Task 4: Reflection

1. Arley Hall Reflective Evaluation

Positives

When putting on the Arley Hall Event there where many positives and there where also negatives. We managed to raise over 1000 pounds, which is an achievement in itself, and it all goes to a good cause.  On the night of the event everything ran smoothly and everyone pulled it together and worked closely as a team. Once the event had finished there where many compliments from the audience members about how friendly the crew where and they thought that car parking was a good idea and all the audience members felt happy from the moment they arrived at the event.  As the FOH manager I knew that it was my job to make sure that all the crew where friendly to all members of the audience and that everything was organised on the night and ran in an order. I felt that everyone that was there to help out from the first years had a clear understanding of what their roles where on the night and they knew how to do the job on the night. One reason how I knew this was I ask one of the crew from the first years and she said that she knew what she was doing start to finish. Another positive point was the food cost; this meant that by the end of the night nearly all of the food had gone which meant that the planning process of the refreshments went well.  As part of an agreement we had to Arley Staff to help us and they feed back they gave me and the FOH team was brilliant, they said that where were better than most FOH teams that come and Arley Hall. This positive feedback really made the FOH team very happy and proud of  what we achieved on the night and the Arley Hall staff are professionals. Two days after the event the Deputy manager from Arley Hall emailed and said how pleased she was with the team.

 

Negatives

Even-though there where many positives there were also negatives. There were mostly negatives leading up to the event. Organisational skills weren’t our strongest point; even though we had ‘To do list’ they weren’t in enough detail, if they were in enough detail maybe the planning process would have been a lot better. Me as a manger should have offered more responsibility to the FOH team instead of leaving most jobs up to me. Deadlines where a problem throughout all teams, not all deadlines were met, this included the cakes, there should have been no excuse about finding last minute cakes, in the industry this would not be acceptable. When we had our evaluation meeting it was brought to my attention that all team did not inform each other of what they were doing outside of class, this meant on the day of the event even though it ran great not every group knew what the other groups where doing. Another problem that we faced was that when the tickets where being sold the system really wasn’t working, this was because the information wasn’t being written down properly and as the events management team where working on that side of things when it came to the night Lucy didn’t really understand why we had that system in the first place. I can understand why the system was put there as it gave a professional look to the event as you had too ring the college, but having this system in college didn’t work as the cash office didn’t really have the time to be taking all the information down on the phone in such a small time. Another negative point about tickets sales was that the posters and flyers hadn’t been put out on time so they only had to weeks exposure time, this put pressure on us students to sell more tickets even thought we had a college of 2 thousand students and we only needed to sell over 100 tickets. One reason how we over come this was by the events manager Ashleigh went into teacher briefing and informed them about the event, which helped ticket sales.

 

When is came to packing for the event the checklist wasn’t in that much detail which meant that we missed equipment off the list, if it wasn’t for the fact there was a second mini bus coming back to Arley we wouldn’t have been give the opportunity to get the rest of the equipment. One way we could overcome this would be by making sure that we take the checklist more seriously and spend more time on the equipment list. The Raffle was important to the FOH but because there were only three of us we gave the responsibility the events management team. Communication wasn’t all that good in the planning process as the teams really didn’t speak to each other and when a team had a problem no one let the events management team know.

 

Future Improvements

Communication Skills

Communications is key when working in such a big team, we could make this better would be all having each others numbers and emails.

 

Lists

To do lists need to be in more details for example having the date and time the task was set for and when It needed to be handed in or created and who is responsible. 

 

Checklists

Checklists need to have more thought put in to them, an example would be instead of having writing the list as the manager, it would be better to give it to someone else to look over.

 

Budget Control

From the start I should have had a spreadsheet of the costs I was spending so it was easier when the event finished to see what money we had made.

 

Deadlines

In future I am going to use a calendar to clearly mark the deadlines that have been set and so that everyone can also be informed when the deadlines are due.

 

Roles and Responsibility

This would in tail that I make sure that I have a meeting with my FOH team and they all understand what roles they have been given on the day and night of the performance.  

Conclusion

Overall I personally feel that the performance ran smoothly on the night and had many positive comments from the audience. There were also many downfalls. I ever am chosen as FOH manager again I will ensure that my downfalls are correct; this would include the planning stages.