It was a few months ago that I was asked by Neil Jones, co-ordinator of the Camden network if I would like to help organise an event for Greenpeace. I'd be working with people from the Bethnal Green and Islington networks and given a brief. As fairly green (excuse the pun) volunteer for Greenpeace I was nervous to do this, but couldn't deny the opportunity to try putting on an event and to get more involved with Greenpeace so I accepted. Several months later the event is over and I have some time to reflect and wanted to share my experiences so that anyone thinking of getting involved in a similar way can have this to reflect on.
I initially thought that we had a hard brief. We needed to use the subvertisement videos that were entered into the VW Dark Side subvertisement competition to promote Greenpeace to its supporters and to the public. I thought that this would be difficult because I couldn't imagine an easy way to get people interested in coming to a film exhibition without a preexisting interest in Greenpeace. This was discussed in the group and in the end we went for quite an ambitious project based on ideas that we crowd sourced from our network meetings. We would put on a launch party with live music as the carrot for our film exhibition and also run a pop-up exhibition over the weekend where people could pop in during the day to talk to us and view the films. I think that the launch party was a great success but the pop-up exhibition less of one, though I'll get to this later.
With our event in mind the list of things we needed to organise fell into three distinct groups. We would need A Venue, Bands and Volunteers. No one was worried about volunteers due to the number of networks involved and lots of interest at network meetings and this all came together quite nicely. Our biggest problem was finding a venue. Google docs was invaluable in this as it allowed us to work on a central list of establishments without needing to email a document backwards and forwards. It was very time consuming trying to find a venue that would cater for our list of needs and our budget. Finding bands was easier, though much of this came together at the last minute, with negotiations with one of the bands falling through and needing to get another at the last minute.
We organised the event by meeting weekly, on the same day and usually at the same venue. I would take notes using Evernote and share them with the group afterwards. A todo list was produced in each meeting so that we could discuss what had been done previously and what would need to be done after the meeting. I won't lie, I am glad to have my Thursday evenings back, but not so much that I'm not already planning to work on more Camden events and also some of my own initiatives that will start stealing my evenings away again soon.
After about three months of planning, the night was finally here and we all met outside the venue with a large number of volunteers and plenty to get setup. We each had areas of responsibility and delegation was very useful here. I was absolutely panicked that we might not get enough people to turn up so I quickly took out a storm trooper and some leaflets to help further promote the event. In hindsight more leaflets and more marketing would have been good though the turnout for our event's launch party was just about right. It was reassuring to hear this from an employee at Greenpeace, who told me that it could have gone either way and we managed to get the balance.
The weekend exhibition was less of a success, partly because it took place on an easter bank holiday which drew a lot of people away from Camden Town and also due to lack of marketing. I still think that it was useful as we got to engage one on one on the street and at our venue with a number of people who were interested and wanted to know more. I thoroughly enjoyed setting up on Saturday and being in a position to direct how things should go. It's something that I have suspected I would enjoy and I did.
The last few months have been a mixed experience of stress, fun and joy. I've learned new things, made new friends and I think that we'll be back to put on an even better event in a few months time.
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