Escalation Planning for Music Festival Organisers.

Any music festival organiser will tell you to expect the unexpected when running a multi-day festival. The unknown is a key element of even the best run music festival and no event is perfect so it is imperative that organisers take steps in their logistics planning to implement a robust escalation process for every conceivable eventuality.

Every music festival should have good contingency plans to allow for unexpected incidents and part of this is having good escalation processes in place but which aspects of the music festival should organisers focus on in putting together these processes and procedures?

Artist Performances and Stage Management. 
Artist’s sets are scheduled well in advance and the set times are managed by stage managers or producers but performance artists can be fickle. The artist management team need to have a clear escalation process should an artist go sick or AWOL. Notification at an early stage in the show management enables producers and stage mangers to reschedule other acts quickly so that the performances continue to appear seamless to festival goers. 

Backline Technical Issues. 
Failure of any backline equipment can seriously impair the quality of the audio-visual presentation and stage managers need to have technical engineers available at a moment's notice to assess and repair any faulty equipment or replace them as necessary.

Power Failure. 
A power failure is one of the worst-case scenarios' organisers can be faced with and in normal circumstances back-up generators are set up to kick in automatically if the main power source fails. Power technicians should always be at hand to ensure that back-up generators are operational by escalating to suitably qualified personnel.

Visitor Emergencies. 
Anything from medical emergencies to violent behaviour or assault can occur at a music festival and visitors need to know where they can go to get assistance. Volunteers assigned to help festival-goers should have a clear escalation process and know exactly who to contact depending on the nature of the emergency. This may be referring to the police present on-site or the resident medical team for example.

Ticketing Problems. 
One of the most common problem areas experienced by festival-goers is over delivery of the correct ticket via email or SMS. Sometimes QR codes and scanning can fail at gate entrances so organisers need a clear escalation procedure in place so that a responsible member of the organising team can make appropriate decisions to resolve any ticketing issues quickly.

Having identified potential problem areas, it is essential to have a written escalation process for all possible eventualities. Aside from having a documented escalation process in place all staff, volunteers and suppliers need to have appropriate training to understand these escalation processes and procedures. Conducting role playing training sessions can assist in them getting a full understanding of these.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics including the documenting of escalation procedures. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Photo by Athena from Pexels

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