Thursday 5 April 2012

Planning my 'how to run a festival' EPQ

First of all, thank you to everyone that filled in my survey, all twenty of you. Fingers firmly crossed that it shows how hard it is to pick bands for a festival and please everyone in the audience.

This is for my Extended Project Qualification, EPQ. Mine is on what factors are there in order to run a successful music festival. So in simple terms what are they?


  • Money, and a lot of it. It cost's hundreds of thousands of pounds to book bands for a festival. You're going to need a budget from the start in order to keep the festival going, and started. Not only is there the bands, there's staff and fee's for the site and advertising. There is a lot more to consider than you'd think
  • Food & drinks. Again, lots of it. Most festival have a wide range of food on offer, and this is what the consumer looks for. Normally to make more profit, they fix prices up a couple of pound, as they do with drinks.
  • The site. It needs to be *massive* or tiny depending on the atmosphere you're going for. Latitude for example has a bigger site than Reading overall, but just over one third of the people.
  • Music that appeals to a wide audience. Will you be seeing Paramore at Reading or Leeds this year? I certainly won't be, but thousands will be. You have to take in to account people listen to a more varied range of music these days compared to ten years ago. Would anyone of expected a rapper to headline Glastonbury ten years ago? I very much doubt so.
  • Toilets, excuse the pun, but are always shit at festivals. Doesn't matter whether they are portaloo's or the disgusting long-drops-we'll-clean-it-up-whenever toilets, they just aren't very nice really. Still, you're going to need a lot of them to keep the festival goers running and alive.
Yes, there is much more to a festival, such as volunteers and advertising. But as I get started on this I'm sure even more will arise.

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