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Final blog (Bucks Live 7)

The event is done!

Initially I would say the event went well. In Alan’s words: ‘No one cried and no one got in a fight!’ Of course there are several things that could’ve gone better, but first I will start naming the things that went well.

On the day of the event, I feel we really communicated as a team. No one questioned Jessie’s leadership and people actually tried to work together. The festival attracted 3,000 punters, which is a pretty good amount considering it is a ‘new’ festival and in a completely new location for us. We didn’t have the comfort of the university’s concourse, which was very challenging, but in a good way. For my team that meant we could put on twice as many acts, which really gave most of us something to be working on at any given time. The story teller’s which I worked on since Christmas were received in a very positive way and most of the artists were very lovely people. I think most of us didn’t try to hide behind an overly positive fantasy of what we wanted the event to be, but were very realistic in working what the event actually was.

Now for the learning outcomes of the things that could’ve gone better. I think if someone else in our group would’ve had the radio, communication would have gone a bit smoother. I think, next time I am helping to run an artist area, I would like a schedule detailing exactly what we are doing at which times and create this with the other people working in that area. We did have a schedule detailing when we expected the artists to arrive and when they were on stage, but we should’ve made more work of that. I think it would be very useful to have a sheet with the phone numbers of all the artists on them in one place. This would’ve caused less panic when artists were late or we just simply didn’t know where they were.

In hindsight we should’ve also communicated better with the artists before the event and give them specific arrival times. Some members of the ‘headlining’ acts arrived at 2 pm and others half an hour before stage time. This made signing them in a bit confusing. It didn’t help that the bus with the societies in them was half an hour late. This is something not much can be done about, but I feel if they had been on time there would’ve been less of a panic at the start of the day. Deciding with the artists in advance how they were going to get paid and sorting that all out before the start of the event would’ve been useful as well. This particular issue did cause some confusion, but I think was managed well.

Throughout the entire year I think communication could have been much better. Towards the day of the event it did get better, but it wasn’t soon enough. If we had booked the acts earlier I think a lot of manically trying to find acts that maybe weren’t of the quality that we would’ve liked them to be, could have been avoided.

I did learn a thing or two about time management (believe it or not) and about just simply putting your shoulders under the work and doing it. I learned an incredible amount about teamwork and how to communicate well with people. I found that sometimes when people aren’t pulling their weight, it’s not because they don’t want to do it, but because they don’t know what to do or how to do it. Helping them by figuring out, together, how to start can sometimes really motivate a person to do well. I have found this is the case not just in other people, but also in myself. When I don’t want to do something, it’s not the unwillingness of doing it, but simply because I don’t know how to do it. These new communication skills have really helped me in other coursework(Entrepreneur) and has really created more of a bond between myself and my classmates and I think the entire, or most of our course feels this way.

I am also really proud of the story tellers. They could’ve been positioned better and briefed better as they struggled to get children to join their story, but they did well. I am very proud of starting this project, fighting for it when it was nearly given to someone else and seeing it through.

All in all I am very proud of this event. The hours I spent finishing painting paw prints on signs, laminating signs, meeting with storytellers and finding them costumes, setting up the event and everything around it have really paid off. I really feel like I am part of something special now and that makes me very happy.

Now let’s hope that I’ll be in a massive tour bus somewhere in the US in 10 years. :)

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SubWoofers (Bucks Live 6)

Less than a week to go until Subwoofers, and we have come a long way as a group. In the past week I have been talking to a lot of my classmates and came to the conclusion that all of us have changed so much since we started this course. Most of us have learned how to communicate as a group and have become better team members as a result. I know I certainly have.

Last year during the winterland event I set as a goal to become better at working with other people, and I think I have achieved that goal. Over the course of this event I have learned how to communicate with others in a kind manner and how to push myself and others to do more without pissing people off.

Over the easter break I feel my team has been doing quite a bit of work, but maybe not as much as we should have done, which in hindsight I regret. However, I am very happy that we didn’t do nothing as that would have been disastrous.

I feel there is a massive lack of leadership in my group, which does not only affect our team but I’ve noticed it is also affecting all the other teams. When we struggle to put together a running order for the act, it means that production/logistics have to wait with creating their schedules for changeovers and the other tasks they have to do. I am a bit disappointed that this has become the case. I do believe that myself and some of the other team members have really tried to make up for the lack of leadership by offering help to other team members with their tasks and just generally trying to compile all of the information we have and communicating that to the other teams when they were asking for it. I feel we were communicating as a team but all of the information that got fed into the team just disappeared and there were several occasions where other teams asked for information, that I was surprised they hadn’t received yet as most of the info was handed in to the team weeks before. These things include communication of up-to-date running order of the acts, technical riders and stage plans. All information that we should’ve communicated way earlier as without this information the other teams won’t be able to do their work properly.

I am very happy that some of my teammates have stepped up and taken the lead in the past two/three weeks and compiled all info and communicated within our team and with the other teams.

I still feel that communication is the main thing we struggle with as a group, as well as motivation. I have found that it is very hard to motivate others to come along and help out with things such as flyering. However, talking to some of my teammates I have managed to gently push them into doing certain things and when I did so I realised some people aren’t doing certain things because they didn’t understand what they were supposed to be doing. By helping them out they now understand more of what is going on and we gain more badly needed information as a group.

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Bucks Live 5

We're making progress! There's a saying in Dutch: ''it took a while, but at least you've got something''. That's what I feel like right now. I got progress on a tech rider for James Mullaly, finally got a Wycombe and Amersham College band called Laced, which we still have to decide on wether or not we want them and I finally got a story, which will hopefully be approved.

Communication with one of the acts was a bit rough at first, but he has become reasonably responsive now, which is very helpful. I was in contact with someone on the music department of Wycombe and Amersham College, but communication with this person is very rough. I have noticed if I send an email once a week, I wasn't annoying him too much and could still nudge him into replying in a reasonable amount of time. He has suggested a band called Laced and tomorrow I will suggest this to my team and if they are approved of I will contact them directly.

Last week I had a meeting with Katie who is on our storytellers team. We came up with an idea of having Disney characters who will ask children about their dog they have 'lost'. Children will have to search for clues with them in a 'dora the explorer' style of treasure hunt. She is writing some of the script and I'm in very good contact with her and guiding her and visa versa when we need it.

When a problem arose regarding the storytellers and who is in charge of it, I did something I normally wouldn't really do. I invested quiet a bit of time into it, so I was very upset when I heard it would possibly be handed over to someone else. Normally I would accept it and get over it, as I'm not the type of person that enjoys conflict and I hate confronting others. This time, however, I stood up for myself and the next day I had a confirmation that I was going to keep working on this project. I think I could have maybe been a bit less panicky when it came to the communication with the relevant parties, but I'm very happy that I did this rather than backing off.

I hope we continue to make progress, and on the artist side of things, I feel it will be a good event.

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Bucks Live 4

The snow isn’t stopping us! Got the first reply to my request for a technical rider. I’ve been having a massive procrastination streak the past two weeks. But today I finally managed to get over myself and do some work on multiple assignments. I didn’t email people I had to email a reminder a week ago and that just made things worse, but last week I finally did it. I rembered something our lecturer said during a lecture about time management. Something along the lines of: “You should throw away the fear of moving forwards.” I didn’t really know what he meant by this, cause how can you be afraid of progress... But procrastinating isn’t the fear of progress, it’s the fear of having to do the work, cause I’m a lazy couch potatoe.....(sometimes) When I answered the email I ofcourse immediatly pushed our website and Facebook page to the artist.... I am more proud of myself, than I probably should be, but at least I made some progress.

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Bucks Live 3

This post was supposed to go up on February 20th, but I think something went wrong. Anyway here it is: It has been a few weeks since I last posted. So far I think it is going reasonably well. We have 4 acts confirmed now, but are struggling to find more acts. The main issue is getting acts to reply, which is something we can’t do much about. We are looking into finding more acts currently and have decided to stop waiting for people constantly. Communication is still a lot better than it was at the start which is good, however I think more meetings wouldn’t hurt. I am hoping to get a lot more done over the next two weeks, as we don’t have a lecture next week. I have personally been struggling with story tellers. We have decided that we are going to pick the story they will be telling, however I really struggle with finding a good story about a dog that can be told within 5-10 minutes and for which a costume isn’t going to be super expensive.If all goes well I still trust that we can put on a great event and I hope that the post after the event is going to be a positive one.

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Bucks Live 2

It has been nearly two months since the last blog, and I feel some progress has been made by the talent team. In the last blog I was pointing out that communication was not our strongest point. However, we are starting to communicate more effectively now. For quite a while we kept beating around the bush when it came to choosing artists. At first this was because we were just looking at artists we liked and then we started looking at artists that are simply too big/expensive for our event. After the market research came in, which pointed out that pop and rock music was the most popular music amongst our target audience we started getting the hang of it. I feel at first we had a lot of similar singer/song-writer or indie type artists and not much diversity, but by involving the local community and the university’s societies we are starting to get a lot of different acts and entertainers. I think it is good that our lecturer helped us to take a step back and actually look at what is going on in the local community and at the wants and needs of our target audience. This way I feel we were more capable of separating our own musical preferences from the event and objectively judge entertainment based on suitability for the event. I don’t think at this moment that there were any more complications other than communication. I am happy with the progress we are starting to make, even though it is not going as fast as I would like it to go. The lecturer has pointed out that we are well on schedule for the event and I will take his word for it and try to adjust to the speed that we are moving at. I am so excited to see what this event is going to be like.

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Bucks Live 1

Like said in a previous blog, this year the second year music and live events management students, together with the music business students are going to put on a charity music festival for Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. This blog will be the first reflection on this process.

In week 4 I got sorted into the talent team, which was my first choice. I have been managing a band since this summer and I really enjoy this and want to carry on with tour management or artist management after university. That is why the talent team was my first choice. This way I can learn more about the dynamic between event manager and artist/artist management.

So far the process isn’t running too smoothly. From week 4 we have been suggesting artists to each other on Facebook. This resulted in a massive list of artists that we then broke down into artists that we liked and definitely want at the event and artists that might not be suitable or we weren’t sure about. This process was quick, easy and pretty effective. The week after in the lecture however we realised that we like these artists, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that our target audience does as well. That week we decided we were going to do market research, which was handed over to the marketing team who handed it over to a few business school students. It is really useful that they wanted to do the market research for us, but as we were waiting for the results of this research we stopped doing work, which resulted in not much getting done. I think it would have been really useful if we had started the market research way earlier. We were planning on finding some entertainers (non-musicians) as we were waiting for the results, but this didn’t really happen unfortunately. I think this is also partly down to all the deadlines for other modules getting closer.

I must admit that I have been feeling a bit useless in this team as there hasn’t been a lot that I’ve been able to do. So far I have obviously listened to artists, recommended a few and shortlisted them with the rest of the group. I have also found some story tellers, but I hoped that there was more that I could’ve done.

The communication in the group is a bit confusing as well. A lot of it is going through a Facebook chat, even though we have had a couple of meetings. I think it would work better if we met outside of the classroom once a week and have a clearer schedule of what everyone is doing and when we need to finish these tasks. I would like to have a schedule like this over the Christmas period so it’s clear for everyone what they are expected to have finished when we come back after Christmas.

I do know that everyone is very excited for this event and we all want to pull off the best event we possibly can. There is, however, still a long way to go.

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Hearing Dogs for Deaf People and BNU’s Music & Live and Music Business

This year, for the first time, the second year students from both music and live events management and music business, which includes me, will organise Bucks Live away from the university. We’ve been asked to organise a day-long music festival as a fundraising opportunity for a charity called Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.

Because this event is aimed at raising awareness for the charity and hopefully get people to sponsor and support this charity, it seemed only fair to me to know a little bit more about this charity. Therefore I have decided to write about this charity in a blog and hopefully learn a bit more about it.

Hearing Dogs for Deaf people was founded in 1982 at Crufts, a prestigious dog show. The charity started out with 3 members of staff training the dogs in Gill Lacey’s, one of the founders, living room. It was officially launched by Bruce Folge and Lady Beatrice Wright, with the help of Gill Lacey and Tony Blunt, as a three-year pilot scheme, which, as we can see, continued on for much longer. The first dog that was trained was a rescue dog called Favour.

In 1986 the charity was granted a full charitable status and bought their first property in Lewknor, Oxfordshire. By this time the charity had 20 hearing dogs placed and 26 people on the waiting list for a hearing dog. By 1990 the charity had doubled in size and in spring of this year they placed their 100th hearing dog.

In 1992 the charity gained an incredible patron; HRH The Princess Royal decided to become their Royal Patron and still is until this day. HRH The Princess Royal opened the charity’s northern training grounds, The Beatrice Wright Centre in North Yorkshire, in 1994. In this same year the umbrella association Assistance Dogs (UK) was launched. In 1996 the charity decided to change its name from Hearing Dogs for the Deaf to Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. This was the year the charity first ventured onto the internet and for the first time people were able to e-mail the charity. Their co-founder and Honorary President Lady Wright was awarded an MBE in this same year. An MBE is awarded to an individual by the Queen for that person’s outstanding service to the community or local ‘hands on’ service. MBE stands for Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

In 1999 the charity opened its main office and training centre – The Grange – in Saunderton, Buckinghamshire. This is a renovated farmhouse and its outbuildings, and remains to this day the home to the charity’s head office and training centre.

In 2002 the charity had its 20th anniversary and celebrated this by unveiling a new logo and new burgundy hearing dog jackets. Later, in 2004, the charity placed its 1000th hearing dog, Ria.

When in 2012 the charity turned 30, they rebranded their hearing dog jackets again and unveiled a new, more modern logo.

This concludes the history of the Hearing Dogs for Deaf People charity for now, but as I wrote at the start of this blog, they are going to try something new this year. In cooperation with Bucks New University they are putting on their first day-long music festival. With this event the charity wants to raise awareness for hearing loss caused by loud music. They want to promote that anyone of any age can and should enjoy a good music festival, but should also think about the consequences for their hearing if they choose not to wear some form of ear protection. All of the money raised with this event will be donated to the charity, which they will use to support and hopefully expand the charity in the long-run.

I will write a blog about how the charity helps deaf people and why hearing dogs can be a massive life saver next week. If you want to find out a bit more already you can listen to Steve and Echo’s story here: https://youtu.be/87pDiCEwrN0

alternatively check out Sophie and Rusty’s story here: https://youtu.be/UUa18xdMrhw

For more information about the charity please visit their website: www.hearingdogs.org.uk

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the team :)

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Reading festival 2017

On the 22nd of August I got on a bus from Amsterdam to London. I was going to work with Specialized Security at Reading Festival as an administrator. After a very long drive and train ride to High Wycombe I arrived at Phoebe’s at 1 A.M. the night before we would go to Reading by bus with Tom. When we arrived the next day I was pleased to find out I didn’t have to sleep on the floor in a small tent, but on an actual bed in a big tent, even though I had to share that tent with about 20 other woman. I unpacked some of my stuff and had to wait for the briefing to start, which I didn’t mind as it was really nice weather.

The briefing was really interesting and we got assigned our shifts. I was going to be on the nightshift from 8 P.M. to 8 A.M. from Wednesday night until Sunday night, in yellow campsite. After we were informed on some important things, like code-words to use over the radio for different situations and how to act in case of a terror attack, Remely, Alice, someone from Alice’s year who’s name I keep forgetting, and me had dinner and got ready for the night ahead.

I spend the next 5 nights in a small wooden cabin with a radio, desperately trying to understand Scottish accents and writing everything down what happened. I had an amazing team of security guards and a lovely supervisor to work with and made some friends. George, who was the supervisor for yellow campsite was one of the only Scottish people I didn’t have to ask 4 times to repeat himself, because he knew I struggled with the accent and tried to speak a bit slower.

A lot of things happened on a nightly basis, like people on drugs that were paranoid they were being followed, people overdosing on drugs or drinking too much and people ‘’going missing’’ and showing up at their tent 3 hours later. The second night I got a bit cold and bored and asked George if I could join Scott for a walk around the campsite as I wasn’t allowed to walk around in my high visibility vest by myself. When Scott and me noticed a fire made of cardboard that got a bit too big we walked up to the guys that were sitting next to it and kindly requested them to not put any more fuel on the fire. Mid-conversation we heard a lot of screaming and turned around to see two of the staff of one of the catering vans fighting. They were a couple and got into a fight because she thought he was cheating on her, because of something she’d seen on his phone and he accused her of stealing from him. In the process she had tried to bite his thumb off and he had scratched her and pulled her hair. We got more security to back us up and I decided the best place for me was to listen and stand behind security and definitely try to not get involved, that was security’s job and not mine. We talked to both of them separately and they agreed on not going near each other again for the duration of the festival, if they did they would have been evicted. They both enjoyed the rest of the festival without trying to kill each other.

About 5 times people were brought into the cabin for questioning about possessing drugs, ranging from cannabis and xtc pills to cocaine and heroin. Often they were let off with a firm warning, unless they possessed quantities that were definitely not for own use, and their drugs were seized and put into the amnesty box backstage.

Apart from this not much happened, because I stayed in my little cabin for most of my shifts, moving to the welfare tent during the last two hours of my shifts (it was opposite the cabin) to steal some of their heat from their heating lights, while still listening to the radio and going back to the cabin to write stuff down if needed.

On the last night we got a complained about a few people going around campsites to steal stuff on both orange and yellow campsite. Security responded by driving over with two trucks and about 12 security guards, trying to catch the people who did it, but they never managed to find any prove of who did it and whether or not they were actually guilty.

Between shifts I still got to enjoy a bit of the festival, either by myself while Alice and Remely were asleep or with them. I also got to see Eminem and Dr. Dree, because George, being the kind person he is, let me off shift for two hours to go see them. I met a lot of great people and the feeling that I had of security at concerts/festivals/venues being really underpaid and underappreciated has really grown. I got to see the long hours and hard work that these people have to do to make a living and a lot of them have to juggle multiple jobs to provide for themselves, and I have really gained respect for the positive attitude with which (most of them) they approached their jobs.

Personally I feel I have gained some better skills in working in a team and listening to people, but also understanding when to back off and let other people do the job they have been hired to do. I am very grateful for the briefing about terror attacks, because I feel very safe knowing what to do in a situation like that. I have also figured out that working nights works really well for me as I have a hard time getting up in the morning, but not as much when I wake up at 4 P.M. and have to stay awake until 8 A.M. I got to see the belly of the beast that is called Reading Festival and I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I was violently ill for an entire week afterwards and all of the holes in my head are still completely blocked. Unfortunately, my phone ran out of battery and I didn’t want to leave it unattended on charge so I didn’t get to take a lot of pictures, but Remely and Alice have some of the pictures that I was in (around) as well.

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Pictures

Tumblr was being weird so I couldn’t upload all the pictures in one go

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Having fun with security

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