Festival Operations

In our previous chapters we have covered festival planning, logistics and the different types of licensing and insurances that you might require to run your event. This chapter assumes that you now have a viable festival plan and it focusses on how you put that plan into practice in the run-up to your festival and during the festival itself. We will start by looking at the purpose and principles of operations management, then turn to the processes of getting the necessary permissions and the paperwork you will need to assemble. We will then look at the permissions you will need to run your event and how to obtain those. We will outline the sort of health and safety documentation you will need including risk assessments. We go on to cover issues of first aid, crowd management, security, staffing and communications. Our experience of these systems and processes is from the UK, and we have used that throughout this chapter. Other countries and territories will have different arrangements, but the principle that your event will probably need some form of authorisation should alert you to the importance of identifying whom you need to talk to and what factors you should consider. An Event Management Plan (EMP) is a key document enabling you to run your festival smoothly and effectively and demonstrating to others that you can do so. But the EMP, however good, will not run your festival for you. Only you and your team can do that. The success of your festival will partly be down to the quality of your planning and partly down to the effort and vigilance you put in whilst it is running. But a good EMP and a simpler Operations Plan will help you hugely to run your festival smoothly and will be a vital support if you encounter problems.