Oliver Illingworth
Introduction
For this assignment, our group will be promoting and organising an event at the Hyde Park Book Club’s basement venue in Leeds. This event will be a showcase of new electronic music from local up and coming bands, headlined by the artist TONII with two support acts of Shotbungullet and Deff60. We decided on this type of event as there isn’t a very large live electronic scene in Leeds, however there is a large rich rave and clubbing culture which we believe we can capitalise on to bring in a new bigger audience for these styles of music. The event will also include live visuals projected behind the performers which should help to create an exciting atmosphere in the venue. Our team, including myself, consists of six individuals, who together have lots of experience in music performance, production, and promotion. Event planning began in November of 2025, with the gig set for the 19th of February giving us just over three months to organise the event.
Time Management
We first decided to split up leadership of each part of the planning so everyone would have an aspect of the workload that they were in charge of. We divided the overall project into six parts: Promotion and marketing, finance, communication, production and tech specs, health and safety, and organisation. We then created a Gantt chart to visualise what tasks needed completing urgently and in what order. This meant once someone had completed all their tasks they could then move onto assisting with other jobs. For example, once the three main organisation jobs were complete, Lucas could move on to help with venue inspection, posters, and ticketing. We also decided to meet up in person once a week to check through each other’s progression and brainstorm ideas. This also ensured a more equal workload between all the team members and reduced the chances of one person becoming swamped with multiple jobs at the same time. We also made sure to give task leadership to the team member with the best skill sets to complete them effectively. For example myself and Lucas had the most involvement with the performing projects so knew the technical requirements of each band the best, which is why Lucas was put in charge of organisation. And as TONIIs project was headlining, she was put in charge of promotion and curating the overall aesthetic of the event as she had the best understanding of the overall vision of the project.
We decided on Thursday the 19th of February for the gig as we believed it was more likely to be free in peoples calendars compared to a weekend or early weekday slot, as the gig is targeted towards students who typically don’t follow a 9-5, Mon-Fri schedule. holding the event in February also meant it would be before exam season began and the student crowd we were trying to attract had to focus on exam prep. On the day of the gig, we will give each band 20 mins for load in and 30 mins for soundcheck, staggering each band arrival by 30 minutes to avoid overcrowding during set ups and sound checks. We also made sure to order sound checks in reverse to performances to avoid an extra tear down/set up after soundcheck. We then included around two hours after soundcheck to give all artists a chance to get food and drink before performances. We also ensured the final performance had enough time to finish before the venue’s mandatory curfew [see show advance] as breaking this would disrupt the venues closing procedure and could lead to noise complaints from the surrounding neighbourhood, which could in turn lead to fines for the venue and make our production team appear unprofessional.
Production
Once we had decided on which artists to hire, we could use their tech specs to find a venue that could meet all their requirement’s. We looked at several venues including Oporto and Lending Room but ultimately decided on Book Club as it was a spacious and well-established venue at a reasonable price point [see costings chart]. This will allow us to bring a decent size crowd to the event while still having a comfortable profit margin. As Book Club is a popular and busy venue that hosts dozens of events a month, this reduced the risk that the venue would close suddenly as well as reduce the chance of infrastructural or organisational mishaps, due to the experience and good practices of the venues experienced staff and management. The venue was also suitable for all the artist tech spec profiles as both TONII and Shotbungullet have a lot of electrical equipment such as synths, drum machines, SPD’s and loopers that each require their own outputs and power. The stage was more than big enough for all the bands and equipment as Deff60 is the only act with more than three people. Deff60 are the only performers requiring backline (requiring drum kit, bass/guitar amps and keyboard) all of which would have to be sourced internally as the venue doesn’t supply this. Fortunately, this equipment can be covered by the band and will be included in their travel costs. The venue also came included with a sound and lighting tech for a small fee, which we decided was a better option than hiring someone ourselves, as the in-house techs would already be familiar with the setup and are likely to be reliable and knowledgeable about the venue. We will be running the box office ourselves and will supply our own card machine and petty cash for people buying on the door. To make it easier to compare the venues tech specs to the artists we combined all the artists specs into a master rider, meaning any duplicate equipment between the bands could be shared, cutting down the amount of gear that would need to be brought. for example both TONII and Deff60 require a guitar amp, so we can use one for both sets, reducing changeover time between and keeping the stage space clearer.
Hospitality
As all the bands are local, they are all able to travel to the venue with relative ease either by car or public transport, which they will be compensated for. Equipment not provided by the venue can all be transported by car, as there is a small car park and load in space at the back of the venue as most of the equipment will be transported by car this will help streamline load in times. The venue also has a small green room which can be used to store equipment in-between sound checks and sets. In terms of hospitality, we will ensure to provide the all the artists with plenty of water and towels for performances as the venue can become very hot with a large crowd present. Although we don’t have the budget to provide food or alcohol for the artists we can give recommendations for a selection of nearby restaurants. As Tommy had access to quick and efficient communication with the venues event manager, he could relay any requests from the performers to see if they could be provided for in advance by either the venue or our production team. We also made sure to query any allergies for the performers and checked with the venue if they would be an issue that would need resolving for the event.
Risk
We knew when creating this event that having excellent health and safety preparation would be essential to ensuring a safe and successful event for both the attendees and artists performing. We first acquired the venues own risk assessment, to find what risks had already been identified and if there were any gaps or oversights that needed resolving. Unfortunately the assessment we received was both outdated and fairly bare bones, so we made sure to create our own in depth risk assessment and also perform an in person venue inspection to check everything is up to code before the event. A risk we were particularly concerned with was the safety of all the electrical equipment being used, as all the performers use a large amount of electrical and analog gear, we had to check and PAT test as much as possible before the event, as even one malfunction could pose serious danger to everyone at the event, causing either electrical shocks, fires or power blackouts, each of which we also detailed in our assessment. Even a smaller malfunction could still disrupt the event, for example if the guitar amp broke during soundcheck, both Deff60 and TONIIs performances would be affected, causing delays or even having to cancel the event if essential equipment cant be replaced in time. As the event is being held in an establishment that serves alcohol, we needed to make sure we enforce a strict over 18s only policy when selling tickets and letting people into the event space. We will need to ensure we have someone at the box office throughout the evening to check tickets and IDs.
Our groups communication during the event will also need to be excellent, as if an incident occurs we must be able to contact the appropriate people quickly. We can achieve this by always having our phones on and wearing easily visible clothing so we can be identified easily in a dark crowd. Both Tommy and certain venue staff are trained in first aid, so making sure everyone on the team knows who to find in case of an emergency will be essential. Another risk we have considered with the nature of this event and the culture surrounding it is that of drug and alcohol abuse. The venue already has security trained to spot the signs, and cut people off from being served at the bar, however our team must also remain aware of these potential issues and the correct procedures to resolve them. The BEST BAR NONE voluntary risk assessment for events states the four objectives of industry best practice as: “the prevention of crime and disorder, public safety, the prevention of public nuisance and the protection of children from harm” which are all thing we aim to uphold in our event.
Contingency Plans
We needed to make sure we had sufficient contingency plans in case of any unforeseen event disruptions. The biggest and most likely potential issues is that one or more bands cancelling due to illness or the venue closing with short notice. If the headline act TONII were to cancel we would be able to move Deff60 to the main slot as they have a large enough amount of music to be able to fill the slot and have headlined several events before, so know what is expected of them as a headline act. If either support act cancels we will attempt to find a replacement act that could fill one of the 30 minute support slots. This should be achievable as Kurtis has a large list of contacts of other grassroots artists based in Leeds that should be able to cover a set at short notice. All of us also have connections in and around our university that we can utilise to find replacements, as well as posting on social media and job forums. While hiring a last minute replacement may impact the event vision of fully electronic artists, it would still likely reduce the chances of ticket cancellations over just having the event with two performances as it would retain the tickets value better.
In the event of a venue closure we have several options available to us. The first of which would be to cancel the event and reimburse all the tickets. As the cancellation is the fault of the venue we should be able to get our venue booking expense back. While this would cover all the financial losses, we would have lost all the time and effort that went into the preparation of the event, as well as wasted the time of the performing artists, who would have spend significant time rehearsing and organising as well. Another option would be to try to relocate the event to a different venue on the same date. This would be ideal in many ways as neither the artists or attendees would have to reschedule, however depending on the location and capacity of the new venue may create issues with travel and overcrowding depending on ticket sales. The third option would be to reschedule the event still at Hyde Park Book Club at a later date. This would be best in terms of logistics as we would be able to keep all the event infrastructure the same, such as: setups, tech specs, risk assessments and equipment. The only issue with this is we would have to find a new date that all the artists could make which may be difficult depending on each groups schedules. We would also have to redo all the ticketing and offer refunds to all attendees due to the date changing, however overall this would be the more cost effective and simpler approach, not counting cancelling the event all together.
Another potential disruption on the event day is equipment breakages. Things like power cables and jacks would be the easiest to cover for as we can take out extra backups from our university facilities and there are also extra backup cables kept at the venue, although these may not have been tested and could be unreliable. Although we aren’t responsible for supplying backup instruments, if one was to break between soundcheck and the gig we may have time to find a replacement either through friends, colleagues or uni loans. For any smaller fixable disruptions such as strings breaking or any sound issues we can make sure to have a music playlist that we can play through the PA while the issue is being resolved. We can also use this in-between the performances.
Finance
The biggest financial decision to make after deciding on a venue to book is the ticket price. The venue cost £210.00 to book for the event and we also spent £30.24 on PRS. For tickets we decided on a pricing structure of £5.00 advance and £8.00 on the door. This helps secure ticket “bookings” as it presents to buyers that they are saving money by buying in advance, which disincentivises people to show up on the day or forget to come at all as we can email reminders to people who paid in advance. If anyone does decide to pay on the door we can capitalise off of that. If we can see ticket sales are down from expected we can lower the price slightly as well as offer incentives like free drink tokens or merch for early bookings. We decided not to pay for any extra staff for the event, except for the in-house sound engineer whose cost was included in the booking fee. We made this decision as the event is relatively small and we believe our team of 6 is enough to cover all the jobs required on the day such as box office and helping with load-ins. In terms of payouts after the event, we agreed on a four way equal split between the three acts and promotion team, then splitting our cut equally among the six of us. This meant anyone on the team who is also performing would get a larger cut, which we all agreed would be fair. These payments would be split from any profits made after paying out our expenses. We expect to sell around 80 tickets in advance and 10 on the door which would give us a net profit of £270 [see costings for details].
Marketing
The marketing vision and event style has been centred heavily around TONIIs Frutiger Aero art style and aesthetic. We have incorporated her bright blue early 2000s digital art style into all of our promotional material as it is a very distinct and eye catching style that will be familiar and nostalgic to the student fanbase we are trying to attract. We also created a specific poster in the style of the two support acts with their name at the forefront to try to draw in their individual fanbases, while still disclosing the fact they were supporting. Alongside social media posts we also decided to print some flyers that we could post around the student areas of Burley, Headingley and Hyde Park to try to attract new fans. We decided to announce the event on the 8th of January as this seemed like a good middle ground where it wasn’t announced so early that people forget about the event by the time it comes round, but not so late that people have already filled their calendars.
Conclusion
To summarise, we hope to bring a unique and exciting event for everyone in the heart of one of Leeds most vibrant and culture rich areas. I believe our extensive planning and preparation will ensure this night is a great success both for our team and the performing artist. One thing we could have improved in our prep is our initial delegation of roles as we didn’t anticipate which roles would be completed first, however once we created a Gantt chart to streamline our organisation, everything ran much smoother.
Technical Specifications
Press Kit
TONII
TONII IS A SINGER, SONGWRITER AND PRODUCER BASED IN LEEDS. HER MUSIC BLENDS NOSTALGIA AND FUTURISM THROUGH LIVE ELECTRONIC PERFORMANCE. INSPIRED BY GRIFF, IMOGEN HEAP AND CHARLI XCX, SHE BALANCES ELECTRO POP WITH TRANSCENDENT HARMONY. TONII CRAFTS IMMERSIVE SONIC SOUNDSCAPES THAT TRANSPORT HER LISTENERS – BUILDING SOMETHING ENTIRELY HER OWN, BOTH EMOTIONALLY AND SONICALLY. CREATING THE PERFECT SONGS TO CRY DANCE TO.
SHOTBUNGULLET
ShotbunGullet are an interactive highlighting the performance-side of electronic music. Influences ranging from 4AM Kru to Squarepusher they create a unique show, performing with electronics and more traditional instruments. They craft tunes to make you move and groove.
DEFF60
DEFF60 is a dynamic six-piece fusion ensemble, blending the electrifying energy of funk, the pulsating rhythms of fast-paced EDM, the harmonies of jazz, and the soundscapes of video game music. Our artistry is defined by a bold, high-octane approach, characterised by relentless tempos and a penchant for delivering unexpected musical twists. As a wholly student-led collective, DEFF60 is comprised of musicians from Leeds Conservatoire, collaborating closely with student producers to churn out music for public streaming. Hailing from diverse corners of the UK— Accrington, Bishops Stortford, Leicester, and Bradford—our members bring a rich tapestry of regional influences to the group, united by a shared passion for innovation and performance.
