Sustainable Festival Management BA(Hons)

You’ll gain a firm understanding of how the events and festival industry can impact communities, economies and the environment. You’ll explore innovative and sustainable approaches to festival event management, while developing core skills in problem solving, marketing, teamwork and negotiation. 

Modules

Marketing & Digital Media

Whether you’re marketing a major global event or a small community-based fundraising experience, you’ll need to understand your customer and communicate your value proposition accordingly.    

In this module, you’ll learn about experiential marketing and how to make an impact, explore marketing techniques such as the use of social media influencers, user-generated content and second screen advertising.

Contemporary Event & Festival Impacts

Considering both mainstream and niche sectors, you’ll explore the diversity of the industry. You’ll also examine the impact events can have on environments, economies and communities, and identify best practices for responsible event and festival management.  

Working in small collaborative teams, you’ll have the opportunity to focus on a particular event/festival, or an area of the events and festivals industry, and its related impacts. There will also be the opportunity to delve into your specialist area of interest and consider impacts within a broad ethical framework.

Wellbeing in Experience Management

Looking at how wellbeing is connected to experience management and wider aspects of customer satisfaction, you’ll explore ways to develop wellbeing as a customer offer while addressing its importance within an organisation. Crucially, you’ll explore the value of wellbeing for your own personal and professional development through a micro-placement opportunity. 

Creative Innovation in Experience Management

You’ll explore a range of innovations including the use of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, Blockchain, naturescaping, social infrastructure projects, passive energy systems and the development of the sharing economy. You’ll also gain valuable skills such as communication, persuasion and negotiation that are essential in industry.

Live Student Event Project

A high-quality event can be the most enjoyable and ‘real’ experience that an individual can take part in. In this module, you’ll learn how to design captivating events for a range of audience segments. You’ll work with a small team of colleagues to deliver an innovative event based on a specific venue, interest or customer profile.

Real World Skills

You’ll explore a range of ‘real world’ skills that relate to your own professional goals and have the opportunity to take part in several technical inductions that may include health and safety, for example. There will also be opportunities to take part in a work-based learning placement.  

You’ll reflect on what you have learnt and how you have developed through a series of blog entries.

You’ll build on your knowledge of sustainability and provide innovative solutions to a real-world industry challenge. You’ll also explore legal and financial issues that relate to the festival industry. 

Through the production of a sustainability-orientated blog, you’ll develop your professional profile and engage with the wider events and festival sector. 

Modules

Legal & Financial Management in the Experience Sector

You’ll learn how to accurately analyse a range of financial materials including industry-standard financial templates such as balance sheets, profit and loss statements and cash flows. 

You’ll also get to grips with legal and regulatory considerations such as data protection, equality and diversity, health and safety, consumer protection and workplace legislation.

Live Sustainability Challenge

In this module, you’ll develop an understanding of how to generate meaningful intelligence from audience data. In order to better understand audience motivations, expectations and experiences, you’ll learn to collect and interpret relevant data.

You’ll also undertake a micro-placement to further your understanding of the real-world sustainability challenges that face experience sector organisations.

Team Learning & Performance 

In this module, you’ll take part in a micro-placement and complete a review of your own team working skills, assessing how you contribute to overall team performance. You’ll also reflect on the practices of others and produce a development plan to help you enhance your professional growth.

Live Public Event Project

In this module, you’ll work in a small collaborative team to devise and deliver an innovative public event that fits the local community landscape. You’ll examine key aspects of the operational and strategic management of a public event and apply relevant processes through a live public event project. 

This could also be an opportunity to add some social value to the local community and/or perhaps work with a local business. You’ll assess technical resource and venue management, develop your ability to procure support services and enhance your customer and venue/site logistics. You’ll also test your skills to both write and critique event plans. 

Demonstrating Sustainability

In this module, you’ll explore the theory and practice of ‘experience impact’. Investigating the huge benefits that experiences can bring, as well as the, sometimes, devastating effects of unsustainable practice, you’ll analyse a range of impacts and learn to develop a holistic view of experience activities.  

You’ll select a particular sustainability related issue that you’re passionate about and discuss this within a blog format. You’ll also utilise examples of best practice to inform and justify proposals designed to address the issue that you have identified. 

You can choose to take an optional placement year after your second year on a three-year programme, or after your third year if you’re studying for a degree with an Integrated Foundation Year. 

You’ll be responsible for finding your own placement, with support from the RealWORKS employability team. 

Choosing this option will enhance your industry experience and skills while studying. 

How you’ll study during your placement year 

You’ll spend time working in a professional context, as part of a business or organisation. This can be in one role, or up to three, and must be for a minimum of 24 weeks. 

You’ll develop in-demand workplace skills, deepen your insight into industry and grow your network of contacts, all of which could help you get ahead in your career after graduation. 

Throughout this year, you’ll develop a portfolio of work that includes critical self-reflection on what has been learned from the experience. You’ll be required to evidence your experiences, the skills you’ve learned and your professional growth. 

Developing your peer and self-evaluation skills, you’ll consider leadership, crisis management and sustainability in the festival industry. Using audience insights, you’ll deliver a live team project and gain real industry experience through a micro-placement to help launch your career.

By the end of your final year, you’ll have the confidence and skills to develop a business plan.

Modules

Crisis Management for Festivals & Events

Here, you’ll develop your ability to deal with complex crisis situations. Working in a realistic multidisciplinary team, you’ll experience a live crisis scenario and will be assessed on your ability to respond to and evaluate it. Throughout the experience, you’ll consider crowd management, venue and site management and attendee behaviour. 

Festival Innovation Project

In this module, you’ll complete a market audit of an area of the festival industry that interests you. You’ll then design and plan the introduction of an innovative, sustainable and inclusive product or service to launch into that market.  

Through the completion of a business plan, you’ll communicate both your innovative concept and its key financial, marketing and operational information as well as the value of your innovation – either as a commercial venture, using an ROI metric or with social, cultural or ecological benefits in mind.

Creative & Ethical Leadership

In this module, you’ll further develop your industry experience through the completion of a micro-placement. You’ll also continue to develop your understanding of creative and ethical leadership and build a portfolio to showcase the range of experiences and attributes that you have developed throughout the course.

Personal Research Project

In the form of an extended research project, you’ll address the important aspects of a topic of your choice, giving you the opportunity to contribute to the theoretical and applied landscape within your field of interest. 

You’ll also be supported by a research project supervisor, who’ll be there to guide you through the research process and act as a sounding board for your thoughts, ideas and approaches.

Live Sustainable Festival Project

In this module, you’ll work in teams to research, design, execute and evaluate a live festival. Through negotiation, you’ll propose and agree a suitable festival focus, type and approach, which you’ll then develop and deliver.    

You’ll also develop your skills and knowledge of setting and measuring objectives, festival plan writing, diversity and accessibility, crowd management, evaluating festival quality, evaluating impacts and legacy, and critically reflecting on the role of other stakeholders. Considering sustainability and ethics, you’ll also be expected to manage contracts, licensing applications and budgetary aspects of the detailed planning process.