Organising your own festival: see the checklist here

Festivals are here to stay! Music, dancing, sunshine and a clear blue sky, it's all part of the game. Tickets sell like hot cakes, but how does it work? Do you want to organise a festival yourself?

The ultimate checklist for organising a festival

There are a lot of aspects to organising. The most important thing when organising a festival is, of course, the content.

1. Implementation of the workflow

What kind of event or festival do you want to organise? What is the goal? Who is my target group? How many people do I want? What do I want the festival to look like? Is it a free public festival or do people pay for a ticket? It is important to turn the answers to all these questions into a concrete plan. Who, what and when are the key elements of your plan. Based on this plan, you can see which external parties you will need to arrange all of this. Think of catering, entertainment, municipality (for permits) and staff for the day itself! 

2. Location and date

Now the most practical matters of the festival after you have designed it. Where will the festival take place and on what date? It is important to consider the location in terms of capacity and noise pollution. Another important aspect is whether it will be an indoor or outdoor event. There are different costs associated with the type of event. With an outdoor event, for example, you have to take into account the weather, but with an indoor event you have to take into account the location and the availability. 

When you are busy picking a date for the festival, it is important to check the availability with the municipality. It is also important to take into account what still needs to be arranged in advance and whether this is possible in the planned timeframe. Also consider holidays when people are off work, for example, but suppliers may be closed. 

3. Budget

You now know what kind of festival you are organising, when it is and where the event will take place. Now you can start working on a budget. Combine this budget with the plan you made and see what your expenses are. How are you going to finance these expenses? For example, how many tickets will you have to sell before you have covered the costs? Do you need sponsorship to ensure you don't make a loss? You can also think of sponsorship for the decoration of your festival, for example parasols with their logo on it. 

It is important that you request a lot of quotations at the beginning and compare them well. This will ensure an optimal profit margin and that you do not incur any unnecessary costs. On the basis of the quotations, you can make an estimate of the costs and thus also determine how expensive your festival tickets must be or how much the catering must charge. It is important that you also make an estimate of what the sales will be on such a festival day. 

4. Licences and insurance 

Better be safe than sorry! Make sure that your permits are in order and that you are insured if something goes wrong. For festivals you often need several permits, a catering permit, an event permit or an environmental permit. Tip: make an appointment with the municipality and start on time! Applying for a permit takes quite some time and you will usually only receive it after a minimum of 8 weeks. After your licence has been approved, you still need to organise the promotion and your staff.

Besides all the permits that everything is allowed, you also want everything to be safe. Think about what kind of insurance you need. Insurance limits the risks of organising your event. Company liability insurance is one of the most important types of insurance, because the event is not covered by your own liability insurance. 

Draw up general terms and conditions! What rules apply before, during and after your festival? Will people get their money back if the festival unexpectedly cannot take place? 

5. Personnel and promotion 

Last but not least: your staff and the promotion. How do you distinguish yourself from other festivals and why do flexworkers want to be at your festival? Organising staff at a festival can be quite a task. Usually you don't have any staff and you only need them for a day or a few days. Are you going to hire people then? Of course not!

Fleks has the ideal solution for this and can serve as your event management software. You enter the shifts that need to be filled with the number of people you need and we will link you to staffing agencies with the right personnel. 

In addition, you can add a workflow so that your employees are well prepared for your festival! With the workflow, you determine which steps your employees must complete during their shift. A workflow is always linked to a shift. This means that you can create different workflows for different kinds of services, such as a bar or catering service. You can create an unlimited number of workflows. You are completely in charge! You can create a quiz in the workflow to check whether the employees have read the briefing correctly. At the end of their shift, they can fill in an evaluation, so that you know what they thought of the work and what could be improved. Finally, they can then declare their travel expenses and hours so that you can make the remuneration a breeze!

As you can read above, organising your own festival is quite a challenge. Thanks to the Fleks personnel planning app, you won't have to worry about your personnel. With Fleks, you keep a real-time overview, also during your festival! 

Try it now for free