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Event Evaluation

The following document will focus on the evaluation of the music event planned by myself and my group, taking into account my roles within the event and analysing each aspect of the event to evaluate what went well and what could be improved on for the future. The event itself was a rock and metal event consisting of four bands and took place at Key Club in the centre of Leeds on the 15^th of march (see appendix 1 for evidence). During the event, each member of the group was designated roles and tasks to help manage the event as smoothly as possible. As three members of our group were also performing in the event as members of the bands, they were designated with managing each band including load in and stage changeover. The last two members: myself and Ben divided tasks with him electing to do the lights for the show (see appendix 9) and myself taking the duty of box office and maintaining health and safety along with collecting photo and video evidence of the event proceedings.

Event schedule

The day of the event started with our group meeting at the venue between 3:30-4pm to begin the set up and load in. Each band was designated a set of 30 min slot to arrive from 4-6pm starting with the headliner so as to match the sound check times and stager their arrival. However, the time slots were unfortunately not stuck to with three of the bands arriving at the same time and slightly behind schedule causing a slight disruption. Sound checks followed during which I underwent safety checks following the risk assessment provided by the university (see appendix 8). Due to a minor delay in sound checks the doors of the event needed to be pushed back by approximately 15mins. The first band kicked off the gig at 7:30pm with the headliner closing the event at 10:50 in time for the venue’s curfew.

Event atmosphere

The overall atmosphere for our event was positive with all those who attended cheering on and supporting each band. Although the numbers in attendance were fewer than expected the crowd were still energetic and appeared to enjoy the event, below in the Event atmosphere section are four clips of each bands set showing the atmosphere and energy of the crowd in each. The opener on the night was a band named Janata (See appendix 3) who despite having the smallest following, were greeted by a warm reception and even a request of an encore. Next up was Metal band How Do You Plead (See appendix 4) who helped ramp up tempo with their high-octane music. The third band was New Damage (See appendix 5) who kept the audience hooked with their unique blend of styles. Last up was our headliner Student Slasher Film (See appendix 6) who closed out the night with their catchy guitar riffs and songs.

Box Office

For this event I was supposed to be running the box office, however the venue had scheduled one of their members of staff to come in and run it for us as they were more familiar with till and payment system at the venue. During the soundchecks I found the venue manager to enquire about taking photographs and helping out with the box office, unfortunately they insisted that the box office was ran by a member of their staff however they were happy to let me take some photos of the box office setup excluding their staff member who requested not to be on camera. During the event the box office recorded an attendance of 35 people (See appendix 6), fewer than expected but still an acceptable turnout for a first event. The images below (See appendix 6) show the box office at the entrance to the venue, including the display showing the bands and ticket prices. On the day we sold 5 tickets on the door for £8 each with 26 people purchasing tickets online and 4 people being on the guest list.

Security

For this event we had one security guard (See Appendix 7) as our predicted attendance was not enough to require multiple members of security. During the show, the security guard was in charge of making sure that the audience were safe and that there were no incidents in addition to keeping track of the people entering and leaving the show. On the night of the event there were no incidents or anything that the member of security was required to deal with. Attendance was tracked using a small tally (See appendix 7) with each audience member being given an ink stamp to indicate to staff that they had purchasedtickets.

Health and Safety

As mentioned above, during the soundchecks and setups I used the risk assessment guidelines (See appendix 8) and made sure that all procedures and precautions were taken to mitigate any risks. As shown in the images below, both main fire exits were kept clear of obstructions and were clearly labelled, any tripping hazards such as curtains and cables were kept clear of walkways and warning signs for use of strobe lighting and high noise levels where clearly displayed at the entrance to the venue. Unfortunately, due to the location of the venue the disabled access was limited and difficult, this proved to be an issue with the lead singer for the opening band Janata needing ramp access to both the venue and stage ultimately requiring assistance from members of our group and members of staff. Alongside this, during the show the lighting backstage was minimal which could have caused potential hazards, there was a report of a small leak side of stage which could have caused a slipping risk, and there were also some members of the bands who were smoking outside and partially blocking the fire exit in addition to two cars being left in the loading bay. All of these issues were unfortunately not thought of and mitigated by out group and were noticed too far into the event to be able to effectively prevent any potential hazards.

Production

The production team for this event consisted of a sound and lighting engineer provided by the venue. Initially we had contacted them over the possibility of bringing our own sound technician in order to save money as we would have previously agreed a cheaper fee. At first, we were told that this would be allowed however when we arrived on the day of the event, key club had provided their own engineer. Following this we divided production tasks between the group allocating stage management/stagehands to members of the group who were performing as part of the bands, with myself on hand if any extra help was needed. Lastly, we enquired with the venue manager to see if our group member (Ben) could program the lighting for the show as he had previous lighting experience and an idea for what he wanted the shows lighting to look like, to which they thankfully said yes. The images below (See appendix 9) provide evidence of the lighting for the event as well as the lighting and sound desks which are situated at the back of the venue away from the stage and the dance floor. The overall production for the event went quite smoothly with only one small mishap happening during the last soundcheck where one of the connections caused the sound system to trip forcing the sound technician to do a quick system reset and causing our group to delay doors opening by 10 minutes. At the end of the event, my group and some of the other band members stayed to help the venue pack down all of the equipment and tidy up the live room.

Artist Liaison

Due to more than half of our group being in the bands performing there was not as much need for a signal designated artist liaison and so it instead fell to a group effort with each group member representingeach band respectively. As mentioned previously, we planned out a staggered arrival for each band in order to make sure load in and sound checks were as efficient as possible and so that nobody was left waiting. Despite the initial plan however, three of the four bands arrived within a 15-minute window causing a slight disruption to the planned schedule. All members of the group helped each band to load in their equipment through the loading bay entrance and helped set up and pack down before and after sets. The images below (See appendix 10) show a few examples of artist liaison with me and my group including photos of the green room, merch stand and load in process. The venue also provided a spacious green room for the artists to use for storage and as somewhere to rest between sets, one improvement in this area for us as a group would be to provide more refreshments for our artists such as bottles of water and snacks rather than just allowing time for artists to buy their own food between sound checks.

Stage management

During the event, efficiency was key in order to have a smooth and successful evening. With this in mind each band was given a strict set length with an appropriate 15-minute gap between sets to account for change over times, this being said the opening band did run over their set time by 10 minutes however due to efficient change overs this did not affect the set lengths of the rest of the bands. It was also vital that the stage was kept as clear as possible during each performance to not only prevent risks but also to make swapping over equipment as simple as possible. The photos towards the bottom of this document show examples of the stage setup along with some examples of some of the bands set up and pack down procedure (See appendix 11).

Online marketing

For the promotion of any event, online marketing is key, unfortunately this is an area that we struggled in. Due to this being the first event we have staged and promoted as a group, we have no active online following aside from personal accounts, so we instead focused our efforts more on physical promotion. Each band featuring in the gig did help to promote the event on their social media accounts (See appendix 12) however over all I believe that we needed to promote online more than we did through use of multiple social media platforms and multiple posts.

Promotion

In terms of promoting our event, we targeted more physical promotion opposed to online promotion as we felt that would give us better chances of selling tickets. For our physical promotion we printed off posters (See appendix 13) and displayed them around our university and the campuses of the university’s that some of the bands were from. On top of this our group booked a table in our university cafe for a day where we promoted our event and handed out free snacks to each person who bought a ticket (See appendix 13).

Financial outcomes

Overall, from this event we sold 31 tickets, 26 online using See tickets and 5 on the door. We decided to price online tickets at £6 plus 10% service charge which we thought was a reasonable price compared to other events we had seen, the tickets on the door were priced at £8 with a £2 increase from prepurchase tickets. Our financial outcome as a group is shown on the settlement document below (see appendix 14) in total we made £211.60 from ticket sales and the total prices from venue hire and staff wages totalled up to £321.55 ultimately meaning that we did not profit from the event and instead owed an extra £109.95 to cover the venue costs.

Summary

In short, I believe that our event as a group was relatively successful for a group of first-time promoters however there are definitely areas that we can improve on specifically regarding the promotional aspects and communication with the venue. All points of the risk assessment were followed as closely as possible with only exceptions being caused by unforeseen circumstances such as low lighting levels and band members partially blocking one of the fire exits. Overall, despite losing money I believe that our event went as well as could have been hoped.