Bartending - Gebr. de Nobel
Almost every weekend I work as a bartender at Gebr. de Nobel in Leiden, which is a pop venue. This work contains; building up the bars, tapping beers and serving other kinds of drinks, cleaning the bars and cleaning the floor after the production.
I think by doing this work I gain better insights into the visitors and why they do or do not like an event. Also with this job, I get an insight into why people work frontstage what they like about it and what could be improved. I think all of this can contribute to my future career.
Stagemanager - Gebr. de Nobel (volunteer and paid)
Almost every month I work multiple times as a stage manager. In the beginning, I did this voluntarily but now I am getting paid for this. With this job, I am responsible for the whole backstage area including the artists and employees.
This job contains: checking if everyone is doing their job correctly, if everyone and everything is on time, keeping track and writing down things that happened that evening in a logbook, cleaning the backstage area after the artists have left, giving out keys, etc. Besides this I also always check if I can help the sound or lights person with their tasks.
I think this job can contribute to my career because I now get an insight into how the backstage of an event works. Also, I get to know more about the equipment that is used backstage.
Stagehand
Before becoming a stage manager I worked several times as a stagehand to get to know the stage and equipment. I helped the sound and lights person with building up and breaking down the equipment on the stage.
Whilst the show was busy I helped the stage manager with their tasks or joined the sound of lights person to see what they were doing and get some explanation.
I think this contributes to my career because I now know the basics about the equipment which makes sure I can have better communication with the technicians.
Popronde coördinatorday
With the coordinators of the poprondes which all take place in the south of Holland, we needed to organize a fun but interesting day for all of the coordinators of the popronde and the national team.
Unfortunately, due to the lack of coordinators who signed up to join the event. The event could not take place. Nevertheless, we put a lot of effort into arranging food and a location and also in making the invitations.
The thing I learned from this is to never change everyone’s email log-ins before inviting them to an event.
The organization of Popronde changed all of the log-ins for the coordinators the month before the inventation. I think this was why no one signed up to the event because they did not see it.
Peel slowly and see stagemanager
In January I was asked to be a stage manager at Scheltema, a pop venue in Leiden, during peel slowly and see. Peel Slowly and See is a festival that takes place at two pop venues, which are next to each other. The festival is only one day but has a pre-party the day before.
It has different music genres such as jazz, indietronica, intriguing ethnic music, and wayward guitar band. My task was to make sure the artists knew where to go and are at the correct time on the stage, also I needed to make sure the sound person did their job correctly.
This job was very fun to do but also very frustrating in the beginning. This was because the first band was an hour too late, not complete at their sound check, and then went missing. We eventually found them drinking at another bar. The performance was great, but it did cause frustration.
Popronde Leiden
Since July 2022, I have been one of the coordinators of the Popronde of Leiden. This is the largest traveling festival in The Netherlands. The concept of this festival is the following: More than 40 cities in the Netherlands participate and they all have their own coordinators, besides this there is also a national team that coordinates all of the city coordinators. The coordinators of the cities have the following job: to organize as many bands as possible in as many locations as possible, within their own city.
My job for this festival contains: looking for venues who want to participate, matching a suitable band or bands to the venue, making sure the venue signs a contract together with the band(s), hanging up posters around the city, and putting flyers everywhere, maintain good contact with the venues, make sure the venues arrange their own lights and sound equipment (if it is not possible to arrange something, we arrange something for them), make call sheets, find volunteers, assign them a job and make a roster, get various permits from the local authority, arrange food and beverages for the volunteers and national team, make sure the event itself runs well and at the end do an evaluation.
For the industry hours, I only counted the hours for the popronde I made during the school year.
BSA student party - Gebr de Nobel
Together with seven other colleagues from Gebr de Nobel, we organized an event especially for students, every month. For this, we need to come up with the theme, the decorations, promotion and marketing, finances, and the building up and breaking off the event.
For these events, I am responsible for making online and offline content like posters and social media posts. Also, I am responsible for making the decorations plan and writing them down including the costs.
The editions we organized were very great. But I think it was very hard to organize these events. Most of the people in the group had a limited amount of time and experience. When coming up with for example ideas for decorations no one wanted to put money or effort into it. Eventually after the edition on the 25th of may we decided to stop with this event.
DGTL
For school, we needed to volunteer at Revolution Foundation at DGTL. For this, I was put in a duo.
Our duo needed to go to the recycleHUB to get clean and empty crates. Then we brought these crates to the backstages of 2 different stages and switched them with the full dirty crates from the backstage. After switching the crates we brought the dirty crates back to the recycleHUB.
I think this job was very easy and it did not challenge us. Also, the organization of tasks of the Revolution Foundation was lacking, no one knew what to do and managers walked away in the middle of the briefing. Besides this, I think it was very nice to see DGTL festival and also their backstages.
I think from this I learned how to not handle your volunteers and also how they could have improved it.
Werfpop coremember decorations
Since December 2022, I have been a core team member of Werfpop, which is a festival in Leiden. I went to a few meetings and after these, I needed to choose what I wanted to do within the festival, I chose the decorations.
Now, I am responsible for the decorations for the festival. For this, I need to arrange sponsors, make a plan for the festival (which is also needed for the safety plan), arrange the working space and materials, and then build all of the decorations.
I also do the building up and breaking down of the festival including the decorations for which I get assigned my own team of volunteers.
I think I learn a lot by doing this. It is my first real job within a festival and the pressure is already really high, but this is also something I like. I think it is great to be creative whilst also thinking about if it is possible. This work also contributes to my network.
