Bucks Live Presents Neverland is Complete!!
It’s all over, all that planning, the stress, the tears, the tension, it’s finally over! It wasn't all doom and gloom, we had fun! There was laughter and smiles all around, once Sunday arrived! Kidding, it was an enjoyable experience, we are a great group and we put on a great event in the end!
On my part, the team I was in worked their butts off, the endless emails coming through to our mailbox was crazy, we’d go into our meetings feeling like we had everything under control and sorted, only to leave having more things that we forgot piled on us.
I did feel like I never had much to do, but I ended up doing things in all departments for the event, even if some of my ideas never quite made the cut, from finding rides, artwork, handing out flyers with Rusty, tracking down Enrico for that damn till and basically just following Tamara around like a sheep helping to de-stress her!
At times, it did feel like everyone was in it for themselves and some people didn't quite pull their weight at times, me included. There were people within our group working their butts off and it did at times seem like some were taking the credit for things that they hadn’t been a part of. It did get to the point where it was all guns blazing in one of our meetings, but things all just got too much and it needed to blow, because after that things settled and planning was on the up!
As D-day approached everyone seemed to fully pull their weight. Shannon Tamara and I were dipping in and out of the workshop to do some painting here and there, sent off emails when we could wherever we were, put flyers around the town on our way back home, going to radio and taking Rusty out to walk around the town, well at least try to walk around town to hand out flyers, but the kids loved it, one kid even came up to us asking if Rusty was one of Santa’s Reindeers, which melted my heart.
Sadly, the day before the event I had to go home due to family matters which I felt was a big decision for me to make, I didn't want to let everyone down but I had to go home. Everyone was so supportive, and even though I wasn't there, I was there in spirit. Liking and sharing everything on Facebook and Twitter, following them every step of the way.
Watching the group chat go mad, with countless messages being sent asking:
‘can someone meet me here?’
‘is anyone in the workshop?’
‘we need as many hands as we can get over here’
It was crazy, and that was just the group chat, so I can imagine how crazy it was being there, everyone running around like headless chickens, but from the feedback given the day went great.
We had some competition on the day as there was another event going on at the rye, which I feel did take some of our customers away. However, all things considered, Bucks Free Press gave us a pretty good review!
To our disappointment, we only had 400 at the most come to our event. whereas in past years there has been nearly 2000 odd turn-up. On reflection, there were some things that could have been done better/dealt with better.
I do feel that the lack of public we had come through could have been to do with the fact that some parts of marketing wasn't done until after Easter. Thoughts that ‘the public may have got confused in thinking the event was in Easter’ was mentioned numerous times in the group, so we decided to start flyering and publicising the event after Easter, this only gave us a week. In my opinion, it should have been done throughout Easter, the public would have been out and about more, considering it was half time for the kids, we could have taken Rusty out more, seeing as the kids loved him. The only piece of marketing we had out over Easter was the piece in the Gallery space.
Throughout the planning process a lot of things I feel we did well, rides, and all things production side were being booked and that all seemed rather speedy, I don't feel like we could have handled this in any other way. The same goes for Talent, but I do feel as though there needed to be a little more communication between the Talent and Logistics, it was only until the final week when we were told that we needed extra PA systems and given the entire backline, it became a bit rushed to get all that together, but we managed.
Another thing in my opinion that should have been done a lot earlier in the process, was stewards, we only had 6 out of 13 that signed up, actually turn up on the day. It was worked out that we needed 23 on the day. Again, this was only arranged a week before Easter, then we broke for Easter and then we only had another week to inform them all. We should have got it all arranged a lot earlier, we were on the ball with it, but suddenly décor in the workshop took over and it sort of got forgotten about for a while. It should have just been nipped in the bud and sorted in the beginning.
Something that seemed to have been forgotten about completely was the raffle. The intention was there, we even asked who worked where, to get some prizes in, but then weeks went by and it got brought up again but by then it was too late to do anything, too late for the public to buy raffle tickets as well. It was such a shame because everyone loves a good raffle.
This was our first proper big event we have done. We did learn a lot from putting this event on, I know I did. The mistakes made were a learning curve, and next time things just need to be dealt with as they arise, every little detail matters, things shouldn't just fade into the background because we feel other things are more important, as shown it can influence the event.
It was a great experience, and I've taken a lot from it!!
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