Event Evaluation
Taking into account your role within the project you need to provide an individual evaluation – (2000 words), alongside film and photographic evidence of you effectively managing your event. You should explain the nature and purpose of your inclusion of all evidence and its relevance.
Your evidence should cover the following areas: at least 3 pieces of evidence in each sub category, with all evidence submitted under supporting material.
· Event Atmosphere
· Box Office
· Security
· Health and Safety (you should directly reference points outlined in your groups risk assessment)
· Production (sound and lighting)
· Artists Liaison
· Stage Management
· Online Marketing – This can include websites, social media, forums, blogs etc.
· Promotion – This can include posters, flyers, influence mixes, videos or any other relevant promotional materials.
· Financial outcomes – This should be presented on the settlement template provided on space.
· Only work submitted as part of your evaluation will be counted in the word count. Photographs, video content, online marketing and promotional materials will not be counted in the word count.
· Films should not exceed 7mins total in length and should be edited to show highlights of the event.
Overview
My groups’ event ‘Eclypse Presents: Garage Takeover’ took place at Headrow House in Leeds on the 25th of February 2026. We wanted to showcase emerging artists within the UK garage scene at a live event. Our event consisted of 4 performing artists which included of a headliner and 3 supporting acts.
In this evaluation, I will break down and analyse my role during our event and the overall event management and performance. This evaluation will cover; Event Atmosphere, Box Office, Security, Health and Safety, Production, Artist Liaison, Stage management, Marketing, Promotion and Financial outcomes.
I will use video and photographic evidence to support my evaluation and will conclude my reasonings.
Event Evidence Video
Event Atmosphere
The atmosphere of the event was lively and energetic when it came to the music, as a group we used the Zoom H5 to record the overall event (please listen to the Garage Takeover wav file). The crowd though small, was up for dancing and cheering the artists that performed. During the event, we did experience times that saw the performers having small audiences.
We changed our plans on the night of our event, during our promotional and stage layout phase. We decided that instead of using the stage at Headrow, we would have a 360 performance. This was suggested by Luca and the venue sound engineer set it up for us. This was to minimise the impact of the small audience and to create as much energy and atmosphere as possible. By utilising the 360-stage set up it gave us and the audience space to maximise the experience in a small crowd setting.
Box Office
Rachel and Connie were on Box Office duty with additional support from Dell who was helping trouble shoot throughout the evening. Before opening the doors, we had 100 tickets already sold, with the hope that more would be sold on the door. Though we did not have as much foot traffic as we hoped, we still managed to sell more tickets on the doors.
The Box Office set up at Headrow House is a table and using ticket scanners to scan for general admission and guest list tickets. Rachel, Connie and Dell used the RA and DICE ticket scanners to do this job and used the DICE app to allow the public to purchase tickets. For managing how many tickets were sold, we used wrist bands on members of the audience. We also used the RA app to keep track on how many tickets were bought on the door so we knew how many people were in the room. Overall, we managed to sell 120 tickets for the entire event.
Security
We had 1 SIA security staff member assigned to our event by the venue. Due to low ticket sales this was all that we required, there were other security staff on the premises that could have been called to assist if a serious issue had occurred. IDs were checked by security outside the venue. The security mainly focused on crowd management and preventing members of the public and an artist from vaping on the premises which is not allowed. Aside from the vaping incidents we did not have any additional security issues.
Health and Safety
Before the event we reviewed our Risk Assessment document to remind ourselves of areas of concern. The security staff were SIA trained and we also checked the drug and alcohol policy of the venue and we knew that our event was for over 18’s only with ID’s being checked on entry. When setting up the DJ equipment, the engineer took extra precautions by placing 2 railings over loose cables as the engineer did not have sufficient tape for taping down the cables to avoid trip hazards.
We also referenced the Risk assessment to make sure that the show was able to still go ahead as our event took place immediately after a band performed, we also checked equipment and PAT tests to make sure everything was working.
Production
For the production, we had an engineer for the night as Headrow’s hire fee includes a sound engineer. We therefore focused on the lights for the event. Luca, as the most experienced, operated the lights and there was another engineer available that also helped with the lighting.
At Headrow, they have a basic lighting rig with a small lighting desk to operate the system. Before the event, we sent the venue our tech spec and we checked the venue’s equipment met our needs. When we arrived the sound engineer told us they only had CDJ-300 and DJM-V10 for the artists to use, but this was fine. During the setup of the show, the CDJ-3000 and DJM-V10 decks were linked to a snake underneath the table which allowed the engineer to get sound from the desks to front of house. The engineer used the Allen and Heath SQ-7 digital desk to operate the sound for the show as I setup the Zoom H5 to record both the ambience of the room and what the desk was receiving from the DJ sets.
Artist Liaison
Luca and Maya managed the artist liaison area. Luca is experienced in Artist Liaising and helped coach Maya through the role as she wanted to learn how the role worked.
Luca and Maya also liaised with myself (stage manager), to make sure the artists kept to their set times. During soundcheck, Luca and Maya spoke to the artists and showed them the green room along with the riders that we supplied for the show. During the event, most of the artists spent their time out in the audience watching each other’s sets. This made Luca and Maya’s job easier especially with a much smaller audience than we anticipated. But during the end of Jae Depz’s set, we could not find Greenhouse, fortunately we located him to ensure he was back for his set and change over.
Stage Management
My role was stage manager as I have experience in working within this area as I work as a sound engineer for a local venue that combines the role of artist liaison and stage manager. I have also been a stage manager for a couple of DJ society events. I therefore felt confident on the night to ensure the event ran as smoothly as possible. During the setup of the show, I spoke to Greenhouse and Emily Jacko (pictured above) along with Jae Depz and AJ to make sure they were happy with the CDJs and what time their sets were. I also double checked the set time so I could keep track on who was performing when.
Throughout the event, I ensured artists were near the CDJs to get ready for their set and made sure changeovers were as smooth as possible. As it was a 360 gig I had to be aware where the artists were, especially as they spent most of their time in the audience supporting each other’s sets. As mentioned, with the smaller crowd it was easy to keep an eye on where the artists were. I also had to make sure members of the public was not putting their drinks on the DJ table or harassing artists.
Online Marketing
Throughout January and early February, we continued using social media for our marketing. We primarily used Instagram and Tik Tok to reach our audience. We also researched the gigs that were playing the Headrow the same night as our event to ask for their help to promote our event and boost our ticket sales or use it as an after party for the bands. We reached out to both bands that played but got no response. Simon also mentioned that there was an event at The Belgrave the same night and encouraged us to contact the band. We tried but unfortunately, we did not get any response.
Despite this, we continued using Meta ads and reels on Instagram and Tik Tok to publicise the event. We found that slideshows on Tik Tok worked best for engagement and decided that we should repeat the formula on Instagram. Rachel was also suggested using posts from other music events as inspiration as we thought it would do well or it suited our style of promotion.
Promotion
Like our online marketing, we continued to physically promote our event using posters on key notice boards at the university and in student halls to broaden our reach to students. We also discussed plans to push the promotion outside of social media and posters. We discussed doing exit flyers at the event prior to ours to help promote the event. We also asked our friends and contacts to help us promote our event to their friends via social media. This was particularly the case for friends in university social and sports clubs who had a wide network.
We used 2 different posters, one with a more professional look and another designed to attract students. (see attached photos)
Social media was our main channel of marketing and we used videos to help promote our event and reach a broader audience. We used artist EPKs and promotional material as edits for Instagram and Tik Tok as we knew both the student and young adult audiences used these apps constantly. We also used the artist promotional material for posters for individually promoting artists to try and reach audiences through a different avenue. We used student discount codes during the run up to our event to try and capitalise student night outs and to encourage students to come to our event. We did this by sending the student discounts into student event group chats and to our friends so we could get as many students as possible to attend our event.
Financial Outcomes
Whilst setting up our event, we created a financial forecast to understand what we needed to sell in order to make a profit. We knew the venue would cost £240 to hire, the artists would cost £525 and we planned to spend £100 on marketing (META). Any other work would be done by ourselves, so didn’t cost anything (apart from our time). Therefore, our forecasted Cost to run the event was £895.00. The final costs were actually £906.21, so our forecast of our costs was robust.
We wanted to sell tickets for between £6.50 (early bird) and £10.00 (on door, general admission). We estimated that we could sell over 300 tickets and if we were accurate in our forecast that would bring in £2650. We would therefore make a profit of £1755 – before we paid a £600 bonus to the artists as an agreed share of our profit, if we sold the full 300+ tickets.
This forecast gave us lots of confidence but unfortunately we quickly learnt that selling 300+ tickets would be a challenge. Instead of selling lots of tickets at full price (£10), we had to discount considerably as we approached the date and still only sold 68 tickets. This meant our actual revenue was £419.50 and we made a loss of £489.17. Our costs didn’t change if we sold less tickets than forecast, as we still had to pay the venue hire and the artists, so this is the biggest learning for us. We needed to book a cheaper venue and spend less on artists, because the event wasn’t as popular/attractive as we had hoped. Spending more on marketing would have been risky, because it may not have produced enough additional ticket sales to cover the additional costs, never mind improve our ticket sales to nearer 300.
Conclusion
My group’s event was a key learning experience for all of us and following the staging of our first live event these are my thoughts:
As a new and unknown event company, we chose a venue that was too large for us. With a capacity of 300 we needed to sell 127 tickets to breakeven. The lack of ticket sales made it hard for us to create a dynamic atmosphere as we did not have the crowd to support the artists that were performing.
For future events I would hire cheaper artists as artist fees were a large cost for us. Whilst a good line up can attract a larger audience, ticket sales need to reflect this and to create interest in an event solely through social media without access to a database or promotional support from the venue was difficult.
During our promotional phase, we should have networked and capitalised on student channels and societies earlier to maximise free publicity and generate interest. A large amount of student societies have social calendars and if we had contacted them earlier with student discounts, we could have maximised student societies going to our event. I would also ask the artists to do more consistent and earlier self-promotion for our event to gain traction with their fan base. Although difficult to manage I also think running competitions to win tickets would have been a good way to generate more interest.
Finally, as a group, we feel we could have used our own social networks in a more coordinated and consistent manner, especially in the last 2 weeks to generate interest and boost ticket sales.
