SHR6E037P~002 BUL22081584 Live Music Management Event Evaluation

SHR6E037P~002 Portfolio: Event Evaluation

Event Evaluation

The purpose of this evaluation is to critically assess the successes and failures of my group ‘Eclypse Events’ and our event entitled, ‘Garage Takeover’, that took place on Wednesday 25th February 2026 whilst outlining my individual contribution. With this essay I aim to evaluate the organisation, planning and execution of the night through the core sections of atmosphere, health and safety, marketing and production. By analysing our decisions, I intend to gain the understanding of how to improve upon choices made for events I intend to curate in the future.

Event Atmosphere

Overall the event atmosphere was satisfactory. Although quiet during the second half of the night I believe the first half was strong with audience members thoroughly enjoying themselves. I believe the main factor to this was the fact that our event took place on a Wednesday night, as our target demographic was university students. Typically, Wednesday evenings for students are society nights, and our event may not have been suitable on this occasion to draw in a larger audience. The decision to host the event on a Wednesday evening was appropriate in planning stages of the event, however I believe hosting the same event on a Friday, or at the weekend, would’ve drawn in a larger audience that would have stayed the entire evening. Many attendees left the event around 1:30AM, likely due to having other commitments the following day, such as university lectures or work commitments, as this is explained through our audience demographic of 18-25.

Ticket sales were unsatisfactory as we sold 68 tickets out of a total 350 capacity for this venue. Tickets were split at 62 sales online and 6 on the door, and this definitely impacted the liveliness of the night. Due to the poor ticket sales, we allowed the artists a larger allocation of guestlist invites to bring the capacity up to 98 in total, 16 of these being previously assigned artist guestlist tickets (see appendix 4).

Box Office

The box office was placed by the entrance to the venue room (see appendix 5). Connie and Rachel were allocated tasks of ticket scanning and putting wristbands on audience members (see appendix 6), with Dell assisting at times. Prior to the event, we downloaded the app ‘Square’ and went over it as a group (see appendix 7), to ensure everyone understood how to sell tickets on the door. We also downloaded the ‘Resident Advisor (RA)’ app to confirm attendance for health and safety purposes. However, it is to be noted that several attendees were not accounted for by Rachel and Connie, resulting in myself momentarily coming away from my responsibilities as artist liaison to monitor attendance multiple times as it immediately indicated a health and safety issue that needed attention. Once these issues were resolved and all audience members ticked off, I was able to return to my position as artist liaison to ensure they were being taken care of.

Security

This area of the event went according to plan as there were no security issues with monitoring the audience and crew members, as well as behavioural issues. Headrow House, the venue the event was hosted at, supplied their own security for the evening. They were positioned at the front entrance of the building to check identification, and then inside, stationed outside of the exit that leads to the green room to effectively assess the crowd safety and prevent non AAA or any unauthorised individuals walking into inaccessible areas, such as the artist green room (see appendix 8,9,10).

Health and Safety

Fire safety procedures were monitored before and consistently throughout the event to ensure health and safety regulations were followed. When we arrived at the venue, the checks taken place included making sure fire exits were completely free of blockages, exit signs were visible and illuminated (see appendix 12), and fire extinguishers were correctly in position and in working order. Following our risk assessment (see appendix 11), to prevent any incidents concerning cash handling and the safety of the team, we agreed that there would be no cash transactions for this event, and tickets sold on the door were to be card only. To ensure the venue upheld its alcohol license and legalities surrounding this, security were instructed to check identification at the entrance and challenge 25, which was also enforced on all bars in the venue (see appendix 13). Tech riders were established and PAT tested prior to the event to ensure no DJ or artist were bringing untested equipment as it is a hazard, as per our risk assessment. Furthermore, we made sure the venue provided ear protection (see appendix 14).In total, all risk management directions were followed by all members of the group and all staff at the venue to align with health and safety protocols.

Production

The production was planned well in advance with the venue (see appendix 34). All that needed arranging was putting up a table for the DJ decks to be securely arranged (see appendix 15) of which this was done by myself, Luca, Rachel and Will,(see appendix 16) and then cables to be securely arranged around this. Regarding sound, this went smoothly for the evening as a sound engineer (see appendix 17) was included within the venue hire, and Luca did the lighting due to his previous experience within this area (see appendix 18). I was required to organise a videographer and photographer to attend and record content for the event and this was done free of charge, with the only costs incurred being the travel home for the individuals, of which we paid for.

Artist Liaison

As mentioned above, I was artist liaison for the evening and this ran smoothly, as expected. My responsibilities included issuing AAA (red) wristbands to artists and their respective guestlist invitees, ensuring artists were aware of their changeover and set times, giving 15 minute warnings and ushering them over to the DJ decks 5 minutes before their sets so they could smoothly blend their sets into one another, purchasing the riders and bringing them to the venue and monitoring the contents so all artists and crew members had access to catering at all times, answering any other questions and fulfilling requests made my artists and teams respectively (see appendix 19,20,21).

Stage Management

Will was appointed stage manager for this event, however I also had to assist at times due to his lack of proactivity to follow instructions and ask for assistance when needed. One of the responsibilities, specifically assigned to Will by a member of the venue staff, was to ensure the stage was free of obstacles prior to the set up of the equipment, and during the event with items, specifically liquids, not to be placed near such expensive items. Unfortunately, after examining our evidential images, this was not followed and could have resulted in severe damage of equipment, potentially having repercussions for us as the event coordinators (see appendix 22,25).

As a group, we decided to take a less traditional approach when setting up the stage for the artists. Due to the nature of the event and quick changeovers, we deemed it more appropriate to position the artists in the middle of the room, making it more intimate, especially with a lower capacity than expected (see appendix 23,24).

Online marketing and promotion

I believe our approach to online marketing and promotion was executed successfully, however this was not reflective in the audience numbers for the night. For the promotion of the event, I created a variety of multi-media content to be posted on social media prior to the launch of our event. These were individual artist promotion teaser clips and images, posted across Instagram and Facebook, and more tailored content to TikTok (see appendix 28,29). Our first strategy was to post everyday for a week, with scheduled content being uploaded at times with highest traffic to boost engagement, and then multiple posts a week for months leading up to the event resulting in over 4500 views across our Instagram platform. As mentioned above, we used a diverse range of artist promotional images and videos, behind the scenes footage and links to tickets, attempting to engage audiences to follow the account and buy early bird tickets. On reflection, this method of marketing was planned well and should have developed a generous audience, but this was not the case. Hosting the event on a Wednesday was not preferable, and the venue used was not necessarily genre specific to host a UKG event, which could’ve been the main repellant for those interacting with the social media content. There may have been too much promotional content posted in a short period of time which can act as a deterrent if people are seeing it too frequently, especially as we also invested in meta adverts as well to promote the event.

To promote the event in person, I assisted in creating the graphics for the physical posters to be distributed around the Conservatoire predominantly (see appendix 30,31) As our target demographic was 18-25 year olds, putting them in and around the building was successful to draw attention to the event and create a sense of excitement. We also distributed posters to neighbouring student accommodation, such as Joseph Stones, as it felt more personal to hand deliver them to students. To expand our reach, I printed a further 50 posters and delivered them door to door in and around Burley and Hyde Park areas, as this will have increased our reach past those in halls of residence. I feel the execution of this method of promotion was successful as it did encourage people to attend the event, though it could have been done on a larger, more specific scale to appeal to a larger number. I believe the graphics were created with intention to stay genre specific, whilst also being eye catching, but this could be altered next time with different colours as the predominantly black poster clearly wasn’t as effective as we intended. (see appendix 32,33)

A further promotion and marketing method that I employed was to contact local digital media platforms, such as The Gryphon and Leeds Magazine, with our press release that I wrote (see appendix 26), to get an article written and published for the advertisement of our event (see appendix 27). We successfully achieved this and Leeds Magazine published an article that I wrote for our event, two months before it took place. If this were to be done again for a future event, I would attempt to reach student magazines, more tailored to the event we were hosting, and ask if this article could be published closer to the event, as there is risk that those who have seen the publication will forget if they didn’t purchase a ticket at the time.

Financial outcomes

As per the settlement sheet (see appendix), this event did not make a profit and resulted in a collective loss of £339.36, split at £56.56 between all 6 members of the group. Our expenses were as follows; £240 for venue hire, £3.35 for wristbands, £110 for local advertisements, £30 on artwork, a total of £497.50 in artist fees and £50 on the catering rider, totalling £930.85. Areas for improvement and lowering costs could be through spending less on local advertisements and artist fees, through negotiating a flat but reasonable fee for all artists rather than different amounts for each of them.

Our total ticket sales were as follows; 14 tickets were sold through RA, generating £92.50. 32 tickets were sold on Fatsoma totalling £167.50. 16 tickets were sold on DICE totalling £108.50. 6 tickets were sold on the night of the event totalling £48, bringing our sales total to £416.50, observing over a 50% loss. Areas for improvement surrounding ticket pricing is to increase the early bird ticket prices, as well as limiting the number of these sold, as the promotion of sell out early bird tickets may encourage people to buy tickets quicker and therefore generating a larger income. Tickets on the door could also have been increased as this tends to be the case for similar events, encouraging people to buy in advance to save money on the day.

Overall, as much as I enjoyed the process of organising and executing the event, financially it was incredibly unsuccessful, and I don’t feel the workload was managed adequately with equal weighting across all members of the group as myself and Luca did almost all of the work. With better marketing strategies implemented, lower artist fees and more footfall, there is potential for this style of event to work more efficiently in future if I were to endeavor to host another Eclypse event.