Event management is a massive topic and has many different aspects to it. In terms of music, event management is where you are planning and producing a music event, such as a festival or a gig, and working on all the aspects of it. Some of the aspects event management in music is the venue, promotion, lighting, sound, health & safety, equipment, contracts and loads more. My role in this is Health and Safety, which is generally to keep everyone safe. As well as making sure that the gig we are putting on is sticking to all the guidelines and rules that are in place at the time, and keeping everything safe so no one is at risk. Health and safety is something that people sometimes overlook and think it’s not that important, however it is probably the most important part of the event. This is due to that if the health and safety wasn’t done right or done at all, there could be injuries or worse to the anyone at the event. A few specific things that I have to do is to create a risk assessment, think about the COVID-19 guidelines that are in place and think about capacity and layout of the venue.
Instead of creating a risk assessment, I am going to write about it instead and a risk assessment isn’t needed.
Seating – The seating is an important part of health and safety due to how the event managers and other people need to know how many people we can fit in, and if the seating isn’t done right it could be a big health and safety risk. It could cause overcrowding or deafening for example if the seats were next to a speaker. With some prior knowledge and some help I figured out the seating. There needs to be at least a 2 metre gap in the middle for people to walk through and get past, and also keep in mind disabled people or people in wheelchairs. There are a few empty spaces at the back that are free for people in wheelchairs. With this in mind, there were 132 seats, and there is space for an extra row in case more tickets are sold. We were thinking of doing a horseshoe layout, however with the limitations of the room there wouldn’t be enough seats. So we decided to just do rows.
COVID-19 – The COVID guidelines have been fully removed for gatherings indoor and outdoors. So we don’t have to think about spacing between seats due to social distancing; masks are not required; there are no limitations to how many people are allowed and food and drinks can be served.
My job on the night – On the night, health and safety wasn’t something I had to think about as it was done by the tutors. So I didn’t have to worry about that. What I did instead is help at the front of house. I opened the gates to let people through once they had their tickets scanned and were given a program. The gate was a bit dodgy as sometimes it wouldn’t work, and the buttons were broken so I had to scan my card instead to open the gate. If I was to do this job again, I would make sure the buttons are working so that the gate fully works and makes my job a lot easier.