What I thought of the original idea:

The original idea was to create an event that promoted our single. We thought that doing it as a shuffle play showcase was a good concept because of the different genres of our singles. Everybody involved had a role that was clearly laid out and explained- such as a backline technician, a stage manager, multiple band leaders, a promoter, a project manager, an mc, and people who worked on designs for advertising. These roles were given to those who we all thought would would suit it and if each person wanted to do it. We considered commercial aspects such as being invited back to the venue at the least. Our anticipated final outcome for this event was to get ourselves out there as for many of us this was our first ever live performance in front of an audience. In a way everybody had a creative input to the event- whether that was designing the posters or actually performing or creating the singles. The thing that is bad about this project is that there are so many different elements to it that it was easy for anyone to fall behind on the written work.

Build up of the project:

The first thing that was decided was the venue of the showcase. We decided to sit down as a group and write a list of 20 possible venues for the gig, the project managers then had to call up some of the landlords for the venue to book ourselves a gig. We thought it was best to research events that were already taking place at the top 5 venues to try and figure out a set date that was suitable for us and the venue, before calling the landlords. Everybody played to their strengths and used their abilities wisely, for example we go the person who was most confident with talking to call the venue to make us sound more professional. I think that towards the end everybody was more committed, everybody was definitely starting to lose interest in what was going on until a couple of days before the gig- this is when everyone started to realise that we had some work to do so that we could actually put on a gig at a professional level. On behalf of the organisation aspects of the project, time management was quite bad, I feel like we were all leaving things until the last minute despite being given enough time to do it. However I think with my band we got lucky and managed to complete the single really quickly, maybe because we never questioned it or thought about if we wanted to change it in any way.

Reflection of the actual event:

Overall the event was a success. we all managed to perform to a good standard and in a professional way. However it was also unsuccessful as our purpose for putting on a gig was to release our singles but nobody managed to promote the singles in any other way than actually performing them. Everybody kept to their individual roles on the day but were also responsible enough to help out with others when they could. On the night of the event a few things were forgotten, luckily nothing physical. For example there was a guitar amp placed in front of the main microphone which was causing feedback, unfortunately nobody realised that this was the reason for the feedback until the day after the gig. I think to make the event better we could have had a set list printed and placed around the backstage area and posters that were advertising the gig could have been handed out about two weeks before the gig. This would benefit the whole group as it would mean that other groups knew what was happening and when instead of them having to go around asking everyone and there would have been more of an audience (we had quite a big audience for a Monday night however 70% of it was made up from family, friends and tutors from the college).