The Hype Mafia team organised this event as part of their Events Management class
The Hype Mafia team organised this event as part of their Events Management class
A group of events management students have helped organise a reunion gig for a band which first played at Strathclyde Union in 1978 and one of whom is Hunter Centre academic Dr Paul Ferri.
The band, Full Circle, played at the Barony Bar on April 24. Dr Ferri had the idea for a reunion concert and had just spoken to the Union about doing this when he bumped into one of the students from the Events Management class. On telling her about it, she volunteered her group as organisers as part of their course.
Dr Ferri said, "My band last played here in 1978 and it's our first reunion gig – so it's a bit special! The six third year students did a great job organising publicity."
The team - calling themselves Hype Mafia - comprises: Radina Dimova, Ineta Valantinaite, Helen Murphy, Meri Aaltonen, Zhanet Stamatova and Christine Hanganu.
Christine Hanganu explained, "I study Business Enterprise and at the beginning of this semester I bumped into Dr Ferri as I was walking to the library to meet the rest of the group. He told me about his band and that he was thinking of organising a concert. I saw the opportunity for organising this as the event for our events management class. After talking with the whole team we agreed to propose this to Paul. He accepted and this is how it all started. Our lecturer Ms Hilary Kane also reviewed and accepted our event before starting."
She added, "Organising this event involved a lot of careful planning, team work and delegation of tasks. Zhanet is the team leader and she made sure we always were on schedule and all tasks were completed. Radina is in charge of the financial part which is essential for calculating the budget and establishing costs. Helen took responsibility for all the sponsorship activities so we can make sure that we have enough funds. Ineta made our marketing strategy in order to raise awareness of the event and attract customers. Meri has overseen our operations and planning, while I did the risk assessment and liaised with Paul. Although we allocated roles from the beginning, we all helped each other and we didn't let our roles stop us from doing other activities that would fall under a different category. The roles were just to keep a better track of the things."
As well as managing to secure use of the equipment mostly for free thanks to personal connections and the charity chosen for all the proceeds – Yorkhill Children's Charity - the team did all the marketing, created the logo and image for the event, set up ticket sales and they managed to enlist Tunnock’s to sponsor part of the evening’s raffle.
Christine added, "For me this was a huge learning opportunity. I got the chance to put theory into practice, work as part of a fantastic team and with brilliant people like Dr Paul Ferri, the band and many more. This experience has improved my communication, team work, risk assessment and planning skills. It also developed my knowledge of the event and music industry. I really enjoyed the planning process from start to finish and taking pride in the result of our work. I feel this will be an invaluable experience for my future career in project management."