Organising dance festivals is a huge project and whist’s a lot of time and effort happens behind the scenes organising the event there are many factors on how you can measure of what makes a event successful. This is so, no single significant good or significant bad point will significantly influence the final result as the mark.

 

Therefore, to be objective on each review and to give a fair overall opinion of how well a festival has done, I have decided to review festivals based on the below six points which is scored from 1 (Bad) to 10 (Outstanding).  This total figure divided by 6 to give an average mark between 1 to 10 which gives an overall average on how well the festival has performed.

 

This is important as participants can see instantly how well the festival being reviewed has performed overall and participants can see the individual mark against the 6 points they have been scored against to see what has been successful and what was not so successful.

 

10 – Outstanding

9 – Exceptionally

8 - Very good

7 – Good

6 – Average

5 – Just acceptable

4 – Disappointing

3 – Poor

2 – Very poor

1 – Bad

 

Any event that scores 7 and above I would recommend as being a good festival overall. This is because as a participant you can probably expect to spend in the region of £400 on average for a long weekend (Friday to Monday) at a festival in total, which includes your return flight, full entry to the event, accommodation for three or four nights as well as food and drink three to four days while away from home. As £400 is a lot of money for most people for a weekend away you would have expected that your weekend away should be as an absolute minimum, at least good or better. You wouldn’t spend £400 on a weekend away which was just acceptable, as the reason why you are going away in the first place was that you are going away to a dance festival that is expected to be good.

 

The six Criteria being reviewed is as follows: -

 

1 Value for money

• How much was the price for a “full pass” when compared to other similar festivals and did this offer value for money?
• Did the “full pass” offer value for money when compared to the event offering as per the program/timetable
• Any extra charges for “preparty” or “afterparty” and did these extra charges represent value for money?

2 Event Venue

• How was the Room temperature/air conditioning of the event venue?
• How was the quality of flooring at the event venue?
• How was the proximity to nearby hotels / shops / restaurants etc. from the event venue?

3 Music quality (during the party)

• Was a Fair mix of music played of what would be expected by an “average” dancer compared to the festival theme?
• Any significant technical issues which resulted in long periods of waiting?

4 Workshop offerings

• Did the classes start and finish on time?
• Did the workshops on offer match to what was advertised from the main festival poster?
• Did the workshops on offer off a fair balance of what would have been expected from the theme of the festival?
• Were the dance instructors visible to most of the participants during the workshops? i.e. were there any raised platforms or large screens.
• Language of the workshops delivered in

5 Balanced ratio of leaders to followers at the event

• Was there a balanced ratio of leaders to followers at the festival?
• Were any there any monitoring of ticket sales to enable positive action (such as restricting numbers) to try and keep leaders and follower’s ratio balanced?

Note smaller size festivals are especially vulnerable to large imbalances of leader to follower ratio due to the small number of participants attending compared to larger events where imbalances are not felt as significantly as extra leaders/followers are spread and distributed more evenly through the large number of attendees. 

 

6 Event Transparency

• Was all the information such as timetable/party theme advertised in a timely manner prior to the festival?
• Was there any significant omission of event information that may have changed participant’s mind had this omission of information been know sooner prior to purchasing a festival ticket?
• Were there any “hidden charges” an average person wouldn’t have been expected to have paid based on the information available at the time of purchasing a festival ticket.
• Were there any advertised party rooms or advertised workshops withdrawn and did not run in accordance with the advertised festival timetable?
• Were there any additional rooms party rooms or additional workshops that ran that was not listed on the advertised festival timetable.
• Were there any parts of the festival (other than workshops and evening parties) that didn’t take place but was advertised to take place as per the timetable/ festival program.