There’s so many things I need to discuss from the lead up to our IPP event so I’m going to go through these things in chronological order. So, leading up to the event I had many meetings with Rachel our designer to discuss what we wanted the aesthetic of the event to be (bellow are some screenshots of the kinds of conversations we had before and after meeting).  In these meetings we discussed the budget, which we set as a maximum of £50, we went through ideas of how we could decorate and headed down to the venue itself to take some pictures so that she was aware of the space that she was working with. The ideas that we threw around were related to our ‘Festival Ready’ theme, but in terms of the dressing of the venue I wanted it to seem more organic than stereotypically festival themed. So we settled on the collection of lots of plants, fairy lights and for Rachel to create hanging string balls which would dangle down above the stage area so that a depth of the space could be created when the lights shone on them. There was a point a few days before the actual event where it seemed as though Rachel had too much work to do and was too stressed so to ensure that our event would run to plan I also contacted another designer called Ellie Light to make sure we had a backup.

 

 

Before the event there was lots of discussion between Cosmo Calling (my main link being Harry Preen who fronts the band with Phoebe) about what backline they would need to provide. We had many discussions about kits and amps to eventually have everything sorted amongst the 3 bands with Hey Lama providing a guitar amp and Tom Say from Nolan Garrett’s band providing kit but no breakables.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the day itself there was some minor stress as I didn’t check in enough with Rachel to make sure she had everything sorted as I trusted her to have everything under control. To my dismay she messaged me saying that she needed someone to go and pick up some materials because she had not had time to so Laura had to go and collect them. Once this was under control we were allowed into the venue at 4pm to start directing the aesthetics and then to start soundchecking from 6pm (the venue is a pizza bar by day so it’s understandable that we limit noise until later on than most venues). This didn’t take very long and luckily Rachel has ladder training so all of the safety aspects of this process were covered and risk assessed. (below is also the soundcheck time sheet sent to all the bands and displayed before the gig in the venue for them to reference)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So doors opened at 8:00pm with the first band coming on at 8:30pm. We had posters around the room displaying set times alongside the event poster itself.  People started coming through the doors at around 8:25pm as expected and we soon had a relatively full room for our first band Hey Lama. Everything was going well and during this set we actually hit our break even point of 35 people which was a relief (over 45 coming through altogether), but during Cosmo Callings following set things started to slightly downhill. Maguire’s only allow their in house sound tech to do the sound and so we were unaware of his skill level. During Cosmo Callings set there were many issues with the sound getting in the way of the gig itself and as the primary stage manager it was my role to sort this issue out. This was definitely a fault of mine because I just didn’t know what to do and I was the stage manager. Having worked with many sound techs I am very aware of how many really don’t like being told how to do their job so I was cautious about bringing the issues up with him. I now realise in hindsight that I should have gone straight to him and told him to quickly sort out the issues so I’ve certainly learnt how to deal with this kind of situation in the future.

 

Other than this the event ran very punctually, the bands were fantastic and the crowd seemed to really enjoy the music with many of them sticking around after the show to tell us that they loved it. Many compliments also came our way about the way we’d dressed the venue as well which was much appreciated. I even received an email from the sound tech saying how much he enjoyed the music with an attached video of one of the bands performance (now this never happens!). So from all this as well as personal messages from the bands saying they loved playing and thanking us for the opportunity, we believe that all in all it was a success.

The curfew set by Maguire’s was 11pm so as the headlining band finished promptly we were able to quickly begin the cleanup. The get out started by Laura helping Tom pack up his kit and driving it back to Cathedral campus whilst I started to take down the decorations and pack them all away so that we could drive them back to Rachel’s house. We managed all this in about 30 minutes and so were able to get our £50 deposit back which we paid the sound tech with. Everything went very smoothly and the venue were satisfied with our cleanup and everyone was out on time with no hiccups! Fantastic!!