Under the Marquee
This summer I turned 25, and to celebrate I hosted a festival in my garden.
Now the word festival might be a stretch. The reality was more of a showcase of my very talented musical friends, being made to stand in my garden under a flimsy marquee, whilst the erratic weather tried to decide if it was going to enhance or ruin the event. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
How did Under the Marquee come about?
Well, Under the Marquee was an idea I had in 2023. An idea of hosting a gig in my garden, with my close musician friends, accompanied by some food, drink and maybe games. This became a very brief hyper-fixation which had me create a brand identity (name and a logo), and not much else. Unfortunately, I had the thought too late in the year, as we were approaching autumn, and I didn’t feel like developing it further, seeing as it wouldn’t have been possible at the time.
Fast forward to this year, and I revisited the idea. I had the weather (well, I thought I would given that it was June, more on that to come…), I had the performers, I had the guests and I had the branding. My only hesitation was the technical aspect. Whilst I had a brief understanding of setting up a stage, I wasn’t 100% on what I would need, and if it would even be possible. So I recruited my friend, and fellow musician Nick as my engineer.
Planning a Festival in your Garden
Let me begin by giving you an idea of the scale of this festival. It was a small and intimate event. I had invited a maximum of about 20 guests, 7 of which would be performing. During the planning process I kept a Google document, in which I wrote all of my ideas, to-dos and shopping lists, which I then later organised into a scheduled to-do list.
My first priority was deciding on a date. I choose a weekend, and an early start time. I then invited my guests, and performers. I told guests that doors opened at 2pm, and that I intended for performances to start at 4pm. I felt that this would give people time to a.) be late, as some of them would inevitably be, and b.) get settled into the environment, eat, get comfortable, ect.
I then created digital tickets, using procreate and canva, and sent this to my friends emails. Which I did, purely for fun.
Once I had a confirmed guest and performer list, I then began creating a rough schedule for the day.
I scheduled the performers based on their genres, and what equipment they would need, putting similar genres, and needs together (for example I had two acoustic guitarists play back to back).
I scheduled each performer in for a 30 minute slot and allowed for 15 minutes between each performer for the set-up of the next. I then informed the performers of this schedule, and their allotted time. I also asked them what their equipment needs would be; what they would bring and what I could provide.
I then took this information and consulted Nick. Together we created an equipment list, and drew out a floor plan that we could use on the day to easily set up our equipment. Nick drew a rough draft, which I digitised so that we wouldn’t lose it:
After I had done these logistic tasks (as well as planning food, drink and general decorations), I just had fun developing the event into an authentic experience. This included:
Creating: artist passes, wristbands, a banner, a map and programme, stickers and a photo booth background. I also designed and created my duo, visual noise., some t-shirts to wear on the day as we were also performing.
The day of the Festival
Honestly, the set up for the festival couldn’t have gone much worst.
That’s because on the day of the festival, the 15th June, the true British summer reared its ugly head and not only did we have a lot of on and off rain, but we also had wind. Wind that did not making setting up two Marquees very easy.
The plan was to set up the two marquees the night before. One for the stage and performers and one for the guests. So I did this, also setting up decorations I felt would hold over night. You know what happened? Nothing. The light rain over night didn’t cause many issues, other than a few puddles in the marquee roof which were quickly poured out.
So having gotten myself ready, prepared food and decorated the marquees, I was awaiting the arrival of my guests, praying that the drizzly weather would change at any moment.
Approximately 30 minutes before the intended arrival of my guests, I heard a lovely bang in the garden. I followed the sound outside to see one of my marquees, completely upside down, surrounded by scattered broken poles and decorations. Well, to say I wasn’t prepared for that kind of a disaster was an understatement. Desperately trying to keep it together, I began collecting broken poles, and decorations in attempt to at least clear the space. I am incredibly fortunate to have my dad, who immediately left to purchase another Marquee for me, an act I have never-ending gratitude for. I am also incedibly fortunate that none of my guests arrived on time. So in what can only be described as a miraculous turnaround, my dad came back with another Marquee, and we managed to put it up, and replace decorations before anyone arrived.
I’d love to say that the day that followed went smoothly after that. It did not, but nothing was unmanageable especially considering the disaster we had overcome in the beginning. For your delight, here are some of the things that went array:
My sound engineer was late. Then he couldn’t get his 24-Channel Track to work, meaning we had no way of connecting mics/instruments to the monitors. Luckily one of the performers had brought his so this was rectified.
The rain was on and off, but we just took longer breaks between sets whilst we waited for the weather to clear. Luckily it did.
Rain got into one of the extension leads, causing a short outage. This was incredibly silly and unsafe of us but we dried the area, ensured wires were properly covered and recovered the electricity.
Mostly what I learnt from these incidents is to test equipment before hand, which seems completely obvious but wasn’t really a possibility at the time and that actually, I’m quite adaptable and good at problem-solving.
Other than these small hiccups, which I have definitely noted for future festival events, it was a great day. All of my musician friends are extremely talented and it was a treat to have them perform. I made great food (if I do say so myself), and I even did my first performance with my collabrative duo, visual noise.
It was a beautiful day, full of laughs, and we ended the day as any festival goer would, drinking under a tent, chatting into the late hours of the night.
