software such as Adobe After Effects and Premier Pro to create engaging content which will help increase tickets sales for this event. We have budgeted for £150 to spend on Meta ads. Now that the event is approaching fast, we are starting a marketing campaign which induces posting content every day that people can relate to and make it seem that they are missing out on a great event. We have also approached a few Leeds-based magazines/newspapers and have already seen features from an online-news page. Finally, to help launch the Instagram account, we reached out to all artists and organised an ‘Artist Spotlight’ series where we have posted about each artist individually and collaborated on the post with them, meaning that it is reposted to their followers which we have seen really help our engagement.

Artist Biographies

Artist Biography – Jae Depz

Jae Depz has cemented himself as a pivotal figure in the Bassline and Garage scene. His high energy remixes and mashups have garnered international attention earning him massive support from some of the industry’s most established DJs, including MK, Mainphase & Interplanetary Criminal, and Girls Don’t Sync.

Over the past year Jae has solidified his position within the scene, shifting away from just being “the man behind the scenes”, into an established artist/producer and DJ. After his remix of the UK top 10 Dance hit ‘Asking’ by Sonny Fodera, MK, Clementine Douglas went viral on TikTok and rapidly reached over 200,000 Soundcloud streams in just over a couple of months, Solotoko reached out to sign it and feature it on the official remix pack for the single, leading to over a million streams on digital platforms.

Since then Jae has released music under labels such as 3beat, Pullup recordings, and NQ records, and continues to thrive on the DJ scene having played at the legendary Mint Warehouse in Leeds, supporting the likes of Danny Bond and Silva Bumpa, DJ EZ, Malugi, Conducta and TS7, as well as headlining a number of venues. With a massive catalogue of releases under his belt, including ‘You’re the One’ With Sempa (3Beat/Universal) and some massive bookings including Gemfest (Pullup Recordings) and Bassline Festival, 2025 is year is tipped to be a big one for the Bradford native.

Artist Biography – Emily Jacko

Emily Jacko is originally from North Yorkshire and is now based in Newcastle. She has quickly established herself as a promising up and coming DJ in the UK’s underground scene, becoming known for her versatile and high energy sets.

Over the past year, Emily Jacko has supported the likes of Bakey, Special Request, Main Phase, Andy C, Badger, Neffa T & Flowdan, Y U QT, Bullet Tooth & Capo Lee, Club Angel, Sherelle, Omar+ and Saint Ludo; with bookings around the country flowing in fast.

Since moving to the North-East, Emily Jacko has landed a role at Profound Sound, an events company and sound label, where she is also a core resident DJ. In this time, she has also been honing in her production skills with scope for some exciting releases in the future.

Artist Biography – GREENHOUSE

Greenhouse has his roots firmly established in uk dance music, from funky to garage, dubstep to tech and more recently adding some hard house and trance influences, through the years he’s been through each scene to hone in a unique mixing style you won’t catch anywhere else, he’s shared the stage with some of the biggest names in dance music, to name a few; Sammy Virji, Zero, Window Kid, Jackum and Hedex. Expect nothing but high energy sets and dirty filthy tunes.

Artist Biography – AJ.

Introducing AJ. (Formally known as AJ JNR). A veteran inside of the UK music scene who has embedded himself in all things production and performance.

After achieving success and a respectable online following, AJ has managed to play at some of the biggest clubs and events around the country; to name a few, Depot Mayfield, Warehouse Project and Magna Arena.

Recently, the Manchester-born artist has been more focused on the production and creation of Electronic music and is due to release a wave of EDM hits to add to his already existing DJ sets.

Artist HD Photographs

Risk Assessment

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Additional Material

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Reference List

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Bowdin (2012) 📖 [pdf] events management by Glenn Bowdin, 3rd edition: 9781136445118, [PDF] Events Management by Glenn Bowdin, 3rd edition | 9781136445118. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/paid/book/2192411/events-management-pdf?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&campaignid=17551311347&adgroupid=136714405606&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17551311347&gbraid=0AAAAADN2nNKg4_oSEVNQ2fEHL1LQ1YEjG&gclid=CjwKCAiAj8LLBhAkEiwAJjbY71jxxkf6cQYL1ruq7C12ZCH1gCzFDoAWdQdmlPGMf_02RKibeYft2hoCNl0QAvD_BwE. 

Wiley (2020) 📖 [PDF] Festival & Special Event Management P-EBK by Johnny Allen, 6th edition: 9780730369394, [PDF] Festival & Special Event Management P-eBK by Johnny Allen, 6th edition | 9780730369394. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/paid/book/4198733/festival-special-event-management-pebk-pdf?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&campaignid=17551311347&adgroupid=136714405606&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17551311347&gbraid=0AAAAADN2nNKg4_oSEVNQ2fEHL1LQ1YEjG&gclid=CjwKCAiAj8LLBhAkEiwAJjbY7wUGQEI-I4tySEDoiYCEiTBXAJCOD6FT8esH8PCFSPMDfimhhNdX_hoCFf8QAvD_BwE. 

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Amplified Production Group (2024) Decoding an AV dilemma: In-house vs. external AV providers for unforgettable events, Amplified Production Group LLC. Available at: https://amplifiedpg.com/decoding-an-av-dilemma-in-house-vs-external-av-providers-for-unforgettable-events/. 

Herstand, A. (2023) Ari Herstand, Ari’s Take. Available at: https://aristake.com/how-to-properly-advance-your-shows-and-why-you-have-to/. 

Haddix, J. (2026) Event budgeting guide: Cvent, Cvent Blog. Available at: https://www.cvent.com/en/blog/events/event-budgeting-guide#:~:text=Why%20is%20it%20important%20to,metric%20for%20stakeholders%20to%20understand. 

Goldstein, J. (2016) Negotiation techniques: 5 types of deals, part 2, Jeri Goldstein’s Performingbiz. Available at: https://performingbiz.com/negotiation-techniques-5-types-deals-part-2/#:~:text=Numerous%20promoters%20like%20this%20deal,a%20gross%20potential%20of%20$3000. 

Sharon, O. (2025) Facebook ads for Music Promotion: Is it worth it?, One Submit. Available at: https://www.one-submit.com/post/facebook-ads-for-music-promotion.