Music Festival Artist Scheduling to Manage Personal Conflicts.

Any large-scale music festival may have hundreds of performance artists booked to appear over a number of days. Scheduling set times, hospitality and transport can get logistically complex and requires meticulous schedule planning. How can potential personal conflicts between artists and others be managed in such a chaotic environment.

Every music festival organiser wants the artists they book to produce quality performances that satisfy fans and festival-goers. Performance artists are often under enormous pressure to perform, and the quality of music delivered can depend on the artist's workload, personal circumstances, medical issues plus mental health and emotional needs. This pressure can fuel personal conflicts with others which can include other artists, organising staff, crew or hospitality staff. Festival organisers should do their best to prevent conflicts, and appropriate scheduling can help to achieve this. 

Typical Conflicts and Why they Happen. 
Artist conflicts can be caused by numerous environmental triggers that can include crowd sizes, stage proximity, camera presence, loud environments, late running, equipment failures or hospitality issues and this can cause arguments with organisers, production staff and crew. There can sometimes be simmering rivalries between artists which can be brought to the surface by being in close proximity to each other. It is not uncommon for artists who previously collaborated to have a falling out over creative differences or ego clashes. 

Conflict Prevention Planning and Riders. 
During the curation process organisers will usually be aware of potential conflict triggers and a certain amount of due diligence and close working with an artist’s management team or the booking agents can determine these. Once booked a rider is obtained from every artist and this can reveal to organisers details of any issues that may trigger conflicts including clashes with other artists or hospitality and equipment requirements. Where artists are known to have issues with other performers organisers can schedule times for different days, times or stages to ensure they never get an opportunity to confront each other. Most festival organisers now use sophisticated artist performance scheduling event management software solutions like Festival Pro. During the scheduling phase organisers can issue specific instructions to operational staff to ensure conflicting artists remain separated in all backstage zones and green rooms for example. This can extend to the provision of accommodation and any travel arrangements with staggered arrival and departure times. Genre specific stages with dedicated backstage zones can help separate artists who may have a ‘beef’ with other artists based on genre or even generational issues (old school rock vs. a new up and coming hip-hop artist for example). 

Conflict Resolution. 
Given the high number of artists that can get booked for a festival it can sometimes be difficult to completely eradicate the possibility artist conflict situations arising. Organising staff with responsibility for artist liaison should have the necessary training and processes in place to professionally deal with conflicts should they occur. Resolving any issue requires staff to not take sides and remain completely neutral whilst providing workable solutions to avoid any escalation. This may involve moving artists to alternative backstage areas and ensuring that security staff are on standby to intervene if necessary. 

For festival organisers planning their next event using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. 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 Anna Giorgia Zambrelli via Pexels

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