Music Event Management: Festivals
- tom chapman
- Oct 31, 2015
- 3 min read
Festival-
Festivals come in varying sizes. These range from small local festivals held in towns and villages, like local beer festivals, all the way up to international festivals like Glastonbury which have thousands attending and watching broadcast coverage. Most festivals take place outdoors in fields and parks during the summer months, and are almost always standing only events like Reading and Leeds festivals. Typically, festivals have more than one stage and take place over more than one day. A lot of larger festivals have campsites for people to stay in for the duration of the festival. Traditionally, festivals would normally take place in the countryside where there was more space and fields to use (e.g. Isle of Wight Festival) but in recent years urban multi venue festivals have become more common where lots of venues in a small area host bands at the same time for example South by Southwest in Austin and Dot to Dot in various English cities. Some festivals also change their location and tour for example Lollapalooza. Most festivals take place annually but some festivals like Coachella Valley run multiple times every year with different lineups.
Bigger outdoor festivals will have a lot of sound and lighting requirements. They will need multiple temporary stages that can be constructed and deconstructed easily, and will often need some of the stages to be under large tents for sound control and weather reasons. Most will have big screens next to the stages for bigger crowds, and will also have very big PA systems because outdoor concerts require a lot more volume. A lot of festivals will have a large house lighting set up but some bands will bring their own lighting equipment. Bands that do this are normally headliners or higher up the bill, smaller acts normally use what is provided.
Food is normally provided by outside sources at festivals. The organiser will bring in a variety of food providers who set up a temporary food stall within the festival. This is because festivals are usually only temporary events, so they don’t have their own facilities on site. Parking is often provided at festivals for an extra charge, it is necessary as people are usually at festivals for several days.
A festival requires a lot more staff than just a usual concert. It requires additional levels of security and emergency services to cope with the higher number of people and because of the duration of the events, staff have to work in shifts 24/7. Extra staff will be bought in by the outside food sources to run the food stands as well as additional bar staff. It is very rare that these staff permanently work for the festival, and are just bought in annually to help. Professional sound and light engineers will also be at a festival to get the best out of all performances, as well as trained stage hands. More stage assistants will be required as there are more acts who have to set up and perform in a shorter space of time, which means more help is needed. There will be a mixture of these people who work for the festival and for the individual acts. Other members of staff at a festival will be the organisers, who spend the whole year booking things and arranging the event as a whole. One thing that makes a festival unique is that acts will not normally do several jobs by doing their own sound, lighting and promotion, all of which will be done for them.
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