Holding the Event of BCU Gift Festival - Report Example

Running head: EXHIBIT MANAGEMENT. BCU Gift festival By Lecturer Date Introduction This project will look at how I intend to hold a BCU gift festival at Birmingham University at the main student’s hall. The exhibition will be a combination of a gift and snack musical festival. Many art festivals have been held in the university in the past by art students and most of the festivals turned out to be a success. I intend to take advantage of my past work experience to hold a fabulous art festival. I will translate the skills I learnt at my workplace to this project where I intend to hold different parties in one event. The first stage will contain the snacks and gift section. In the second area I will put the food and beverage together with student band. Then the final section will have a set stage for a local performing band and a fashion runway. This report will take you in detailed phases how I intend to hold this event and how I will ensure it is a success. Project initiation. Any art festival must give the crowd an unforgettable experience in order for it to be considered successful. How you start a project determines whether it will go all the way or it will get stagnant half way (Preston, 2012: 26). The initiation stage is where the life of the festival starts and where the festival objectives are determined. The main objective for organizing this art festival at Birmingham is to promote the works of BCU art and design students. The students in the festival will get to show case their talents and skills in their different stalls to the public. I also want to provide the students a multiple opportunity to interact with each other and with the faculty. The festival also want artist to learn from one another allowing them to create relationships and a possibility of working together. With these objectives in mind the first step is to thoroughly think through the whole process. It is also at this stage I choose my partners and committee members and determine the stakeholders. I requested the PME committee join the project as the main committee and invited BCU student union and Birmingham institute of art and design faculty to partner with me in making this event a success. I also invited the various clubs in the institutions to feel free to join in the organization of the art festival. The second step was to contact the BCU faculty in charge of events to ask permission to hold the festival in the institution’s main hall. The main aim here is to confirm the venue is available and to notify the authorities a full picture of what kind of event the art festival will be. After confirming the venue was free and acquiring permission from the university board we now entered the second phase of planning for the event. Art festival planning The smooth flow of any event is determined because this is the said skeleton of the event. Planning for this event at first seemed very difficult but to make this festival a success we had to break down every little detail and plan for the art festival. According to Tonge (2010:7) one should consider the e time, scope and objective before starting the project. We already derived the objectives in the initiating stage so here we consider scope and time. The planning of this festival is going to take four weeks before the date of the festival. Planning a festival such as this can be very engaging and so we had to work round the clock to ensure everything was in place in time for the event. The scope in this case covers the institution because the event was going to take place inside the main hall. The festival will be open for all students and faculty members in Birmingham. The scope is limited because it is easy to concentrate and target the students and faculty and also cost effective The first step was to consider how to organize the space and the equipment required. Since the art festival was going to have three sections this meant we needed to divide the space into three. Here we considered what equipment we need such as public address systems, light bulbs, setup stage equipment and a runaway also considering where to store the equipment before the festival. We also had to go through the power, water, lighting and air condition. Geier, (2009) insist that safety issues can be a deterrent if they are not addressed at an initial stage. With this in mind we went through all the safety measures to ensure there were a standby first aid kit and enough fire extinguishers in the hall. Having gone through the venue we sat down to establish the cost of holding the art festival and determine the various income sources. We went through the cost of equipment and materials required to cover the whole event and later established other costs such as advertisement, communication, documentation, utilities, transport, cleaning up and contingencies. The most costs incurred were as a result of hiring necessary equipment, hiring a local band and purchasing materials for the art festival. We were able to save a lot because we didn’t have to pay for venue and parking space and the school band was also voluntary. Various income sources identified were individual contributions, the sell of art pieces, fund raisers, lottery tickets and donations. We came up with a final budget that was going to cover the art festival’s expenses fully. Risks Some of the risks foreseen during planning included budget, timing, public relation, and weather and venue capacity. The cost of the gift and snack festival was going to be large and so to make the event successful we would be aggressive in sourcing funds. To pick the perfect date and encourage large crowds it would be essential to seek the faculty’s advice so the art festival does not clash with school events. We will use modern technology to market the art festival and approach the art club to help in designing logos, fliers and brochures for the festival. Weather can be unpredictable thus the choice to use the major hall in case of bad weather. The institution’s hall is a great choice because it has enough capacity for the three sections, has great interior and thus no need for major decorations. Art festival execution This is the stage where activities are laid out as planned. The team had to start raising funds for the art festival. The BSU faculty and voluntary students help spread the cost more by contributing in kind. Some of the students offered their expertise in decorating the venue, others in setting props and serving as guides in the festival. The faculty contributed documenting equipment, projectors, and marketing. The Rock Island art festival held at the Grady County fair held last year on August for performing arts, food concessions, art demos junk art competition was our model guide. The main aim of the festival was to promote several artists’ works and provide the community members an opportunity to bond and have fun. This festival was to serve as a model festival for the gift and snack festival we were organizing at Birmingham’s hall. From my past event marketing experience I was able to mobilize for enough volunteers to assist in running the event. We designed lottery tickets and sold them in advance plus printed t-shirts for the event and sold them to the public. All the money we collected facilitated our movements and enabled us to outsource what we needed. Our biggest task was to identify where to hire good sound systems and choosing a local band. We had to consider a disk jockey for hire to keep people entertained when the two bands were off stage. After looking through the available local bands were lucky to find a popular band loved by most people to come and perform in the art festival. Upon agreement we immediately printed out posters and circulated them round the institution. The art club volunteered to create and design posters, flyers and brochures for the art event. In week 1 we had all the marketing material ready for the volunteers to distribute them. We laid out how the hall divided and determine the space available for students selling gifts and snacks, food and beverage and art pieces. Interested participants were asked to register and we had to scale it down to fit the capacity we needed. We dealt with staffing issues and called for interested volunteers with different expertise. Instead of hiring out some services looked for people to serve as photographers, parking attendants, ushers and coordinators and provided them with the necessary materials. We then send out invitations to our target host the Media and English faculty, special guests, the various faculties, club houses and briefed them about the event. We were able to meet with our partners to discuss our progress. Once the Media and English faculty accepted our request to be the main host, the next step was to draw the program line. We sent the drafts to parties involved and on response we came up with the final program lineup. The next bunch of brochures printed had the program lineup included and performing artists. The art club worked to come up with a huge poster to be placed on the hall’s main entrance. Figure 2 on the appendix is a poster representation. The team coordinated well in the final week to follow up on the service providers and local artist hired. Setting two stages one for the local artist and a mini one for the school band were quite tedious. The equipment was set in place and lights and sound tested before the event. There was a slight miscalculation on vendor booths so we had to order two more for the food and beverage section. Everything else was counter checked by the logistic team to make sure the event was going to go well. The committee had everything well laid for execution. Figure 1 is a 4 week series of diary post that we kept to keep track of the planning process drawn by the team during the production process. WEEK ONE Budgeting Publicity Outsourcing Logistics Establish budget Identify funders List Income sources Create & design brochures Distribute posters Market online Press release Volunteer campaigns Find equipment for hire Contact local band Hire transportation Hire security Identify number of vendors Establish hall capacity Open & closing time WEEK TWO List of participants Publicity Mobilize staff Workshops Create final list of vendors Determine main host Send invitations Meet with the school band Review comments online and respond Radio local show Print more flyers Call for volunteers Photographers Ushers Camera man Security Logistics Invite participant for a meeting. Meet with several club representatives WEEK THREE Event program Advertisement Relations Logistics Brainstorm on the program Write the program draft Distribute to people concerned Adjust the program accordingly Come up with final draft and send to all parties Pin signposts in the compound Design the final banner Public campaigns Place Ad On Newspaper& local radio Create relations with: Club houses Faculty Volunteers Host Cross check outsourced equipment Run safety measures Compile participant’s list Check number of furniture, toilets & vendor booths. WEEK FOUR Venue set up Confirmations Staffing Logistics Position stage Setup the runway Position the vendor booths Arrange the display section Test lighting, sound equipment and backup power Decorate the hall Call artists MC’s script Rental confirmation Transport company Check staff list Issue badges Distribute uniform and walkie talkies Position all volunteers Assign head coordinator Cross check: Furniture Hired equipment Parking signs My previous experience enabled me to keep constant control of the whole process as agreed during the planning process. Although it was a team I had all the team members’ assigned tasks to move more efficiently. Mistakes and failures that were inevitable were readily accepted as a learning process. Although there were challenges the activities conducted in the three phases were well coordinated. The team endeavored to ensure that issues were solved at the initial stage to prevent later disappointment. The PME committee chosen had organized various events in the past and so it was easy for them to participate in the art festival organization. The next event art festival organized at Birmingham should target outsiders to participate in the event. Challenges encountered and how they were solved. The team had a great number of experts who made organizing the event easy. My past experience helped me identify the challenges we had in the planning and execution process. We had narrow resources at hand this meant that we had to find ways to widen our resources. The plan was to reorganize the event and cut down some of the unnecessary expenses at the initial stage. Because the idea of the art festival was to promote the students no fees was charged and this eliminated one income source. The alternative was to create lottery tickets for the gift and snack musical festival for sale. We agreed to give the performing local band one vendor boot to sell their albums and other wares in exchange for a discount. This band also agreed to play for longer hours if we incorporated their logo in our advertising materials such as t-shirts, brochures, flyers and banners. In the first weeks we had a communication challenges because we did not have enough volunteers. We tried to use emails and instant messages, social sites to communicate with each other and the public. In the past I have encountered such challenges so we were able to overcome this barrier easily Certificates and gift small gift hampers designed for free by the art club were issued to volunteers to keep them motivated. Conclusion Organizing the snack and gift festival in Birmingham created a good opportunity to work with other people in organizing an art festival because great ideas were generated and everyone had something to add to the project. For any event to be successful, there must be three phases initiation, planning and execution and must be systematically carried out. My work experience in exhibition management helped the organization team sail through the three stages. Any risks that were foreseen before the event, measures were placed to cater to them making sure that the event was a success. The challenges such as resources, communication and motivation were addressed as they arose by the total quality control team. The faculty and students played a huge role in organizing the event and without them the organizing process would have been cumbersome. The set deadlines were met because the PME committee was dedicated and they had prior experience in organizing events at Birmingham. The snack and gift festival will be one of its kinds in Birmingham and it is bound to attract a large respectable audience. Reference Geier, T. (2009). Make your events special: how to plan and organize successful special events programs for nonprofit organizations. Michigan: University of Michigan Preston, C.A. (2012). Event marketing: How to successfully promote events, festivals, conventions and expositions. New Jersey: John and Wiley sons. Tonge, R. (2010). How to organize special events and festivals. Queensland: Gull publishing. Read More