SHR6E037P~001 UTT23083947 Portfolio: Event Planning

Rationale

Within your Show submission you need to concisely explain what the nature of the event is and how you will utilise your project management skills. You should consider the following areas in your rationale:

Time-management
Production – (technical and logistical)
Contingency plans
Finance
Marketing and publicity – This should be a breakdown of relevant marketing approaches you will be utilising to promote the event.

A large part of this assignment is explaining your approach and rationale for your choice of live music event. You will need to include the following items in an appendix to show why you have taken the approach that you have. It must include the following:

Technical specifications for both venue and artists. Event advance/Schedule and Costings chart. This needs to presented in one document.
Press Kit – Press release, artist biographies with quotations, artist achievements & at least 3 HD photographs
Completed Risk Assessment * including financial risk planning. (different to your event costings).

Overview

In this overview, I will discuss how my group ‘Eclypse Events’ have planned for our event at Headrow House on the 25th of February 2026. We initially had a group meeting to discuss our options and the type of event we wished to host. Considering what other groups were discussing we quickly decided that we didn’t wish to organise a band event. As 2 of our team members were already DJ’s and were familiar with the scene, we felt it would be interesting and a good experience to host a DJ night at a venue in Leeds. This led us to research the local scene and identify a gap in the market for DJ events in the EDM and Garage scene. This fit well with our intended target audience of 18–25-year-olds, students and party goers. We also felt that if we engaged a headliner with a significant following it would help ensure the success of the event, whilst giving the opportunity to show more up and coming acts. In our initial meeting we also discussed our preferred dates. We chose late February to maximise the appeal to students as they would be back from Christmas break, but there would be enough time to market the event to them after Christmas. We felt it was important to have a mid-week event as these are big student nights and it also increased the likelihood of headliner availability and kept the venue cost down. Our venue selection was based on cost, location and the type of events held at the venue including previous DJ events held there recently. It was important that we could attract the type of headliner that would help us sell tickets.

To do this we put together a list of possible artists that were suitable for the event and divided the list into Headliners and support. We had previously discussed artists that could be part of our line up and we individually researched DJ’s. Luca using his experience in the EDM and Garage scene also provided lineups from other events like Beaver works. This led to me finding Emily Jacko (a DJ who performs in the Garage scene) from one of these posters and I added her to the list of possible DJs. Emily would later be added to our roster for the show. Once we finalised our roster we focused on the production and advancement of the event. We are currently promoting our event.

Time management

In terms of time management, we had an initial meeting to decide the theme and format of our event and our key target audience. We identified our ‘ideal’ date to maximise ticket sales and the style of venue that would meet our requirements. This then enabled us to refine our venue options leading to our identifying and booking Headrow House.

At this point once we had our venue secured, we were able to create a time plan for all the tasks that would need to be completed as a working document for our team to follow. This is constantly monitored and updated to ensure all necessary tasks are completed. (See appendix 2 in additional material)

Production

In Production, I will break it down into 4 segments: Technical, Logistical, Hospitality and Health & Safety.

Technical:

For the event to progress we requested technical specifications from the Venue Headrow House. We needed these to identify what equipment would be available for us to use on the evening. In the venue hire pack, an engineer would be provided as part of the hire for the event, with additional costs of a lighting engineer. We also checked the artists tech specs for their equipment specifications. In addition, we know one of the artists (AJ) also performs with a microphone (see Technical Specification) and we had to send the tech rider to the venue to make sure that he will be able to have the equipment he needed for his performance.

As a group we discussed stage design for the event as we thought having some suitable lighting would create atmosphere that fitted with the artists music. We also discussed having a projector for visuals to create an immersive environment. However previous experience of working with the projector at Headrow House revealed that the experience payoff did not justify the extra cost. We also sent the artists the advance to the artists and venue to let them know about the timings and arrival times for the event on the day.

Logistical:

Each artist contract of engagement included their rider requirements. These were all noted and a shopping list with costs were noted for purchasing nearer the event. All but one of the artists lives in Leeds and will be making their own way to the event. AJ will be travelling from Manchester, and his travel expenses will be covered, this has been costed and included in the expenses.

As a group, we created a tech channel list and equipment list for the event that the venue sound engineer can follow to setup equipment (see Technical Specification). The equipment will be setup on the day by the sound engineer, and we will coordinate with the venue to find out what time we will be allowed into the venue for the event and greeting the artists.

We discussed as group what roles needed to be filled on the night, for example, Artist Liaison, stage manager, box office, general event co-ordination. We agreed that we would be role flowing through the night but settled on who was doing which job to avoid any confusion.

We also discussed about security briefings and wristbands to make sure we can keep the event safe and keeping artists safe when on and off the stage.

Hospitality:

For the artist riders, we looked through the requirements and created a shopping list. This was then sourced through supermarkets/Costco to make sure that we are able to supply the requested to the artists but also to keep costs down. We plan to source the goods on the day to ensure everything is fresh.

We will also make sure as a group that the artists greenroom is stocked up throughout the event, so we avoid running out.

VIP/guest list, the acts will supply us with their VIP list so we can make sure they are added to the guestlist at the box office. They have been limited to X number, and this has been accounted for in the budget.

Health and Safety:

As part of the risk assessment to ensure that we could put the event on, we emailed Andrew to ask when we could visit the venue to do our assessment of the venue. We visited the Headrow’s venue and inspected the room on the 5^th January 2026. Using the risk assessment document as our guide we were able to ensure that everything was in order prior to the event. Whilst inspecting the venue, we asked Andrew about security on the night, about how many would be working on the night and where they would be positioned. We also asked Andrew about the potential hazards that could occur on the night and how we could avoid them from happening during the event.

As part of the assessment, we need to check for dangers and falls like sticky flooring, trip hazards, stairs and so on, PAT testing on the equipment to make sure everything was in date and allowed to be used. (See Risk Assessment)

We also checked with the venue for its liability insurance certificate to check it was in date and would cover the venue for the date of our event.

Contingency Plans

In our contingency plans, we discussed potential issues that could happen prior or during the event.

Venue – if Headrow House has to cancel our event, we will contact/ask Superfriends if Belgrave Music Hall is free and available. If this isn’t feasible, as we will have advanced sold our tickets we would need to reschedule the event using social media to communicate.

Artists – If the headliner pulls out, we will contact the agency that represents Jae Depz and request a replacement. We have a good relationship with them and think that a replacement could be found within budget. If a support artist must pull out, we will find another artist to perform within the same price range. We already have the contact details of various other DJ’s who have approached us since announcing our event and we feel confident that we could find a replacement.

Equipment – If DJ equipment gets damaged/ broken or Headrow House has to cancel the equipment for use, we will as a group look for potential workarounds including using equipment from partner Belgrave Music Hall depending on availability. Look for a reasonable priced local hire and liaise with Headrow House if the equipment cancellation was last minute and to see what costs can be shared/covered.

Poor Ticket sales – If ticket sales are low or not enough tickets are sold, we plan on doing last minute sales and discounts. We are also planning to give out free tickets and discussed about doing competitions. We also plan on increasing our promotion to drive sales up so we can attract more people to the event.

Finance

In our initial planning meeting, we discussed our investment aspirations for our first event as this would influence our venue, artist booking and pricing. To ensure we would be cost driven and stay within budget we created a budget tracking document and a financial spread sheet (see appendix 1 in additional material). Once we had set our parameters, we were then able to properly budget, considering artists based on their sets and their fee/riders. Once we knew the costs of the venue and artists, we were then able to set our ticket pricing and tiers and marketing and promotion budget. It was important to us that we set our ticket prices at an attractive and affordable price to ensure the event was a success. We also created a bank account for our group to handle the budget and money costs for the members of our group to help keep track of money and spending.

To initially fund the event, we agreed as a group that we would share payment costs as they arose. We knew that we would incur upfront costs for hiring the venue, promotion and marketing ads and booking artists if they were part of an agency.

During the early planning of the event, we were given student venue hire cards to have a look at different venue costs, this helped us understand how much we would need to contribute. As a check we also consulted with Andrew from Superfriends to verify the venue hire in case Headrow had updated its venue hire cost. See costing chart (appendix technical spec)

In the planning meeting, we also discussed merchandise and how we could help artists sell their merchandise at our event as well. After consideration, with it being our first event as a group, we decided to leave merchandise to later events once we have gained enough experience.

We kept all the payments logged and tracked so we do not miss any payments and to keep spending visible so we can see if we are exceeding the budget.

As a group we also understood that a significant percentage of our finances would be spent on marketing and promotion. We planned to use social media as our main source of promotion using meta-ads for Facebook and Instagram, websites, local and city-wide blogs and articles to help promote our event. Luca did most of the online posters for the event as the rest of the group sorted the press releases and artists biographies for ticket websites and promotions. We also agreed to contact the social secretaries of key university sporting clubs to promote our event amongst the student community.

Since we decided as a group that we were using three different websites, we divided our tickets to the platforms by giving Dice half our tickets and using Fatsoma and RA to sell the remaining through our ticketing tiers to maximise our profits.

Marketing and Publicity:

As a group we discussed how we could market and promote our event. We needed to create a logo and Company name. After much discussion we decided to call ourselves Eclypse Events and Luca designed our logo (see appendix logo). In addition, we considered various ways we could promote the night.

Posters

Target university noticeboards in accommodation, social areas and key information spots. We would use hard copies of the social media posters that we created to highlight the event (see appendix posters) and place them in the relevant places. We had a look at various styles of posters that we could use for social media (see appendix Ecyplse poster ) and tested different styles to see which fitted our vision and the event.

Articles

We created a list of key events/social pages relevant to our target audience and sent them press releases to feature articles about our event to promote it (see Leeds Magazine)

blogs

We contacted prominent local bloggers that are influential in this area and asked them to feature the event

We discussed about reaching out to student clubs and advertising in student unions. Through friends we agreed to contact the social secretaries of key student sports clubs to further our reach.

Ticketing websites

As we planned to only have electronic ticketing we were able to use ticketing websites as a third party to sell our tickets. We identified the key websites we wished to use, which are Resident Advisor, Fatsoma and Headrow’s ticket partner Dice. This increases our accessibility to sell tickets to a wide audience, reduces our risk of exposure to fraudulent payments/scams and limited the time required to manage ticket sales for us. It also provided another opportunity to promote the event as we could load a description of our event and synopsis of the acts. As a group we did discuss using other websites like Eventbrite, but we found that Resident Advisor and Fatsoma worked better for our event. On ticket websites, we added our press release

We also implemented ticket tiers to help range our tickets, generate early interest and to test the waters of interest to see how people would react to our content and promotional work. Our ticket tiers range from early birds to late release. We promoted our early bird with limited tickets in early December and try to use them as a way of promoting the event as use of last-minute presents or to build interest for the event. The release of the first normal tier tickets was done in collaboration with artists and the press release which saw us gain some attraction from fans of artists

Social Media

It quickly became apparent that our key area for marketing and promotion would be through social media. This would be our main source of promotion while using blogs and articles to reach a broader audience. Our key reasons for using social media as our main platform for promotion is driven by our target audience, cost, targeting and speed. We conducted some market research among our peers and friends to discover how they found out about events. We quickly realised that most people use Instagram, TikTok, ticketing or event websites as a way of discovering events and shows. As we are targeting students, 18-25 year olds and garage music fans it made sense to use Social Media as a way to reach them. We also found that by using social media we could collaborate with our artists and use their social media followings to further boost the event. By using the acts platforms to attract their fans and share the content, we can drive further interest and raise the profile of our event. Cost also plays a large role. Through social media you can reach a lot of people for not too much money either through promoting on your profile or by paying for targeted advertising. Targeted advertising is ideal as it can be done by location, age, gender and interest. This minimises money wasted on marketing to irrelevant market sectors. Depending on ticket sales we can also increase the amount of advertising we do as the event draws nearer. This can be done in real time and is quick and easy to deliver with minimal lead time.

On Instagram and TikTok we can also monitor the metrics on our posts to see where and when we could push the marketing to further reach our desired audience and to further increase the numbers coming to our page. We can also post about articles that feature us and repost which would boost our attraction to our audience. As social media marketing is so agile we can constantly tweak our marketing campaign to ensure maximum ticket sales. With TikTok we tried different ways of video promotion and content e.g. using reels and Tik Tok to promote the event. Using a certain theme to show what our company looks like and how we could make our event stand out and look attractive. We also investigated how the repost feature works on Instagram and the use of meta-advertisement to further boost our posts.

Ticket Scams

Whilst promoting our event, we discovered an issue with ticket scammers. We are currently trying to resolve the issue by blocking scammers from our social media feeds and locating where they are coming from. Direct customers to official ticket platforms such as Dice, Fatsoma and Headrow House.

Conclusion

Our event is planned for February 25th, we are currently in our promotional phase, and we are working hard to ensure that we can maximise ticket sales. We are also closely monitoring our budget and liaising with our artists to ensure we always have clear communications. As a group, we have been communicating with each other via a WhatsApp group and giving updates so all of us are kept in the loop of what’s going on with our event and using it to constantly review our advertising strategy on the run up to the event and to make amendments as necessary. We will also be working through task identified in the time plan that need to be done in a timely manner.

Technical Specifications

Your technical specification must be presented as one document
Technical Specifications for both venue and artists.
Event Advance/Schedule
Costings Chart;

Replace this example with your technical specifications as a PDF.

HH ADVANCE DOC 2023 Download

Technical Specification + Other – Garage Takeover @HH 25th Feb 2026 Download

Press Kit

Press release

Press Release – Garage Takeover @HH 25th Feb 2026 Download

Replace this example with your press release as a PDF.

Artist Biographies

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.

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.

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 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.