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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAa4ZYjHoQU)

tune

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Summer '18!

So what have I been up to all summer to warrant me not making a single blog post since May? Well ladies and gentlemen I’ve actually been experiencing one of the best summers to date and now its all settled down and we’ve rolled in September I’ve realised how bored I really get when I have no structure to my life, resulting in me actually looking forward to Uni starting up again at the end of the month.

I thought I would just make one big extravaganza blog post with every piece of work experience I have gained this summer rather than making an individual post about each, as to be frank I can not be bothered to write multiple posts.

If you have read my last couple posts you will know May was a super cool month, we exceeded expectations with our course event subwoofers and I worked ticketing at the health and wellbeing festival in London which was super different from any other event I had done, and I had a blast. I ended off May with a bang by attending my favourite festival Slam Dunk and had once again a beautiful time, I can’t rave about that festival enough, I just bloody love it.

It soon became June and I was fortunate enough to begin this month with a guest ticket to Download festival, yes you heard correctly my time had come and I was being treated wonderfully, big thanks to Adrienne for that. It was my first time attending Download, a festival I had always wanted to attend, and It allowed me to catch up with so many pals I had not seen since the previous summer so all in all with the great bands on the line-up I had a ball.

June also was when I worked box office at Kenwood house, I was there for 2 weekends working the box office and the weather and experience was grand.  Working events with a general older audience was nice to experience as I learnt how differently you need to cater aspects of the event for the age of the audience. As I had only worked on events with most of the audience being young adult working at something for the middle-aged and elderly was a cool experience.

July soon approached me and what a busy month it was, with moving to a new house on the 1st then straight off working with Ginger Owl for a week at Wireless festival it soon kick started the month for me. At Wireless I was working artist accreditation, a role I had some experience in but soon realised Wireless and the genre of music it is attracts a different type of audience to what I was used to, this experience allowed me to gain a thicker skin and nail my firm but fair stance.

July was also when I went to Truck and Y Not festival again working artist liaison. If you had not read my blog from last year you would not realise working at these festivals last year made my summer, everyone was so friendly, the acts were lovely and the all around environment was amazing and this summer was definitely not anything less.

I soon arrived back from Y Not festival and the following week I was off working at a Youtube convention called Summer In The City held at the Excel in London. Here I was working as a meet and greet supervisor, I’m not going to lie, meet and greets are not something I typically mesh with but it was a fantastic time to see how it all works and experience the crazed fans and how best to deal with them and so many different scenarios that  may occur.

Before I new it SITC was over and it was the middle of August, this upset me as despite having a super busy, amazing summer it had just flown by and all that was left was for me to be a proper punter at my first camping festival, that was Reading and I can say I survived the  toilets and punter camp sites and had one of the best times. I saw some of my favourite acts put on amazing performances like, The Used, Underoath, FOB, Panic!, Sum41 and so many more.

So that was my summer, short and brief but I gained so many life long mems alon

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgc8a7ikd2w)

not just this song but he whole new album is a bop, this song especially, maybe due to the first line constantly being stuck in my head

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My Experience at the Health and Wellbeing festival London, May 25th-28th 2018.

This was a very different event compared to the others I have worked/ volunteered at before, firstly the whole theme of the event was a completely new one for me, manly due to it not being primarily music based but rather, health and meditation workshops which came in many forms. Yet with the primary focus of the event not being music there were a lot of similarities within how the event was ran which I am always fascinated to see. I was put on box office/ticketing with my fellow friends. I always love the role of ticketing as you get to have a chat with the customers and get a proper feel for the audience, a major bonus was due to the layout of the event where we were positioned you could view pretty much the whole layout and be able to watch the whole day unravel which I found cool. Everyone I spoke t, customer and trader were honestly lovely and it was fantastic to experience something new and such a relaxed vibe throughout the whole weekend. The team behind the event was small and a strong loving, family vibe was relayed strongly through the communication used and the smiles all around. Whether it was the many aromas circling the hall or not a happy, relaxed feeling was very much the case both days I was there which I thought was amazing. All in all I had a fab time and enjoyed the event very much, big up Eimear for the role, it was great, and what a beautiful event it turned out to be.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw85yLl0Rk8)

Haven't been proper into Boston Manor for about 3yrs now but this new single has me absolutely hooked, they've won me back. It is an absolute bop, very radio friendly I can see it making its way on R1 quite frequently and honestly it deserves the recognition as its a tune.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs_7y0ToBcU)

Trophy Eyes always manage t sound so unique and stay so relevant, in love with this new bop and can not wait for the full album, that voice is heaven sent I swear

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Proof that the queue was as fab and long as I said😂

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The 5th and Final Subwoofers Post: It's finally over!

Welcome to my fifth and final blog post about Subwoofers, the family, dog and deaf friendly music festival my course so wonderfully put together on Sunday the 6th of May 2018 in co-ordination with the Hearing Dogs for Deaf People charity. To say that we smashed it out of the park is an understatement but with all the highs came lows and areas that are eagerly waiting for improvement within next year’s event, this blog post will cover it all from my perspective.

With 7 months to prep for the day came many disagreements whether that was about what acts, rides, food and even name we would use for the event, to get up to date with all the ins and outs of the event check out my previous 4 blogs on Subwoofers to read all about the past 7 months prior to the big day. 

2 days after the event we held a debrief meeting which is when we learnt that the whole course had very similar views on areas of the event that had major room for improvement, I will be linking in the sections which relate to my experience within this post.

8:00am May 6th, 2018 my alarm rang, honestly it was a wonderful lie in I am very grateful for compared to the 5:00am start for Winterland the previous year. I made my way to the bus stop to be greeted by Femke and her sun cream which was a lovely thing, if I had a penny for the amount of times someone asked me if I wanted sun cream that day, honestly, I think I could quite frankly quit the course and go live off the wealth for the rest of my life.

At 9:30am we were off and heading to site to join the first group full of logistic and production members who had been there since 7:30am. I am not going to beat around the bush, but I was not too excited for the event at this point, maybe it was the fact today despite being the big day also meant it was over and I think a part of me is still sad about it being done and dusted, relieved but sad nonetheless, however as soon as I stepped on site the excitement hit me like a brick to the face.

The morning started with us all being given roles and heading out on site to erect some gazebos and marquees, which I am not going to lie this was a little bit more complicated than the average joe may think. This was the first load of team work I was involved in for the day and I think it was some of the best team work I’ve seen in the whole 7 months of work. Whether it was the amazing weather or something in the air, everyone was a ray of sunshine and despite in my opinion there being a slight divide between the music business students and us in the live course throughout the whole build up, I felt it was the first day this whole year where there was no divide at all, we all got on happy as Larry and worked our buts off to be ready for 1pm, our opening time.

Here I will point out some areas of improvement that I feel need to be re-evaluated for next year’s event. Firstly have everyone on site for 7am, not just certain teams as it was shown this year that having the other half of the course there 3 hours later had a major impact on our schedule when being ready to open to the public at 1pm. Secondly, I would make the jobs that need doing the morning of the event clearer and give people certain tasks to complete, despite this seeming a bit time consuming in the lead up I feel It would be majorly beneficial on the day to make sure the site is able to be 100% ready to open on time. It would also prevent people floating around being unsure what they should be doing.

Being a member of the marketing team, I heard some people prior to the event think we could have done a better job, in all fairness I agree, I think especially within the social media team we could have gained a wider crowd through more videos with the artists that would be performing on the day. Create a wider variety of clips of the acts other than re-using those on our doorstep like Dan the Guitarist and Acapella as Subwoofers had so much more to offer. Also, I do not feel we took advantage of the site enough, people love a cute dog and we did not really use that to our advantage as much as we should have. Flyering is another area I think we should have worked on collectively, going to local events during the lead up like Wycombe Wanderers games, local gigs and even shop windows and schools should have been on the priority list. I was a big fan of the timetable that was made by Alan our course leader, it was the only schedule for flyering that was followed to a t, even if it was a bit late in the day, it is definitely an idea for next year to have someone of higher authority like your lecturer to make the timetable as people are more likely going to follow it, like we have learnt here.

However, despite the room for improvement, with there being a queue out into the car park 10 minutes before doors opened that’s when I became super proud of what we had achieved, and all efforts that were not made went out the window. To have sold 1,000 tickets prior and 2,500 on the door is insane and nobody saw that coming. Despite it not being the 6,000-capacity sold out show we had hoped for back in September, with being a bit slow on the socials within the first few months and the strong effort coming into play a bit later than liked I think we are very lucky with the outcome we had, and I believe the big banners hung on round abouts and main roads are a big thanks to pay. I will give some credit to the weather too, that had a massive help in hand.

With 1pm on our heels the masses were flooding in and the music had begun. It took me about 30 minutes to really get my head in the game, it still seemed unreal, an improvement I would make in regard to that is to make a plan, this is something we lacked in the social media team, we had forgotten to make a plan, and that left myself and the other social media member to essentially be floating around capturing whatever we saw. This leads me onto communication within the teams, marketing and talent should have had a much better relationship, the event was classed as a music festival yet those promoting it were oblivious to the schedule and so were those in the talent team, only a fair few seemed to know who was on and when which made it very confusing when making sure you were promoting the correct talent acts on the social media pages. Having up to date stage times next to the stages would have been a blessing, something for next year’s group to definitely take on board as it would allow the event to be seen more professional on screen as unfortunately due to this miscommunication we Instagram lived a certain act naming them after someone else, a major rooky error.

Despite our minor hiccup we miraculously had no negative comments on the social media pages, whether that be on the day of the event or after which is a great achievement and something I think the whole team should be proud off, no incidents, no threats, nothing in my opinion went drastically wrong.

6 hours has never gone so fast, and despite a few slips in that time for example did the face painter even show? that is something we will never knew the answer to for sure, with the last hour finally drawing into a close came many relaxed shoulders and a time for a little fun for some of us, we could not really recommend the rides to the customers if we had not tried them out for ourselves, surely. Despite having one of the best days so far going on the Miami trip and bumper cars with my fellow hard workers was so much fun and a much-needed last spur for us to break down the site for the day once everyone had left.

Whilst Ska Souls serenaded the crowd with one last song it was wonderful to see everyone dancing but sad to see it was over so quickly, our 7 months of work gone in the space of 6 hours.

 I say this every time, but it amazes me how incredibly fast it is to take everything down, the fencing, box office, signage however the deck chairs I’m not so sure. I have never seen so many students try and pack away 300 deck chairs into a van so awkwardly it was painful but we did it, like we did the event, despite a month ago the event looking like a right shambles I think the day itself did it justice. When packing away, from my view point there was jobs clearly given out to everyone which worked amazingly and was a true vision of how team work should be, I believe if the morning roles were as clearly given out we would have been more prepared upon opening but that was just down to time management and there was not much time left to spare in the few hour leading up to the doors opening.

Once we were pretty much packed away we discovered all food traders but one had completely sold out which was wonderful to hear and proof that people stuck around to quite literally eat us out of house and home.

Getting on the bus and heading back to Wycombe at 9pm that night was sad as it meant it was nearly over but to wake up and read the incredibly kind reviews left by our customers and the press that attended was amazing. to discover that it was not just our big heads who were still buzzing from the day but those who attended was a great reassurance we had pulled it off.

Due to our fantastic efforts, like with Winterland the hearing dogs have confirmed there will be a second year of Subwoofers which means our hard work did pay off, despite it being a very stressful few months, to watch everyone have an amazing time on the day, customer or staff made it worth while, to next years team good luck you are going to need it, just be ahead of the ball, please!

A brief reflection on my role: I will forever be grateful to our course leader Alan for moving me to the marketing team midway through the year as I had an absolute blast and the most enjoyable time leading up to the event as well as on the day going round and being able to capture the fun and liveliness of the event. Working with the social media pages was something I had never done before and I realised it is a major interest of mine as I found so much enjoyment from it these past 5 months.

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Izzy and myself went live on Wycombe sound on April 30th from 11:20 onwards to promote Subwoofers, despite a hiccup with where Subwoofers was being held I think went super swimmingly.

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picture 17 I think really portrays our happiness at the outcome.

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oh yes, that is my course and our beautiful hard work paid off <3

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6e1TmYb33w)

What a strong Eurovision this year was, with the results yet to be announced Hungary hands down had my vote, I have been so stoked to see their performance and they absolutely hit it out of the park, what a diverse sound and performance to go to Eurovision with and I bloody loved it. Spain, Czech, Israel, Finland and Cyprus deserve major shout outs too as they came to fight and put on killer performances too. I also just want to apologise to all my twitter followers who are not fans of the show as my commentary on the night has been excessive but very necessary.

Fingers crossed Hun place in the tops. 

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cp4lAWNm_Q)

After seeing OM&M last week on ma birthday I have been blasting nothing else, apart from that new Parkway album but we'll ignore that for now. Anyhow with Austin having left the band I was slightly sceptical as to how their live show would go, with the album being an absolute hit, I must admit in my opinion one of om&m best, the stage presence and performance went hand in hand with that. What an absolute insane show and I am so stoked that they are supporting BFMV at Ally Pall in Nov because I need to see these guys again!.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9bu5BI03WA)

Caught these guys supporting Of Mice and Men at KOKO on my birthday which was an amazing show, however Wage War  were insane live and put on a solid performance, their vocals live are on point. This song is one that has been stuck in my head ever since and it is a jam and a half with the catchiest chorus, don't say I didn't warn you.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar48FZ8PvZ0)

Another idea for Subwoofers social media pages was to create a launch video. Unfortunately that idea did not work out as we had first planned, however what we ended up with was 3 short introductory videos of what the audience can expect on the day. I think as a long term use this actually has worked out better for us as the 3 videos opposed to the 1 have gained us multiple more views across our social media pages. Here is my cringey video as an example.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Uc4cNS7uU)

Another video I did under Subwoofers FM. This time interviewing Bucks New Universities Acapella society who you can also find on the 2nd stage at Subwoofers, the family friendly music festival on May 6th at the Grange in Saunderton.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX-zQJDjUbU)

Here is another creative idea we put to use in order to gain more activity on our social media channels for Subwoofers, my course event. Due to the event being in collaboration with the hearing dogs for deaf people I thought it would be cool to do a diy dog treat recipe video in time for the easter holidays so that our target audience of young families would be able to have a go making these at home to increase our event awareness.