Events Student Launches Big Falmouth Food Book

To complete their studies, third-year students from BA(Hons) Creative Events Management work in small groups over a 10-week period to devise, plan and manage a live, public event.

This year, events included an all-day music festival, an early morning fitness rave dubbed ‘Breakfast Boogie’, and Selfies for Cinnamon, a pet and owners’ photography competition aimed to raise awareness and new volunteers for the charity Cinnamon Trust.

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BA(Hons) Creative Events Management

Senior Lecturer Matt Kirby said: “The events were incredibly diverse this year and really demonstrated our third-year students’ ambition and management skills.”

Esther Wilson, third-year BA(Hons) Creative Events Management student, was part of a group who organised the Big Falmouth Food Book launch at a local gin bar.

The Big Falmouth Food Book contains over 70 favourite recipes from the local community and students; it has been collated, designed and produced entirely by the students.

Esther told us: “The concept originally came from an episode of ‘Hairy Bikers: Mum Knows Best’, where they did a recipe share at the end of the series. We felt it would be a great way of celebrating the culture in Falmouth, to replicate the concept and then collate all the donated recipes into a book.”

The group started collecting recipes at the beginning of the year, aiming to print in March, then worked with a Falmouth graduate photographer to get images of the dishes. Esther was then responsible for setting up the layouts for each page and creating the book. 

“Creating the Big Falmouth Food Book was an absolute joy,” Esther said. “But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t stressful at times. My favourite part was definitely picking up the finished book – after spending so many hours creating it and seeing it on my laptop screen, it was almost surreal holding it.” 

Esther said: “I learnt a lot about working to a short deadline and managing the planning process of the two parts of the project: the book and the launch.” 

“The launch event was a complete success in our eyes,” she told us. “We had around 150 attendees which was about double what we had anticipated, but that didn’t seem to cause any issues. Our wonderful chef (and lecturer!) Paul did an amazing job.” 

Matt Kirby added: “By working as full-time event managers on their own events for three months, our third-year students get an invaluable real-life work experience that can really assist them in their next steps after graduation.” 

Esther already has work lined up for when she finishes. 

“I’ve been working at Trebah Gardens as an Events Assistant for four years now,” she told us, “working part time through term time and fulltime through the holidays. I’m re-joining the team in May as we launch the 4th year of our performance season.” 

Part of this year’s performance season will include a production with a cast of 100 actors. 

Esther added: “It’s going to be a busy summer!”