World’s Smallest Festival

Two film makers approached me to help them produce the World’s Smallest Festival.

They had a site in mind and the concept but they needed me to help make it a reality.

The festival was part of a 3 month project of theirs to make 1 million pounds to set up a film fund for budding film makers- www.blagamillion.com

The plan was to get a massive artist to play, but only allow 100 people to come along. People who wanted tickets had to text a number and then 100 were picked out of a hat.

I helped them source sound and lights and did all the licensing, health and safety, security and general event management.

This video explains a bit better than I can:

The day went very well and featured sets from Howard Marks, Arthur Smith, The Langley Sisters, Jarmean, The Popsocks and many many more, all nicely situated in a delightful back garden.

We’re now pitching the idea to various music festivals. Get in touch if you’re interested.

BLOC Weekend Production Manager

The largest event I production manage, BLOC is a 3 day electronic music festival in an off season holiday park. After the first 2 years at Pontin’s in Hemsby, Norfolk we’ve now tripled in size to the 6000 capacity Butlins Resort in Minehead, Somerset.

After meeting the guys many years ago in Brighton, when they decided to start a weekender they contacted me to take care of producing the event for them.

I organise all staffing, infrastructure, logistics and generally manage all the behind scenes work and crew that make it such an individual and ground breaking event!

BLOC prides themselves on cutting edge lighting, sound, decor and AV and it’s my job to make sure that we have the best people working with us to make this happen, and to make sure that it all works well together.

Please check out more about the festival here: www.blocweekend.com

Still in it’s early days, but the reputation of the festival is growing fast with an allegiant fan base, as well as top press and radio support from Radio 1’s Rob Da Bank and Mary Anne Hobbs. We’re also now hosting the Vapor Stage for Friday and Saturday at this year’s Glade Festival.

We’ve also recently hosted a room at Eastern Electrics in London as well as events in Paris at Le Batofar and a lot more afoot for later this year and 2010.

Here’s a taster of what to expect at BLOC2010

Festival Production

Since 2000 have worked on a variety of festivals across the UK and in Spain.

Roles have ranged from artist liaison to production office manager, production manager, gate manager, stage manager and deputy production manager. Festival sizes range from 500 to 15000 to 150000!

In between these roles I’ve also done 2 years at the award winning dance music festival- Glade Festival.
www.gladefestival.com
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Glade started out as an area at Glastonbury many years ago and is now entering its 6th year as a standalone festival. In 2008 it won best Dance Music Festival at the UK Festival Awards.

Working alongside all of the 4 directors I helped them to create a smooth running event.

In 2008 the event was at the Wasing Estate in Berkshire. The areas I was involved in were:

Promotion- Street promo across the UK and online promotion

Community Liaison- Meeting with locals on a regular basis and managing a community liaison group, to raise dialogue between the festival and the locals. This also involved being involved in the licensing of the festival and speaking with locals during the event to answer any questions they may have had.

General Office Tasks- updating contact list, meal ticket allocation, answering general emails, organising on site workers, litter picker teams and other areas of pre and on site production.

In 2009 the festival moved to Matterley Bowl in Winchester where I carried out the following:

Marketing Manager- setting up a clear marketing timeline in the latter part of 2008 to ensure a clear plan of action of how to promote Glade 2009. I also had to find new ways of promoting the festival as well as advert planning, UK wide promo- online and street, competitions and media partnerships.

Community Liaison- Meeting with locals to advise them on the kind of festival we are, and hearing any problems they may have had with previous events.

Production- Organising venue managers and production office staff as well as over seeing the overall running of the festival.

More info at www.gladefestival.com

Here’s the promo real that we sorted to help advertise the event and let people know what to expect at Glade 2009.

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Other recent festivals I’ve been involved in include;

Glastonbury Festival- Production for Glade area (2008 / 2009)

Loop Festival- Production Office Manager (2007 / 2008)

BLOC Weekend- Production Manager (2007 / 2008 / 2009 / 2010)  (see seperate section)

Lost Vagueness at Glastonbury- Production Office (2007)

Lost Vagueness at Electric Picnic- (2007)

Rocket Festival- Deputy Production Office Manager (2006 / 2008)

Bloom Festival- Production Office Manager (2006 / 2007)

Reading Festival- Gate Manager (2008 / 2009)

More info about my festival work is available on the Association of Independent Festival’s Website here:
www.aiforg.com