Speaker 1: Hello everyone, my name is Paul Walters. I'm the co-founder of the International Institute of Live Events. I'm here today to talk to you about my time at V Festival, a festival that took place across two locations in the UK and the one that I was principally located at was in Staffordshire. The festival no longer exists as a festival under the name V Festival, but it ran for quite a number of years within the Staffordshire and Chelmsford area. Yeah, that was an interesting one in that respect. And I suppose a lot of people think about how do you get into the industry and how do you get opportunities to work at a festival or an event? So I was lecturing at the time, just started lecturing, and a colleague of mine I was working with, he was working at V Festival and through that relationship we built up. I asked him or he asked me if I'd like to come down and work with him on the overnight crew at V Fest. So that was my first experience in Twitter. That was around 2000, 2001, if I remember rightly. And from that period, I worked there from 2001 to 2010, 2011 at Staffordshire site. So I worked with a team of people and we were the overnight event management team. And because the festival ran principally for a weekend event in the latter part of August, you need an event management team that takes control of the day as well as the night shift. So even though the main activity of the event takes place, and the main stage closes around 11, the activities of the young people on the site doesn't necessarily diminish. So you need an overnight crew. An overnight crew is taking responsibility for the event management of the event and all facilities and contractors and event attendees. As I said, my first introduction was as night time. So I've never did a day shift, but I did a number of day shifts as an event manager at other festivals. And that came on the back of V Festival. But the one principally at V was always night shift. It was always a night shift, one which, in a sense, you have to be prepared to work the night and stay awake through the night, which is difficult for those who probably haven't worked a night shift. And be ready to act on any situation that occurs during that. So you need a team of people around you. You need a site crew available. You need a vehicle to get around the site. You need your radio communications active and working. You need somebody to respond. And to the security, be it the police, be it the fire service, be it the ambulance. So they're all available at the night time as well. Probably not as active as they will be in the daytime. But they're all on hand and they're all available and they're all stationed in a controlled area, which they call event control. And event control could be in a building, could be in a port cabin, or it could be an enclosed secure area on the site, which we had. And you have a port of cabin on that location. And we're all stationed in a port of cabin where you have your communication set, your computers set, your map of the site, your location. So you know where everyone should be at any given time on the site. And if there's any situations, you can then deploy people to a particular location using the grid reference on the map that you have. Something similar to what I have on the wall here. And they're so absolutely vital to understand the sort of geographical layout of the site, not just from a visual point of view, but obviously from a typographical map point of view. Yeah, it would be nice. So it wouldn't just start off with a drive and a do the night shift. You'd be introduced into and inducted into the V Festival sort of management community by attending one of their, let's say, sometimes we call it a SAG group, safety advisory group, or it sometimes calls a major incident planning meeting. So you go to those meetings, you meet all of the management team and all the major contractors, particularly all the fire safety ambulance. And you talk about the event. You look at the draft event manual that's been produced and any issues from the previous year or anything that you may feel may be current and present for this year. Then you look at scenarios or you throw those scenarios out to the team of people in that room and they come up with solutions and suggestions of how to deal with those and processes. And then if they're suitable enough, they're written into that draft document and published later on when you then get the final results. And then the final document sent to you before you go to the event. So with every festival I've ever worked at, that V Festival did that as a standard procedure. And I think for most events now it's considered a standard procedure. I'd be very sort of surprised if somebody said they worked at a major event and they didn't have a multidisciplinary meeting prior to the event to understand how everybody works together and what's contained in that document and what are the major issues and situations that could unfold and how you're going to deal with them. So we get that first of all. And that would probably be, say, two months before the event. And then any new additions and new drafts to that, we get sent them. And you read it. You have to read it before the event. You should read it before the event. And you make your little notes, your post-it notes. So you know that if any situation comes up, you know where to turn to in the document. Because that document could be 40, 50 pages in its own right. And you know, therefore, either you know it verbatim, so therefore you can relay it. Over the communications, or if you don't know it, then you can go directly to the document to find out exactly what you should say and who you should be saying it to and what channel they may be even on as well. So once you've done the multidisciplinary meetings or SAG group and you've taken that information, you've read that information, when you attend the festival, and you should attend it at least a day, two days before it starts, just to embed yourself into the site, particularly if you've been there before and you might think to yourself, nothing changed. The event site sometimes stays the same in terms of, you know, egress and exit points and so forth. But certain aspects within the event site may change. And if they do change, then you've got to be aware of it. So you do the orienteering, you go around the site, you meet the people, you talk about the event to your friends and the team that you're working with. And when it comes to your first night shift, you just have to be prepared and awake. So sleeping in the daytime is an absolute must to then work throughout the night. Yeah. There are many challenges and some of them are quite comedic when you look at them. And I think for me personally, V Festival is one of the best festivals I worked at and one of the best teams I worked with when I look back over my time working at various different festivals, even in the UK and Europe and internationally, because the way they ran their whole management structure, the way they communicated information, the way people took their roles seriously and did their jobs appropriately. And the care and attention that they had in it. So we didn't have a lot of issues at V Festival in my time when I was working there and when I was working at the Staffordshire site and doing the night shift. There were situations where you might have a contractor who gets stuck in the mud at the end of a shift. I remember seeing one of those sort of big trucks leaving the site, then got stuck in the mud. Another truck came to pull it out. That got stuck in the mud. They brought another one and that got stuck in the mud. And you just look at the comedic nature of what's going on at that. But overall, when I look back, there were no real major issues. They had hiccups one year when the whole wristband situation we had broke down on site. That was basically just to do with a piece of tech that they had. It didn't do its job and it happened on site. And therefore they had to find a solution. They found a solution and it worked. And like I said, dealing with situations as they arrived. When I worked at other festivals, I found that I had to deal with far greater problems. Sometimes borne out of the event or sometimes things that just happened and it's totally out of your control. But principally, there were no major issues that we had on that. And it was quite enjoyable as a learning process to see how the festival was managed. Not just from my point of view, but also from other people who work on the festival and their specific tasks and responsibilities. But I think sometimes when you get the artist on site, that's when it becomes quite sometimes funny. Because then you see how the artist liaison operates with the artist and the production crew, the stage management crew and the backstage crew, particularly in the VIP areas. Now, those areas are very sensitive and certain things that go on backstage you cannot mention. You cannot talk about and everybody will know that who works on festivals. They'll say, what happens on site stays on site. So even though you may not know what's happening on site, it's still on site. Even though you may have witnessed certain things and seen certain things happen on site, some of those are quite comedic. Some of them can be quite, let's say, from a health and safety point of view, could be quite precarious. But I suppose if you spend a lot of time in that area, we didn't really spend a lot of time in that area because we had to look at the whole site. But there were certain things that I did witness that I felt there was an eyebrow raising at some stage. I think my favourite moments. Sometimes when you've done a good shift and you know that whatever incidents came up during your shift, you dealt with them, whatever the incidents were, because you know you want to do a good shift. You know what you want to make sure that you carried out and kept the place safe first and foremost. And any incident that arose while you were working, they were dealt with appropriately. And it didn't become a long standing problem that echoed into the next shift or became a continuation. I think from one thing I witnessed, I think it was probably my second year there. And there was a lot of theft going around at festivals at that time. I'm not saying that they don't do it now, but there's quite a number of thefts going around. And so we were given a warning by the police to say, look out for it. So the first night, even before the early, when the early bird arrived, there's a certain campsite on the site. I think it was known as Red Campsite. At the time, where certain people would locate themselves and they would then go out on the rob during the night. So that morning, the police operating the day shift, he said to me, before we come off shift, let's go down to the Red Campsite and have a look. And they went down and they did a raid on about four or five tents in Red Campsite. And when they finished raiding those tents, they had a pile of booty that these young men had robbed during the night. And I mean a pile. It wasn't a small pile. It was a pile of about one meter high of things that they've just robbed from other people's tent who just arrived on site. So that's it. Before the festival really even kicked off, people were getting their things robbed. But you'd be surprised what people take to festivals. They get told not to bring valuable items, but people bring valuable items and these thieves will go out and steal these valuable items. So that was my sort of understanding intelligence and understanding how you deal with that information and how it's acted upon and how to not just nip it in the bud, but make sure it doesn't become a long standing problem for the rest of the weekend. Because once those people are removed from the site, the likelihood and the reduction of theft is going to be diminished significantly. So acting on that intelligence that's coming through the police and making sure that you deal with it at an early stage in the festival, it creates a much better atmosphere for everybody on the site, not just from us in terms of managing it, but particularly the attendees. Because they were unaware. A lot of people are unaware what went on. But again, it's safety and protecting people's goods while they're there, particularly on the campsite. Yeah, I think there are so many ways to get into it. And it's good when you know people. And if you're prepared to take a risk, introduce yourself to people, you know, make yourself known to people, volunteer and show that you are committed and you want to learn. I think what I found. Is that people are prepared to take you on, give you that opportunity, give you that chance to do the job and what you learn, what you progress. And once you've done that, you'll find that opportunities just keep rolling in. And that's what happened to me through V Festival, that more and more opportunities came in. And once they came into other festivals and events, then I became more confident in my own ability. And I started going out and sort of putting myself out there to work on different events and contacting other festival organisers. I started contacting festival organisers in Holland. I was contacting festival organisers in London. I was contacting festival organisers in London. I was contacting festival organisers in London. I was contacting festival organisers in Denmark. I was contacting festival organisers in Denmark. So I was working on all different events from golf events to festivals to, yeah, you name it. And that was just going online, finding out who's managing them, trying to find a contact detail, an email address and just, you know, putting out an expression of interest. But once you've got that confidence and knowledge behind you, you find that you can go out there and start pushing yourself out there to develop your skills, your knowledge. And for me personally, because I was lecturing during that time I was working at V for that 10 year period. I wanted to learn more anyway because I wanted to bring that into the classroom. So even though V was an excellent sort of starting ground for me, it allowed me to then look at the wider industry and the festival industry more so and then the sporting industry and push my knowledge beyond that and work in other areas. So I say to people, even if you don't know any knowledge, be prepared to learn. Once you've learned, then be prepared to have that confidence and take it a step further and push it forward. And push the envelope. From Gatecrasher to Cream Fields to Grand Concert in Denmark to there's been a lot of small festivals I've worked at. A lot of them, I can't remember the name of them now, in different parts of the country. So I've been working either as a stage manager at some community festivals, particularly community festivals. And I find sometimes they're really hard. You learn more at a small community festival because you're given a more in-depth role. And that role means it's your ability spread across more things. So I've worked with a lot of councils and working with councils and working with community groups, developing their event management plans, developing their risk assessment, and then giving them advice and guidance on their events. So be it cultural events like your Caribbean carnivals, Notting Hill Carnival, but I had contacted a Notting Hill Carnival over 15 years ago. And talked about the possibility of working with them, but they went through big structural changes many years ago. So yes, working on those ones which I mentioned, but also working with a lot of community groups and local councils who have a lot of, let's say, cultural and heritage festivals that they have annually within their own city region. So working across the whole of the UK, I found myself. I've worked in lawn and lawn and lawn, and I... I'm a very happy young person here. I want to be a leader in the community for so long. I'm a fond of the work that we do right now. Instead of living in Fulham, I'd rather stay in the UK than in a small town. There's a craze around this around streets and people walking around with their that walk them through these community tours. And I was reallyumbs, and I'm happy to be part of it.