Rationale
Introduction
In this Portfolio I will be explaining the rationale and planning process for my group’s event ‘Eclypse Presents: Garage Takeover’, a garage music club night developed for ‘Live Music Management’. I will also contain details of my personal contribution towards the project. The event will take place on the 25th February 2026 at Headrow House, Leeds from 11pm-3am and marks the official launch of Eclypse Events, a new Leeds based promoter company that my group and I created for the purpose of this module
During our first lesson, when we were given instructions to form a group and event concept, Luca Bryant and I gravitated towards each other as we both wanted to put on a clubnight. Rachel Gladders and Willard Uttley liked the idea and four of us formed a group. The reasoning behind this decision was since most of us frequently attend DJ sets rather than band gigs, we decided to play to our strengths and already existing understanding of the electronic dance music demographic and production needs, particularly as Will and I are both sound engineers and Luca is a DJ.
One of our first major decisions during the planning process was choosing Headrow House as the venue for our event. I advocated for Headrow House due to a strong combination of financial and logistical factors. Firstly as we were entitled to a discount from the venue as Leeds Conservatoire students on the Live Music Management module, I straight away saw the significance of this opportunity to keep costs down and therefore financial risk low. Choosing a cheaper venue would allow us much more flexibility for marketing later on. Secondly for clubnights they can remove part of the staging so it becomes a 350 capacity venue in the main room, this is ideal for a first event as anything bigger may be difficult to promote with only artists EPK’s as we wouldn’t have any of our own official footage because this is our first event. Headrow House’s location in the middle of the city centre was another key consideration in my reasoning. There is a bus stop directly outside the venue and it is a ten minute walk from Leeds train station. The proximity to the bus stop is perfect for people all around Leeds and the proximity to the station is perfect for people coming from across the wider Yorkshire and Manchester areas. The venue is also well positioned to students and young workers living in the burley, hyde park, headingley and horsforth areas due to the direct 4-10 minute trainline. This ease of access supports our focus on 18-25’s as our main demographic because they’re more likely to be living in these specific areas as stated on Wikipedia: ‘Hyde Park is in the centre of the city’s student community, being next to Headingley, another large student community’ (2025). Since Headrow House is located in the centre of the city it is an extremely popular venue and based on my own experience attending both band gigs and clubnights there, the clubnights nights are far busier and more successful, making it a great choice for our event.
Another early decision we made was to form a promoter company to deliver the event, instead of individuals teaming up to put on a one off night. Presenting the night in this way gave us more credibility and professional appeal when reaching out to DJs and venues. It also gave us the framework to establish actual branding and marketing, which would help us to sell more tickets, as well as giving us the opportunity to build a social media following, allowing us to put on more events in the future. In our second meeting, we researched existing promoters particularly ones that host electronic music nights. Companies like Louder Events, Airspace and Labyrinth inspired our ideas for branding and marketing especially the latter as a member of our group currently works for them. Something that was important to me when discussing names was ensuring that we could use the name to have a matching logo and therefore in my eyes a cohesive brand. I was able to back this idea up to the group when I found an article by Binary Glyph stating ‘a matching logo can support recognition’ and that ‘there are advantages to aligning the two—especially when your brand is new’ (2025). After brainstorming a variety of names we settled on Eclypse Events due to its strong visual concepts of an eclipse and darkness, perfect for symbolizing an edgy nightclub environment. The eclipse logo we created is instantly recognisable, which will help us standout.
I created an email account for us (eclypseeventsuk@gmail.com) to ensure we had a way to professionally contact venues and artists. We made social media accounts such as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook with the username @eclypseeventsuk on all as ‘a uniform handle across all platforms makes you easy to find, helps you appear professional, and reinforces your brand identity. It can also provide SEO benefits, making you more visible in search results.’ (PostPaddy, 2025)
A few weeks later Dell Ding and Connie Gaskell were added to our group.
Event Concept and Rationale
Creating a UK garage clubnight that appeals to a clearly defined audience whilst establishing a strong identity for Eclypse Events is the core rationale behind Eclypse Presents: Garage Takeover. Through research we identified our target demographic as 18-25, aligning closely with UKG audiences. This age range also represents the most frequent users of online media platforms, which greatly influenced our marketing strategy.
Targeting the 18-25 demographic was a strategic choice based on marketing efficiency and cultural relevance. This audience has a high engagement rate with platforms such as Tik Tok and Instagram, where event promotion and discovering new artists is promoted. Due to this statistic, we identified social media as the most effective way to promote the event. This strategy coincided well with our budget as digital marketing allows for a greater reach and engagement compared to more traditional marketing approaches like putting up posters. Additionally, we were advised by Headrow House not to put up posters outside of the venue, which further reinforced our choice to opt for online marketing.
Basing our launch event around garage was a decision informed by current trends within the UK electronic scene as through social media the genre has experienced a resurgence in popularity with it ‘flooding Beatport, being played continuously on BBC 1, and topping the charts’ (2023). From its cultural connection to Britain’s nightlife to its appeal to younger audiences, UKG was the obvious choice for both the target demographic and the long term identity of Eclypse.
After several meetings, we made a shared chart on google drive listing emerging UK garage artists, based in the North, especially Leeds, allowing us to assess potential bookings based on a plethora of factors such as online following and monthly spotify listeners. Each group member added to this research and as a collective we voted on DJ’s who we viewed as best suited. This evidence based approach allowed for our decisions to be based on facts instead of personal biases.
I contributed significantly through my role in securing ‘AJ.’ for the event. AJ is a Manchester based rapper and DJ who has a strong presence on Spotify and who has performed at venues like warehouse project in Manchester and Depot Mayfield. As he is a family connection of mine, I was able to approach him directly via his number and negotiate his involvement in the event. He substantially reduced our overall artist cost by agreeing to perform for travel reimbursement only. This was a crucial booking as it provided the lineup with a credible performer whilst simultaneously giving us better financial flexibility. This subsequently allowed for a larger portion of the budget to go towards obtaining a higher profile headliner with a stronger appeal to the Leeds club scene. Greenhouse was selected due to Luca’s connection to him and the fact he has opened for Sammy Virji. Emily Jacko was chosen due to her experience supporting Andy C and Leeds UKG legend Bakey. Finally our headliner Jae Depz was selected due to his fanbase in Leeds and his tens of thousands of monthly listeners on spotify, as those are the fans who keep returning and are therefore more likely to buy tickets.
Project Management and Time Management
Prioritising time and project management was extremely important when beginning work towards the event as it was part of time restricted assignments. The planning was split into two sections: preproduction and marketing, this helped me focus my attention onto different areas inside of those sections without becoming overwhelmed. Preproduction started with confirming the venue and reaching out to DJs via the Eclypse email. On 13th November 2025 we sent formal offers to the four artists which were accepted and official artwork was finished on 16th November. This allowed us to have the artists EPK’s so myself and Luca could begin making content in preparation for the event announcement.
Marketing via our @eclypseeventsuk social media accounts began with the launch of tickets via a pre-sale on 17th December 2025. We decided on this date as we were conscious of having at least 2 months for marketing. The early bird tickets went live at 10:00 on 19th December 2025 and our meta adverts on 18th December 2025.
During this process I took charge in creating press material including the press release and responsibility for distributing it. I reached out to popular Leeds student papers with the press release such as The Gryphon and The Repository (formally Purple Pages) and submitted an article to Leeds Magazine. My proactivity secured a published article on 23rd December 2025 about our launch event in Leeds Magazine increasing our online presence and credibility and marking the beginning of our third party promotion. The Gyphon are publishing closer to the time.
All content was made by myself and Luca. When we both submitted poster demos to the groupchat the majority favoured his so I began working on creating promotional material for social media using the artists EPK’s whilst he was doing that. At first it was decided that Luca would handle creating videos for Instagram and Facebook posts whilst I would focus on TikTok, as the content needs to be more varied for that platform, but more recently we’re doing all three together. This approach worked well during the time constraints of announcing a new member of the lineup everyday. In my opinion, dividing roles in marketing helped me to learn how to compromise and professionally communicate through challenges with another person, ultimately leading to us being able to quickly produce content whilst simultaneously handling artist liaison and admin.
Communication was managed mainly through our whatsapp group, where we discussed everything, whilst our google drive folder was where we organised all documents like tech specs, EPK’s, marketing plans, clips made for social media and so on. This made sure that everyone in the group always had access to all the documents and ideas and were able to catch up on important topics they had missed if they couldn’t meet up or call. Following on from this, Luca and I regularly called to keep progress flowing and to discuss challenges, we invited everyone to the calls on the groupchat but as everyone else often claimed to be busy it was usually just us and still is. The calls took place at least once a week whilst often daily during busy times like the launch of social media and tickets. The constant conversation was vital in keeping the event running smoothly and at a good pace to meet our self made deadlines to ensure we met our actual ones. A formal risk assessment took place on 5th January 2026, by Connie after giving her instructions of what to write down and what questions to ask by us. This made sure that potential risks were identified and therefore addressed well in advance of the event.
This professional experience illustrated to me just how important communication and leadership is during a collaborative event especially when stressed with the time constraints of academic pressure. Finally it’s worth mentioning that even though Rachel worked/works multiple shifts a week at her job she managed/manages to contribute the third most in the group compared to others who had and still have no excuses and minute involvement.
Marketing
We launched social media pages when we dropped the tickets but we posted a ‘coming soon’ teaser on instagram and facebook to get some followers before the announcement. I created a social media plan (see appendix) that outlined what videos we should post and the dates aswell as what captions are best. I also researched the best hashtags and what times to post on each day of the week to drive the most traffic to the Eclypse account. We posted everyday for a week with often multiple story posts to keep boosting engagement. We have gained 73 followers and had over 4500 views on our social media posts combined.
When it came to marketing as our target demographic was 18 – 25 year olds, we took a social media led approach due to ‘half of all users are under 35’ (Haigen, 2025). To increase our visibility I researched what hashtags are better to use and I found that the most researched opinion was niche hashtags, Aperture Comms writes ‘while these tags may not have the largest following, they are likely to closely align you with interested audiences.’ Furthermore, when conducting research on the best times to post I found that optimal times varied during different days of the week but that posts after 4pm consistently performed better as that’s when most people finish work/education and also early mornings before people go to work/education. This research contributed to us getting the amount of views we gained.
We officially began posting properly on the day of the ticket launch. After this we posted daily grid posts and multiple story posts to keep capitalised on engagement. Currently short form content does the best on social media as it can ‘help you reach new audiences, strengthen your brand, and create lasting impact in a fast-moving digital world’, so we posted clips less than 15 seconds long on reels. When we announced each artist with their own individual post, we used Instagram’s new collaboration feature where the post not only uploads to your account but also to their account so all their followers will interact, like, comment on their posts. Due to this we gained 73 followers mainly from the other DJs’ followers and from our research we gained over 4500 views on our posts altogether. Adding onto that, we used meta ads to display our main promotional video on Instagram and Facebook, we ran an advert over christmas and we will be running it again on the 25th Jan as that will be a month before the event. Finally we will put up flyers around LCON when term starts again, in case some people don’t use social media.
Production
Control over production was delegated to Luca and full technical specifications were created for an advance to Headrow House. With the artists we agreed on a setup of 4x Pioneer CDJ-3000s and 1x DJM-900NXS2, linked via an 8-port gigabit network switch using Cat5e/Cat6 cables. An SM58 will be provided to AJ. due to his hybrid vocal performance. For the event we will also be using the venue’s PA and a sound engineer is included in the venue cost who will be present from 22:00 which is when we will begin setup.
Lighting will also be the in house rig and an engineer will be present at 22:00 with ShowKontrol integration where available. The schedule is Emily Jacko 23:00-00:00, AJ. 00:00-01:00, Jae Depz 01:00-0:200, GREENHOUSE 02:00-03:00 with ten minute changeovers that I decided between sets. The greenroom will be open for the DJ’s.
To maintain health and safety at least one member of security will be placed near the entrance to ensure crowd control as that was a big risk outlined in our assessment and fire exits etc were confirmed safe by Connie during the assessment, this will be double checked at 22:00 before the event incase there are any changes.
Finance
When it came to tickets we sold through Headrow House’s partner DICE, Fatsoma and Resident Advisor. Splitting the tickets through multiple platforms allowed us to improve accessibility and reach a wider audience. The tickets were split into these tiers: pre-sale £6.50, early bird £8 and general release £10 aiming to lead people to buy more tickets whilst the costs are cheaper and therefore driving more traffic to the links so ticketing platforms will boost the event.
The total cost (see appendix) will be £987 and to break even 128 tickets must be sold. If we sell out all tickets minus the guestlist including a photographer and videographer that I negotiated to do the event for free, we would make a profit of £1404.50. To keep organised an Eclypse bank account was created to avoid getting mixed up with our personal incomes.
Contingency Plan and Conclusion
In completing the risk assessment as a group, I gained an understanding of how risks such as financial and operational could massively impact events unless addressed well before the date. By learning this I now have the proactivity to take matters into my own hands by preventing issues using forward thinking and planning instead of the more common approach of waiting until something happens to respond.
Probably the most major risk identified during the process was Headrow House cancelling on us. In case of this we researched other options and identified their partner Belgrave Music Hall to be the most ideal backup option due to it being the same capacity and pricing. Having a realistic plan B allowed us to make all decisions calmly without pressure and demonstrated the importance of creating good relationships with venues for longevity as a promoter.
Cancellation of the DJs was also outlined as a risk so to combat this when securing the headliner we went with someone who was with a booking agency as they would be much less likely to cancel on us. If Jae was to cancel on us we would get a new headliner from MB artists as the work has already been done with the agency, as long as they were of similar price. Following on from this if any support acts cancelled we would find DJ’s of similar price range from based in Leeds, many of which have reached out to us to ask to be featured in our next event after we began posting via instagram.
In addition to these, some technical risks identified were last minute cancellation of DJ equipment and equipment failure. How we would rectify this would be either sourcing equipment from Headrow House’s partner or local hire which we would discuss with the venue as responsibility would fall on them so we could see if they would be willing to cover some costs. In conclusion, the risk assessment helped me to learn the skill of anticipating challenges and rectifying them early on through contingency planning to always maintain health and safety and financial security as a promoter.
Ultimately through planning Eclypse Presents: Garage Takeover, I have learned important abilities such as artist liaison and admin including contract signing and professional communication, financial planning and risk prevention, marketing and finally leadership skills. My contributions to all aspects listed have significantly shaped the event and I have thoroughly enjoyed leading my group with Luca.
Technical Specifications
- Technical Specifications for both venue and artists.
- Event Advance/Schedule
- Costings Chart;
Press Kit
Press release
Artist Biographies
Jae Depz – Headliner
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.
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.
Her trajectory is set to continue upwards through the rest of 2025 with some very exciting announcements forthcoming…
Highlights:
– Beatport Filmed set supporting Main Phase / Club Angel @ Airspace Leeds (Springwell Works)
– Beatport Sponsored set supporting Bakey, Special Request and Anz @ Airspace Leeds (Merrion Centre)
– Played at NX Arena supporting Flowdan, Neffa-T & Big Ang @ Big Fat Rave Newcastle
– London Debut at The Glove That Fits supporting RTK Tarantino, Sulphur (Scruz), Gabriel Muñoz @ Profound Sound
– Sold out her first headline event @ WHQ Newcastle
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.
RA: https://ra.co/dj/emilyjacko/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.
“I’m grateful that I have the ability to spend each and every day in the studio, making music, performing to like minded music enthusiasts and enjoying every moment along this journey!” – AJ.
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 HD Photographs
Jae Depz
Emily Jacko
AJ.
GREENHOUSE
Risk Assessment
Additional Material
Reference List
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