Major outdoor music festivals draw huge crowds year after year and book top-tier musicians to entertain those crowds. The good news is that you can plan a much smaller, more local music festival in your community and bring people together to enjoy your local talent. Here are some things to keep in mind as you begin planning your local music fest.
Equipment
Hosting a music festival requires quite a bit of equipment, so be sure to plan ahead to guarantee that you’ll have everything you need when opening day arrives. Providing a stage for your musical acts to perform on is a great way to make them more visible to a larger crowd area. Around this stage, you will also need to bring in plenty of electricity for amplifiers, microphones, lights, and various other audio-visual equipment.
Your festival attendees will also require equipment. Are you planning to provide chairs or other types of seating? If so, be sure you have plenty based on the size crowd you’re expecting. Bringing in food and drink vendors is a great way to make festival patrons happy, and with that will come a need for bathroom facilities. Mobile restroom trailers are a great option no matter where you’re hosting your music festival.
Time
Make sure you’ve left yourself plenty of time to plan your festival. You’ll likely need many months to secure a venue, book musical groups, and apply for permits. You’ll also want to bring in other types of entertainment that can perform between musical acts or be available throughout the festival in a side location. Children’s tents and art installations are great options, and you’ll need to plan well in advance to get those in place and ensure you have plenty of people to staff them.
Marketing
People can’t attend your music festival if they don’t know it’s happening. A great source of marketing for this type of festival is the musical acts themselves. Fans will often travel great distances to see their favorite acts perform live. This is true even for smaller-name, local groups that don’t have a national presence. Make sure your musical acts are telling their fans about your festival. In addition, talk to local radio and TV stations to see if you can go on the air to tell your community about the big event.
A music festival can be a great addition to any community. Do your thorough planning, and hopefully you’ll create a festival that people want to attend every year.