Managing the Music Festival Artist’s Entourage.

Depending on the status of a performance artist their entourage can vary between several individuals and a sizable supporting crew. Planning and managing these individuals can be challenging because of the typical space limitations common in festival backstage areas. How can organisers successfully manage these entourages to keep all parties satisfied.

As an artist grows in polarity and financial wealth their supporting entourage can expand to unmanageable levels. Given that a music festival environment has to manage numerous artists performing back-to-back on a single stage the set transitions can be frantic often combined by limited dressing room and green room availability. A large entourage can dominate backstage facilities creating tension between artists scheduled to appear. Organisers need to carefully manage these entourage groups because they can be an integral part of an artist's satisfaction and resulting performance. 

What is an Artist’s Entourage. 
The entourage often includes a mixture of professional support technical crew, personal assistants and friends with the overall size dependent on the artist's popularity, genre and budget. Professional technical crew may consist of tour managers, production managers, sound and lighting engineers and instrument technicians. An artist could also have a personal support entourage which includes personal assistants, bodyguards, stylists and photographers or publicists. In addition to these technical and professional roles an artist may also want friends and family to accompany them on tours and performance appearances as moral support for example. 

Festival Organiser Planning. 
An organiser will usually encounter large entourages when curating and booking their headline acts who will command the highest fees and have the most demanding riders. The contract and rider agreed between the organisers and artists should specify at an early stage in the planning process the estimated number of people in their entourage. Once the number of people, plus their roles and requirements, are fully understood organisers can plan for transport, accommodation and catering for example. If an artist has demanding requirements for dressing room access, production and stage managers can juggle artist set times to make allowances for the additional number of people required backstage. 

The Accreditation Process. 
Artist’s management teams are not great at providing the full details of everyone expected in an accompanying entourage and organisers will have to push them hard to obtain details as early as possible. Festival organisers use an accreditation process to allocate access passes to named individuals with headline acts getting the highest number of passes to account for their entourage. Using an event management software platform like Festival Pro can help organisers manage their accreditation process with functionality dedicated to accreditation management. Passes can be allocated by type with some giving access to all areas whilst others may be restricted depending on how organisers want to manage the backstage areas. Passes can be issued with scannable codes that match access to specified zones. Organisers should be prepared for late changes as artists have been known to invite additional friends at the last minute without notifying organisers so they do not appear in the accreditation system. Where there are space limitations organisers should try to balance an artist's requirements with the event logistics and constant communication between the organiser’s artist management team and the artist’s manager should help satisfy all parties for a successful performance. 

For festival organisers planning their next events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics including a dedicated accreditation management module. 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, site planning, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Image by sabena206 via Pixabay

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