FINAL PRESENTATION

THE INITIAL IDEA

Our initial idea was to put on a jungle club night. We would base how successful the event was by how many tickets we sold and how people spoke of the event afterwards. We also wanted to enjoy the event ourselves and just see people having fun. Our inspiration came from the festival Nass, which Grace and I both attended. I had also been to a number of jungle nights so we both knew what kind of music we wanted.

PLANNING THE EVENT

We started planning the event by looking for a venue. After speaking to people at college we decided we would contact Volks. We also made the decision that we wanted to do our event in mid January, we chose Wednesday 15th as we have Thursdays off college. We also thought that the 15th was a good date as it was far enough away from New Years for people to want to go out. Volks replied and said that the 15th was available to hire however, everyone who attended had to be over 18. As Grace is 17 we had to find somewhere else. With this in mind we also decided to make our event 8p.m-12a.m as most of our friends would have college the next day.

As I had been to an event at the latest music bar before, when i was 17, we decided to contact them to see if they were available to hire on the 15th. They replied and we arranged a meeting to look around the venue. We had been emailing the latest music bar's correspondent, Cathy, however when we arrived at the venue we were met by a lady called Angie. In the meeting we arranged with Angie that we would have the event in the downstairs of the venue. This would cost us a total of £200, £150 for the hire of the venue and £50 for security as the event would be mixed age range. Here are the notes and pictures I took during the meeting.

Once we had booked the venue we started to think about how to make the event stand out from others. We came up with the idea of fancy dress as this will attract other people rather than just jungle music listeners. To go with the dress up we also decided to decorate the Latest music bar to make it more exciting inside. We started researching decoration ideas and found one on pinterest. It was homemade so the materials wouldn't cost much to make, so we could take it out of the ticket profit.

We started sorting Djs. This was my job as a few of my friends DJ in my spare time. I asked my friends George and Archie as they DJ as a duo and are the best that I know. I also asked my friend Cam and George's friend Max offered so we 4 DJs. I decided to buy George and Archie beers as a way of saying thank you as we couldn't really afford to pay them.

Our next step in planning the event was creating a poster for us to publicise our event with. We made two versions and decided with the 2nd as we felt it represented our event better.

THE DAY OF THE EVENT

After a lot of promoting our event for weeks the day of the event finally came around. I went to Tesco with my grandparents to buy the beers for the DJs, on my way to the Latest music bar. Grace and I met there at 3p.m to start setting up. When we got there, there was nobody there we could see so we rang the door bell. A man ran down and opened the door without saying anything and ran back upstairs. We found this weird but went down stairs anyway to start setting up. There were about 70 chairs on the main stage, which was very annoying as this is where we wanted everyone to dance. We decided to send Cathy an e-mail asking her where we should move the chairs and what time the bar staff and security would arrive. Whilst we waited we started to make some of the tissue paper flowers. We got no reply from Cathy so just decided to move the chairs up stairs as we weren't using that space.

Once we had moved the chairs we started putting up the vine leaves that Grace had made the night before. We stuck the up with black masking tape. This worked well and the decorations stayed up. We then added some of the tissue appear flowers and the venue was ready.

It was around 6p.m when the bar staff arrived. They were quiet rude to us at first and didn't really say much to us until one of them came downstairs. They said they were told the event was going to be upstairs and didn't have enough staff to have the downstairs bar open. This was annoying but was't the end of the world so we agreed to have the upstairs bar open and the downstairs closed with security watching the bar downstairs.

The DJs were supposed to arrive at 7p.m but they hadn't arrived so I called Archie. Archie said they hadn't left yet and would be there around 7:45. This was annoying however we weren't paying them so I couldn't be that annoyed.

The security then came downstairs and said they wanted to make it a dry bar as they were worried about the mixes of ages. We argued that we told Angie in the meeting that it would have been a mix of ages so they would have had time to prepare for this. Also, with most of my friends being over 18, it was a problem for me as they came to drink and have fun, not be treated as if they were underage again. The security found some wristbands to give to over 18s so agreed to let us have the bar open.

The event started and it was going well. Grace and I were on the door selling and checking tickets, it got to around 9p.m and we asked the security if they could let the last few people into the event as we wanted to go have fun. The security agreed to this and Grace and I went back downstairs. Later on, Grace came and found me as the security weren't letting people in, who had bought tickets. We went and spoke to them and they said that we had said we were closing the door at 9:30. This wasn't true at all we were just closing the door for people to buy tickets. Jena and Elle are both on our college course so buying tickets wasn't necessary for them. However, the security ignored this and continued to be rude to us and everybody else. Having dealt with pretentious security in the past, I knew there was no way of getting through to them, especially as they felt as if they had authority over Grace and I as we were younger. Throughout the night the security continued to be verbally and physically abusive towards everyone who attended the event. Although the event still went on until 11p.m and was enjoyed by a number of people.

WHAT WENT WRONG:

Arrived at 3p.m, didn't see or hear from any representative of the venue until 6p.m.
Understaffed for event so downstairs bar wasn't open.
Proposal of dry bar (under 18, wristbands, miss communication)
Shut doors at 9:30p.m
Finished at 11p.m not 12.
People kicked out, the smoking area boundaries weren't stated by security.
Name calling by security (Nonces, cretins ect...)

WHAT WENT WELL:

We made profit from the event
70% of tickets were sold
People who attended said they had fun and enjoyed the night.

LESSONS LEARNT FOR FMP:

Have enough contact details, personal numbers and emails.
18+ event, less stress potential underage drinking.
Finalise everything in meeting over e-mai to make sure everythings in writing.