SHR6E037P~001 HOA23083714 Portfolio: Event Planning

by

Hoad,Leo (STUDENT)

Poster design by Shania:

Introduction

For this assignment, our group (myself, Shania Patel, David Shuttleworth, Gracie de Wolfe and Thomas Jason) have decided to put on an indie folk gig at Lending Rooms. We will play the gig ourselves, with Thomas Jason as the headliner and myself (artist name ‘Hoad’) and Gracie de Wolfe as supporting acts, and the event will take place on February 25th, 2026. In this portfolio, I will explain the rationale behind the decisions we made for this gig, detailing our relevant skills, roles and research into the industry. 

The initial months of our first term were spent getting to grips with the module. This involved learning professional terminology and practices, researching possible venues and funding, and understanding the different ways you can go about promoting an event. Since we are all active musicians with our own projects undergoing, we decided to play the gig ourselves. This would also help to reduce overall costs which is important if we want to turn a profit with our event. Myself, Gracie and Thomas have the most crossover in our music styles and are at similar places with our projects, so it made sense for us three to play. We are all in the early days of our solo music endeavors; Gracie and I are both at the point in which recording is underway but we have yet to release music and establish ourselves in the Leeds gig circuit, whereas Thomas recently released his first single ‘Hard Day’s Loving’ (on October 6th, 2025) and has already played at a number of Leeds venues, including Headrow House and Northern Guitars. He also has the most professionally developed social media, with a large number of posts and reels documenting his musical journey, although Gracie and I also have significant social platforms to promote on, with over one thousand followers on both our instagram accounts. As Thomas is the most well-established and experienced of the three of us, we decided to have him headline. We titled the gig “A Night of Indie-Folk Music”, as all of our styles can fit under this umbrella term to help market the event. Furthermore, Thomas is part of an independent collective called ‘Willow and Oak Records’, who state that they are a Leeds-based indie-folk record label, and so we will have them present our gig in order to help attract the right crowd. We will probably attract a large crowd of primarily Leeds Conservatoire students for this gig, especially those enrolled on or interested in the Popular, Songwriting and Folk courses, but we also hope to attract people outside of our university with the help of marketing methods I will detail later. So, we had our gig idea, and now we just had to sort the where and when of this event. 

Initially, we were looking into Left Bank as our venue, as David and I had already put on a couple of gigs there thanks to his good relationship with the owner. However, the hire rate of this venue is quite high and out of our group’s budget, especially as we would once again have to bring in our own sound engineer, as well as potentially supplying an entire PA system ourselves. The additional costs of a more expensive venue and more staff for transporting, setting up and running the equipment would have been too high a risk for this gig. Previously, the Left Bank gig on May 22nd had been picked up by Leeds Jazz Festival, and so the guarantee of high ticket sales justified the higher expenditure, but this time we don’t have this high guarantee and so it’s important to be realistic as one of our main goals is to turn a profit. We did actually set up another gig at Left Bank with Dave Dray (David Shuttleworth’s artist name) headlining on September 26th, but this gig was mainly for our own enjoyment so we wanted to play this nice venue and were less concerned with turning a profit. 

Thanks to Shania, we have a contact at Lending Rooms in Leeds (Tom Ford of F.O.E Presents) and booked ourselves in for February 25th for a cheaper hire rate of £130. After discussion, we found this date to be the best for all of us out of all available dates at the Lending Rooms. Furthermore, after some quick calculations I found that we would only need between 20 and 30 people to attend in order to break even depending on specific ticket prices (more on this later), which we think is a realistic crowd target for us to surpass at this gig.

Time Management

Once we felt confident in our event concept plans and had Lending Rooms booked for February 25th, we began to lay out a project timeline and came up with this rough structure:

  1. November 8th-December 8th: Conceptualising the Event (PHASE 1)
  • Brainstorming phase
  • What kind of event are we putting on?
  • Book in a date at a venue
  1. December 9th-29th: Dividing up Work (PHASE 2)
  • Technical Advance
  • Budgeting
  • Risk Assessment 
  1. December 30th-January 8th: Planning Promotion (PHASE 3)
  • Creating content for social media
  • Marketing publicity campaign
  • Press release distribution
  1. January 9th-24th: Practical Details (PHASE 4)
  • Equipment booking
  • Creating ticket link
  • Staffing
  1. January 25th-February 25th: Final Preparations/Checks (PHASE 5)
  • Announce gig on January 25th
  • Begin marketing campaign / Promo rollout
  • Distribute on the day schedule information

February 25th gave us all ample time for preparations, including rehearsal time, time for organising logistics and time to effectively promote. We discussed the order in which to tackle things and agreed that this way would be the most efficient use of our time. 

  • In PHASE 1 we established a solid foundation of coherent ideas on which to build up further plans.
  • PHASE 2 would be completed by the end of 2025, making use of our time in person together at the end of term and ensuring we’d have all appendices ready for our first assignment.
  • PHASES 3 and 4 would guarantee production of at least a month’s worth of promotion material, as well as time to organise logistics before announcing the gig on January 25th, with enough room for any unforeseen time delays. 
  • Finally, PHASE 5 would give us a plan to follow in the month leading up to the gig itself, allowing us to focus and generate the best possible results. 

Division of Work

In preparation for this event planning assignment, we split up the technical, logistical and financial work like this in order to lighten to individual workload:

Dave – Promotion

Shania – Production

Leo – Costings and Finance risk planning

Tom – Risk assessment

Gracie – Contingency planning

I volunteered myself to cover the financial side of things as I have relevant experience in this from organising a number of my own gigs. These notably involve Leeds gigs at The Fox and Newt, Wharf Chambers and Hyde Park Book Club in 2024 and 2025. Dave and I have also worked on a few gigs together under the name ‘Toad Promotions’, and these were at Open Source Arts and the previously mentioned Left Bank. As with promoting any gig at our level, our turnouts for these varied, from selling out to making a loss of money. The lessons I have learned from these experiences though are vital. 

There are many factors when putting on a gig that will be out of your control and can negatively affect your turnout. For example, when playing a free gig (the usually popular ‘Night Train’ event) at the Old Red Bus Station in December 2024, the weather on the day was atrocious, with extreme rain and record breaking winds and so the turnout was unusually low. This example shows just how unpredictable turnout can be, and so you must consider this when putting on any gig. You can do everything right organisationally and promotion-wise, and still end up with an underwhelming crowd. 

Firstly, I believe it’s important to ask yourself, “Am I doing this gig just for fun, or do I need to turn a profit?” For me personally, enjoying the gig is the most important thing and I have previously sacrificed profit for a better overall event experience, say by lowering ticket prices and letting people in for free on the day to get a bigger crowd, or by spending more money on a better quality venue for my own gigs in order to have better sound in a nicer environment. For example, Hyde Park Book Club basement charges £150 + VAT (which comes to £180), but this includes their high-grade PA and a professional sound engineer, as well as an iconic venue space. I hired this venue for a headline gig with my band SMASHA MONOCLE in April 2025, and although the turnout wasn’t great and we made a loss, the gig was very enjoyable for me, the supporting bands, and those in attendance. 

For this gig in February 2026, however, our aim as a collective is to put on a “successful” event, in every sense of the word. This includes enjoyment for both the artists and the attendees, but we mustn’t forget that we’re attempting a professional, industry level gig here, and so we must also turn a profit to the best of our abilities. I have therefore made efforts to reduce costs at every turn, but without sacrificing much of the event experience quality. The fact that we have a relatively low costing venue with a big capacity of 200 and an in house sound engineer is a great foundation to build upon. Furthermore, we have negated the costs of producing a poster (Shania is designing it) and of press for the day of the gig, as we have friends (Toni, for example) who are happy to do photography and videography for free. It is important to utilise your own skills and contacts to reduce costs where possible, especially with gigs at our level where it can be difficult to turn a profit. Using ‘TicketLab’ for our online tickets will also reduce costs. Unlike with other providers such as ‘EventBrite’, TicketLab doesn’t charge any extra fee on top of ticket prices for the event organiser, but they do charge 20p plus up to 6% for the buyer. This is a minute additional cost for the buyer, as tickets will be priced between £5 and £10, but this small saving will contribute to our overall reduced expenditure. 

I’ve also made some financial risk plans, allowing us to counter any last minute additional costs or lack of funding that may otherwise push us into negative figures. I have set the ticket prices accordingly to consider such risks. As our gig is primarily aimed at students, we don’t want to be selling expensive tickets. The gig is also in February, and so we don’t want to further isolate customers who may already be somewhat put off by poor weather. This is not prime gig season, so we have less leeway. Because of this, I will set the online ticket price at just £5, with a MOTD (more on the door) policy. This will hopefully encourage customers to buy online and give us a good idea of how attendance numbers are looking leading up to the gig. If, by the day of the gig, numbers are low, then we can raise the door price accordingly to make up for this. If we at least break even online, then OTD tickets can comfortably be around £7-8, but if we don’t, then we’ll set them at £9-10 in order to cover our spendings as quickly as possible. Furthermore, the fact that it’s the promoters (Tom, Gracie and I) who are playing the gig means that we are happy to receive less pay than normal, or even zero pay (we have discussed this). The industry standard artist payment is usually 80% revenue after break even (total revenue divided by ticket cost), but we will be very understanding if the gig isn’t so successful. Obviously if we weren’t the ones playing the gig, then we would have to ensure payment for the artists in some form, whether this be a guaranteed percentage or simply a promise to cover travel costs and supply a rider, but in our specific case this is less important as we are happy to split whatever profit we make equally between the five of us. 

Dave decided to cover promotion, as he also has good experience in this field from putting on gigs previously. Once again, we must try to cut expenses wherever possible in this area. Dave had previously printed quality A3 posters from Beam Works on Otley road for his gigs at Open Source Arts, Wharf Chambers and Left Bank, and the cost for 20 of these quality prints was £44. Given that our gig at Lending Rooms is aimed at students and on a Wednesday night in February, we cannot afford to be spending this much and so we will print off our posters for free at university instead. Although the quality won’t be as fine, the posters will still serve their purpose and the design and placement of the posters is what should draw people into our gig. We can also book a table for free in Leeds Conservatoire’s cafe bar and promote our event in person during the busiest times of the day in the final weeks leading up to it. In terms of online promotion, we are looking into producing Meta Ads to boost on Instagram and Facebook. From my previous experience promoting reels for SMASHA MONOCLE, I know that you can set the price and geographical coverage for these ads, and so we will be putting a max of £20 into this, making sure to localise coverage to Leeds and the surrounding areas. We can also promote the gig for free on public Facebook groups like ‘Leeds Music Scene’. I have done this before and succeeded in bringing in new faces to my gigs. On top of all this, Tom, Gracie and I can promote the gig on our various platforms (mainly Instagram and TikTok) and in person. For example, I will be playing a series of open mics in Leeds (at the Duck and Drake, Leeds Art Gallery, Northern Guitars, etc) to give a teaser of my set and encourage people to attend our gig. In my experience, word of mouth is the most effective form of promotion at our level, as potential customers feel a sense of personality that can only be conveyed so much on a screen. You will also attract the truest of fans this way, rather than say an extra follower on social media who will never attend your gigs, listen to your music or buy your merch. This is in accordance with Kevin Kelly’s ‘1000 true fans’ strategy. The cost of the venue and promotion total to around £150 total expenditure from us, and so we can break even with around 30 people in attendance. Any attendees beyond this point will be contributing to our profit.

Shania wanted to do the production, which involves putting together the final technical advance and making a poster and sending them to the venue. Later it will involve organising the equipment and schedule for the gig. As it’s Shania’s contact at Lending Rooms, there is a degree of familiarity she has with the venue that the rest of us don’t have as we’ve never played Lending Rooms, so it makes sense for her to be the one keeping contact. This made things easier for all of us as things could get complicated if we were all separately emailing the venue at one time, and it’s best to keep things uncomplicated for the venue to clearly read. Shania also has skills and experience with Photoshop and has made us a poster for free, therefore eliminating the need to pay for a “professional” poster design.

Tom did the risk assessment, as he was the only one of us staying in Leeds for most of December and so he could visit the venue in person. Tom carried this out on December 22nd, giving plenty of time for us and the venue to consider possible risks in advance of our event.

Finally, Gracie made a contingency plan to account for anything that may go wrong during the gig. She made this concise table which clearly communicates the solutions and responsibilities for such failures, therefore making it easy to prepare for the worst and reduce these risks. This will be sent to the venue and distributed amongst ourselves prior to the gig so that each individual can account for their potential risks. For performers, this involves pre-checking their equipment (XLR/jack leads, instruments, pedals, etc.) and ensuring they have a backup plan for missing band members (they could be ill, or involved in an urgent emergency on the day). This could mean having prepared backing tracks ready or just simply being prepared to play solo. If the main performer (Tom, Gracie or I) is unavailable on the day, then we, as the promoters, must have backup performers we can reach out to on short notice. This should be easy as we have many fellow musician friends between us at Leeds Conservatoire, a number of whom I know would be eager to play. We will also be responsible for a lot of equipment booked out from Leeds Conservatoire (cables, amps, drum kit, etc.). To ensure we don’t get fined for losing any of this (as this would eat significantly into our profits), we will make a final checklist of all equipment so that we can keep track of it throughout the day at various key points; pre-transport from uni, upon arrival at the venue, after setup/soundcheck, after packdown and finally post-transport back to uni. The venue, of course,  also has its share of responsibilities. For example, any faults with the venue sound system will be in the hands of the sound engineer on the day. By having an early soundcheck we can reduce this risk affecting our event, but ultimately it is the venue staff’s responsibility to make sure everything is working as that is what our hire rate pays for. As Lending Room is a regularly used venue, the sound system must be checked throughout each week and so the chance of this risk is low.

Technical Specifications

technical-specificationsDownload

Press Kit

Press release

Press releaseDownload

Risk Assessment

Thomas’s risk assessment of Lending Rooms:

RISK ASSESSMENTDownload

Official Lending Rooms / The Library risk assessment:

9178020, FRA, Library, Leeds (March 2024).docxDownload

Conclusion

Independently putting on your own gig in today’s climate is definitely a big challenge. With high costs that are disproportionate to the lack of financial stability guarantees, the odds are certainly stacked against you financially. In my numerous experiences as both a performing artist and a promoter, I have seen the many different outcomes of grassroots level gigs, with some selling out and others making huge losses, the results can sometimes be totally unpredictable until the day of the show! However, with many of the gigs I have previously managed or been a part of, I was lacking the understanding of the industry I now have thanks to my studies. By trying to organise our gig in February to an industry standard, I now see how these professional practices can help to reduce financial risks and allow you to identify what will and won’t help you see a great turnout and profit. Inevitably, you can still do everything right and still fail due to factors outside of your control, and so I stick by my personal claim that enjoying the experience is the most important thing, but now I feel confident that I can also succeed financially more in future. 

Reference List

  • Thomas Jason (2025) Hard Day’s Loving [streamed]. Single. Thomas Jason.