I have enjoyed the previous three weeks in this studio, as we have been doing very practical work, which I enjoyed much more than learning things only off articles and books. Upon this point, I think our team / class has been adapting to things very quickly, and we are sticking to the schedule and making significant progress. More importantly, learning about festival operation from a systematic way let me realise how much mistakes I have made in my previous experience in organising events, which is an idea that very excites me. Last year, I took the role of ‘director’ in two non-profit piano concerts with a very small team of volunteers, where none of us had any knowledge in operating events. Not going to lie, it was a tough journey: Ideas were popping up every minute randomly and we would just grasp onto anything we could – there was no clear distribution of roles, no planning, and we had to just navigate things throughout the way. Although the concerts turned out to be quite successful, we have made so many mistakes throughout the way which had caused a lot of stress amongst us; the learning in this course was therefore very valuable, as I can now clearly see some ways to improve our conduct and skill sets if we were to throw other events in the future.

The first important skill set that I’ve learnt in the previous three weeks was planning. I’ve always believed that the best way of learning is through practice, and as much as this mindset has helped me overcome challenges, it sometimes made me overlook the process of planning. I never realised that coming up with a name and mission statement would be that important, as we used to just call the event ‘non-profit women piano concert’ (which now seems very ordinary and unlively). It also shocked me when I discovered that there is a whole independent department called ‘identity’, which is dedicated to logos, graphics, posters, etc. Identity is important as it is linked to the overall image of the event; for example, constructing a logo means identifying the main colours that can be used for social media posts, as it’s best of these colours to match so we can keep a consistent style. Not having anyone to control the overall identity in my previous team has therefore made our advertisement style inconsistent, which has reduced the level of credibility.

I’ve also learnt the importance of constructing a clear and solid communication structure. According to Carrión et al. (2015), the best structure for organising events is when information can be traced for every team member. Everyone should be as informed as possible, which means that all channels of communication should be accessible, even for people that are in a different department. I really loved the way we used Teams and spread sheets, as we were able to construct main channels and sub-channels, keeping every team independent yet accessible for each other. Only using WeChat for my previous teams now seems to be a big mistake, as it only allows private and enclosed group chats so information would easily get lost.

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Reference:

Kulhánková, H., Jong, D., Carrión, M., Eagle, R. (2015). Setting Up a Human Rights

Film Festival, vol. 2. Human Rights Film Network, 83. https://moviesthatmatter.nl/content/uploads/2020/12/Hanbdook_EN_72DPI.pdf