LO2- Interview with Steve Causer

Before we asked him our questions he gave us a presentation about what he does, about festival and how we could make ours better. Some of the festivals he did are:

Swindon invincible
Swindon shuffle 2009
Big arts day
Radio 1 big weekend
John peel day
Phantasmagoria film festival

He told us the main ways that festival was from tickets, sponsorship, bar, food, pitches and advertising - banners ect and the main costs are: infrastructure, marketing, artists, technical, bar/drinks costs and the after party. He also told us that in our team we would need a creative director, marketing - web, logistics, crew - artist liaison/technical ect, stewards and security.

He said some important things that we had to know are our venue, dates, acts, marketing, tickets, licences, what we can and cannot do with our venue, policing and security, ticket selling, on-site facilities and act requirements.

When we asked him questions we asked him about some problems he found, what his worst festival was, if its is better to have a festival indoors or outdoors ect. He said that we need to be ready in case of change of dates, drug issues and we need to show people that we are aware of any problems that could happen, we should not bring people in at the last minuet, if you sell tickets online you don't get the money until after the event, its better to have your own security, running festivals is very expensive, if the police come you have to pay them, be clear about what your festival is and what will be there and it takes about a year to organize.

He also told us that if we are going to sell tickets and we want the money we make on the tickets to be used to fund the event then we should only sell tickets in person because if you use the internet you don't get the money until after the festival so if you wanted to used the ticket money to pay for acts you could not so it is better to sell tickets in person. The only bad bit about this is that you might not sell as many tickets as you would have if you had sold tickets online as well as in person.

The last thing he told us was about when the festival is running he said: if the police come to the festival you pay for their attendance, first aid on-site, how we could get everybody in and out and what to do in case there is a fire or any other emergency e.g. where are the fire extinguishers ect.