Reading Festival!

If I said this was my first festival experience, I would be lying. I’ve done V Festival and LeeFest (see my post on volunteering). But I’ve done nothing like Reading Festival.

So first off I spent way too much on essentials, tent and clothes – obviously. I’m a girl.

I finally learnt how to pitch my tent like two days before from my mother who came to get me beyond excited as I was sulking that I couldn’t figure out how to pitch a tent, to see said tent standing upright and looking how it actually should look. I haven’t been that surprised in a LONG time.

Deaf Havana

Packed, excited, said all my goodbyes at work, I sat at Clapham Junction for an hour waiting for my little cousin. I love that girl with all my heart – she makes me laugh and she’s bloody great but OMG. I wanted to throttle her. I people watched for a while though (sorry to say all the fit blokes were taken).

We couldn’t really agree on food. I think that’s one of the worst things about festivals. Food. What the hell do you eat – if you even eat (we all know most of the time you’re drinking). I personally think we had a good idea going (apart from the doughnuts and maybe the cereal choice… And of course the sausage and tuna pasta, that wasn’t the best idea).

Alt-J

Getting there was fine. It all went downhill from the moment we started walking from the cab to the festival. Because as girls going to a festival we bought too much. We stopped all the time – no, my cousin stopped all of the time. In my head once I stopped it became clear that I was in serious pain. I had four heavy bags plus two bags filled with food, before I offered to hold more because my cousin was trailing behind. It took near enough and hour and fifteen until we reached the White camp from Red. Now if any of my readers know Reading Festival, they’ll know that that’s a long ass walk. And that was made thrice as long because there were drunks and other people walking just as slow. So you can imagine I was not happy. I got the tent up only to find the vodka had spilled. THE VODKA HAD SPILLED. My night was ruined. My poor cousin having to put up with me and I’m trying to be as nice as possible without being rude but I’d already had a long day and it was like nearly 10pm and now the vodka had spilt all the way down my back and on my clothes.

Our Food

Another little thing… why are tents so small? Why can we not stand up in tents and I am so glad ours was waterproof. If I do another festival with tents I am making sure I can stand up because getting changed and moving around is an absolute chore. Plus, the bigger ones are so much cooler. Yes, heavier but cooler.

FRIDAY

Friday was different. I had to get used to the coldness of being in a tent, the feel of the festival, what we’d do for the day etc. Also, using the disgusting toilets. I walked into a shack like cubicle and for unknown reason looked back (I can vomit just thinking about it. That image will never ever leave my mind). I have a question for all festival-goers and festival organisers… how? And more importantly, WHY??? There must be another way surely!? If you have ever seen the scene in Slumdog Millionaire with the toilets… it was EXACTLY like that.

We saw about 13 different bands from Hadouken!, Friends, Palma Violets, Random Hand (they were the biggest surprise of the festival – so good), Deaf Havana, some Coheed and Cambria, Angels and Airwaves, You Me At Six, Bombay Bicycle Club, The Courteeners, Foster The People (had a mini panic attack no biggie) Paramore and The Maccabees (who were better than expected).

I was involved in a crowd Avalanche where you feel a whole load of force push you to the ground and when you finally realise you’re not watching Paramore anymore but on the floor crushing some girl’s legs. It’s pretty weird instantly helping others around you to get up before you can actually get up yourself. When it happens again though, you do freak out a little especially when everyone else is getting up apart from you. You’re still on the floor as you see others help each other up bar you. Yeah, peed my pants a little at that.

SATURDAY

Saturday I was more in the swing of things. I was used to just casually walking around – I felt that you had to know who were going to see so you didn’t miss anything but that feeling went pretty quickly. I could relax, drink even. But whoever gets used to those horrific toilets? I swear I watched a man walk to the toilet shack, take a deep breath looked at me and crossed his fingers. I laughed for about ten minutes waiting for my cousin to come out of the toilets who herself was trying not to be sick from the stench. God awful things.

At Lower Than Atlantis!

We walked around everywhere. We even sat and watched Green Day make an appearance through sheer luck! We didn’t exactly make it inside the tent but we heard them from outside and watched them on the big screens!

So that day we watched some Modestep, Doc Brown (he’s amazing), Max Raptor (new band, quite good), Jaguar Skills (so so good), OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), Lower Than Atlantis (love!), The Vaccines, At The Drive In, Florence and The Machine (accidently got a guy on my shoulders – don’t ask), Katy B, Metronomy (also better than expected).

During Flo & The Machine

We were meant to watch The Hunger Games and then Chronicle the film when they turned one of the tents into a small film tent but the amount of energy that is taken out of you - when we got into the tent I was out like a light!! I hadn’t even had a proper drink!

SUNDAY

We made it our business to do everything on Sunday. Ate loads, drank more (but not lots because the toilets just ain’t worth that), even made it to the Silent Disco tent which was a hell of a lot better and emptier than anticipated.

We experienced Holly Walsh, Stephen K Amos (in tears crying he was so funny), some of Gaslight Anthem, Bullet for my Valentine, Good Riddance, Kaiser Chiefs, The Black Keys, Foo Fighters.

Another thing I’m not too keen on is being in the middle of a crowd. I’m not technically claustrophobic because I can be in tight spaces but when everyone is pushing everyone for no god damn reason it gets tiring and you get so agitated. Another crowd avalanche happened during Black Keys which meant even though I was near the front of the crowd and I could see Patrick and Dan (so cool!!) it also meant I wasn’t really paying attention because I had idiots around me pushing. And a silly Welsh girl who talked too much and who also liked to fists pump to The Black Keys, nearly punching me in the face. Little bit gutted I couldn’t really enjoy The Black Keys as much as I wanted, but that just means I have to see them again. Also I had a go at some 18year old that was pushing his butt into my side and I meant, really? It’s never that.

But then again, we did push ourselves to the front-ish on purpose so we could see the Foo Fighters up close. Unfortunately only one of us really got to see the Foo Fighters up close because I decided that being in the middle of the crowd being pushed in every direction was just not worth it. So I pushed my way out – to everyone’s dismay. Until finally I found a good enough spot by the huge screen and speakers that I could sing loudly and dance around a bit.

Damm Foo Fighters were amazing.

I’d just like to say an apology to Daniel also for being kind off-ish but you caught my attention as I was coming out of the toilets. I was in such a shock from the toilets (I will never forget the sound *shudders*) and from seeing you at 11am in the morning when I have make up all the way down my face that I didn’t even consider getting my hand sanitiser out of my bag. Which is wrong. So wrong. So yeah… Next time I might actually hug you back and not tell you not to touch me…

I had a drunken cousin Sunday night which was funny and I completely rinsed out my phone battery life through playing music shuffle, which I’m delighted I won, then using the Flashlight on my phone to have a rave in the tent. Good idea at the time…

No idea who he is..

Silent disco dancing

We talked to some of the others around us but we mostly kept to ourselves. My cousin is so much better at talking to strangers than me as I sort of go into defence mode and can be rude (because you know, they’re strangers… Stranger Danger and all that… it’s what they teach you in Primary School) so I left talking to people to her but we did have small talk with everyone and of course smiled at funny little things that happened around us. And there was always funny things happening from the costumes to people shouting to “FENTON!! JESUS CHRIST FENTONNNN!!” or the usual favourites, “ALAN?? STEVEE??!! ALAAAANNNN”

So just to say I had an amazing time. I saw bands that surprised me, that I loved and that I didn’t ever think I would ever see live.

However, if I do that again, bigger tent or V.I.P (not kidding), prepare for the coldness at night and I always forget a pillow. Plus, I will invent something feasible as a toilet situation other than a she-pee and human cat litter called the Travel John Disposable Toilet so it’s got to be better than that (honestly have a research, it’s a brilliant idea).

My Event (part. 2)

Our event is over and done with, now a couple of weeks ago I gave you a low down on my 90’s themed event and here is my newest post telling everything that it’s over!

The 90’s night was, thankfully, a huge success – even though we were up against Bedlam – and now here is my chance to actually give you in full detail how this night came about.

According to my group mate, this idea came about by watching the Spice Girls on a laptop and from getting very excited about our childhood and what we remembered from it, Voila! The 90’s night was born – under the original name of “Death of Pop!” It was meant to celebrate the year that Pop died… but as time went on and the confusion of others, the name changed to “I <3 Pop”. Unfortunately, this had to change again to the final “Saturday Night – born in the 90’s.” Expressing the Whigfield classic (don’t act as though you don’t know the dance…) as well as giving the obvious information about the event, it was going to be held on a Saturday and of course, born in the 90’s the main theme.

Promotion and marketing went hand in hand together and for our event our main aim was to bring back nostalgia to students. We bought rainbow dust, ultra violets and lollipop sweets as a giveaway when handing out leaflets.

We held a promotion day with a gazebo in the middle of our university campus blasting out very cheesy tunes from the gym next to us and with hand-made t-shirts (made by our very own marketing manager and her boyfriend) spent most of the day handing out flyers and dancing along to tunes (see pictures). I’m not going to lie to you, I would like to say everyone got involved but it was just me handing out flyers… everyone else was cold and it was freeeeezing!!

We had 8.45am starts handing out flyers at the gate to university, promotion flyerring on the various club nights held at our venue and every night selling tickets at the university halls.

Then, came getting people to come. Now, as we all know, Saturday is a day of doing nothing for the fellow student and we are rarely seen out on a Saturday, unless it’s a house party or there is something ‘Student special’ going on, or, you have money and like a Saturday night out. So, when the news that it was a ‘Reading week’ for a lot of students (which means a week of students all going home) did frustrated us, especially when our whole group trekked around all of halls to sell tickets (myself and a group member getting escorted out because it was deemed as “business” – don’t worry we talked to the warden the next day and she let us come back in).

We had 300 tickets available at the Student Union shop, 100 online and then another 100 or so with us at all times. We hardly sold any tickets with a week and a bit to go. We were stressing, plus, it didn’t help that our lecturers were starting to worry too.

But not to fear, we knew that like a Friday night out most students only ever bought tickets a day or two before the event and most of them would probably get them on the door. However, for our event we had hardly sold 300 in the student union shop two days before our event. Everyone would pop into the shop to ask how many were left or constantly refresh the online ticket page just in case it ever went down.

As luck and life would have it, Thursday saw us go down to 50 tickets online and we put another 100 up by 1pm that day – it did annoy us at first because, naturally we wanted it to go down to a lot less before we put more up, but by that evening it had gone down to under 100 which resulted in us having to put more up on Friday when we realised we had sold just about 400 tickets.

By 8pm on Saturday, our group could only put just under 100 tickets online. Can you believe our luck – I couldn’t explain how it all happened from selling just over 200 on a Wednesday to the Saturday being able to say that throughout the day our total had risen to 700!?

We had spent Saturday dragging our friends/ boyfriends who had come down for the day, redecorating the whole of the club in bright neon cut-out words, CDs, 90’s CD cases and bright coloured cassettes. V.I.P sections decorated with sweets, our brilliant posters and pictures of the 90’s.

Leaving the venue at 5.30pm and coming back for 8.30pm we waited anxiously for our first lecturer to assess us and that was even before everyone else turned up! Thankfully, she was overly impressed with our group – I have to admit, truthfully, we do get on together really well, because we all wanted the same thing - for the event to be a success. If there were ever anything we weren’t happy about, we could always talk about it.

So imagine, 800 of your peers once hearing the song that was a big hit, everyone knew the words to because it was a guy and a girl speaking about a popular girls toy (huge hint)… would you say that everyone erupted with joy and screams and shouts or that everyone turned their head in disgust?

Because if you wanted to go for the latter; you wouldn’t have come to our event. Every so often a classic song would come on and everyone would erupt with excitement! It was crazy!!

Unfortunately again for our group, we couldn’t drink and though we enjoyed the night we couldn't exactly go out on the dance-floor and boogie on down like we desperately wanted to.

By the time our second and final lecturer came to us, it was 1.30am – yes! I’m being serious – I was the one in charge of showing him around the venue and keeping him entertained until he left. There was no way I could not dance to Take That – Never Forget and out-right told my lecturer that I simply loved this song there was no way I could'’t put my hands up when the chorus came on. My lecturer however did not mind at all claiming that the 1990’s were his Master years and he would go out clubbing to the 1990’s music. Result! He even volunteered to come to our event.

He left at 2.15am. Champagne hit our table at 2.19am.

The night ended to us hugging, chanting in joy and congratulating ourselves. We had pulled off a sell-out event!

I’m not going to say that I went to bed that night exhausted but happy but tired and I collapsed in bed with a smile on my face. OH NO! I came back to my house – everyone asleep from already been and gone to my event – shouting at how great my event was. I walked into my bedroom my best friend who had come down just for me in my bed sleeping – I woke her up screaming at how well my event had been, how my lecturers had said to me congratulations to me and was very happy with his stay!!

I WANTED TO SCREAM ABOUT IT! I WANTED TO JUMP ABOUT AND TALK AND TALK AND TALK!!

I had even driven my cab driver crazy talking to him about what he had done, how it had gone and the wreck the venue was after everyone had left.

It was surreal over the next couple of days where our peers are still organising and stressing about their events yet to be put on and ours was over and done with!

The next meeting with our client was the most anticipated… he loved what we did, he came down to see our event and was astonished at the outcome, and more than that, he wanted us to do it again!

Us, second year events students, and a real client wanting us to recreate our event again so more people can come, more profit, more 90’s!

Our client had said to us that he was already going to make profit with his bar sales so the ticket sale profit could go to us. We were almost at the point of fainting we were so happy!

And that’s where our story gets a little confusing because, most of the second year events are for charity and the profit made would go straight to them. But this was different and even though our client said we could keep the money – University laughed at the idea; of course we couldn’t keep the money it’s the clients!

So we’ve been pushing to have the profit of the ticket sales invested into the next event – which is what our client suggested.

Its' not our fault and it's not exactly my university's fault either. According to our client, any of the events that have been put on at this particular venue has never made enough profit to cover its budget. So, this has never happened before - which we all need to take on board as a huge compliment - however, we're all still buzzing off this amazing news and this amazing night that we organised and ran as successfully as we could. We've had heated discussions with administrators who is completely clueless and because we are too - we're all going around in circles because they are leaning towards giving all of our profit away to charity – which is all well and good but not when we can half that money to invest and the other half to a chosen charity of ours.

We've got to wait until Monday so she can figure out what is best. From the talk I had with her, the profit that was made is wholly the clients and so what they do with it is completely up to them. Which then makes us say – then why can’t we have it, because he said he could have it!? But as a university, again, they’re saying “oh my! Oh no! Of course you can’t have it for yourselves…” but then they get stumped… to which we want the rest of that sentence and they can’t give it to us. Legal stuff, contracts, permission etc., it’s all in the way.

So we wait until Monday.

If you wanted to ask me what I learnt from this, it would be that I really think I can do this as my profession. Which sometimes as students I think that’s hard to say. We study a degree in something we like and are good at, something we are interested in but really it’s not what we see ourselves doing in fifteen years’ time. But as an event management course, it’s not something you can just say that you didn’t want to do for the rest of your life because it’s not that kind of course; it’s like a marriage or I guess, more permanently, a tattoo. As well, it’s your personality as I think event managers as much as they can be taught – it’s a hard profession to get into and the person has to be willing to do it.

So what I’ve learnt is that, I cannot wait to do this event again with some great people and hopefully with some money to help us. I’ve learnt to overcome my fear of being in charge of finance  and even though, I’m very slow with numbers and it takes a while to get my head around calculations etc., etc., I think, personally, I’ve done really well in keeping it all together and working out everything in a way that everyone can understand and not lose any money!

I’m overwhelmed at how well we have actually done, I had given up hope of a sell-out event (even though I made a £5 bet that it would), I was happy with about 350 people so we could break even. And I guess as well, for university to know what to do if this sort of situation ever happens again.

That, all our effort, our good team work and just the hard work and thought process we put into every single detail of the event, paid off in such a exploded way that has seemed to dumbfounded everyone; us, the client, our university and now it’s all about how we can all go about this in the correct way that we all win.

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet