Much of my free time is spent organizing our annual Make Music Day on June 21st of each year with a team of people. It’s a daunting task that takes a lot of time and navigating the city’s policies for such an event can be a headache. I thought I’d write up this how-to document on the process in the event so others could learn about how the event is put together.
Make Music Worcester is an annual free, outdoor day of music held on the summer solstice, June 21. Completely different from a typical music festival, Make Music is open to anyone who wants to take part. Every kind of musician — young and old, amateur and professional, of every musical persuasion — pours onto streets, parks, plazas, and porches to share their music with friends, neighbors, and strangers. All of it is free and open to the public.
Make Music Day began in 1982 in France as the Fête de la Musique, it is now held on the same day in more than 750 cities in 120 countries. Make Music Worcester invites all members of the Worcester community to join in the celebration of live music by performing, hosting musical acts, and attending the free concerts and programs.
But how do we make this happen?
(note: this is an abbreviated overview of the process. If I were to go into every minute detail, you may be deterred from ever trying to pull something like this off yourself.)
1) Email park request list to parks department: We hold our event in multiple parks, but so do other organizations. First step is to request the parks department hold those spaces for you before others organizations get to them.
2) Complete and submit special event permit: It’s not enough to just reserve the parks, you need to let the city know that you are having an event. This nearly 10 page application gives the city and municipal departments an idea of what will be taking place, and what pother types of services will be needed from city departments.
3) Contact our liaison from the Make Music Alliance for contract: Because this is an international festival, we need to pay dues in order to have access to their planning materials. Getting a contract from the Alliance is the first step in a formal relationship.
4) Contact fiscal agent to discuss Make Music Day details for upcoming year: Since we are not a formalized non-profit, we need to seek the assistance of one to act as our fiscal agent. They hold the money for us and allow us to operate under general non-profit rules.
5) Attend special event meeting: If you thought the city was out of the equation by now, you are wrong. The Special Events meeting allows you to personally present your proposed project to multiple municipal bodies and find out the cost and paperwork involved for other formalities such as sound permits, police detail, and electrical access.
6) Identify and apply to funding / grant opportunities: Events get expensive. That is why we take some time early on to identify grant opportunities and financial sponsorships to cover the cost of the event. Also, a perfect time to set up a crowdsourcing site.
7) Pay Make Music Alliance fee: The fee that we pay allows us access to personalized event planning software and inclusion in national press releases. It’s often a percentage of your overall budget – this past year it cost us $500.00
8) Open SOLSTICE to the public: Solstice is the software that allows musicians to sign up to perform at the event, and allows us to match them with one of the stages we are setting up in the parks. It basically organizes all of our talent recruitment for the event.
9) Start the Media Show!: Now its time to schedule press releases, obtain media sponsorships, schedule social media posts and create MailChimp mailings so that we can hype up the community.
10) Outreach and Relationships: Now, going into our third year, we understand the importance of building on the relationships with participants from past years. This includes reaching out to the previous year’s venues, performers, sponsors, business partners and volunteers.
11) Schedule Info Sessions: Anyone who has ever planned an event knows that the way to peoples hearts is through their stomach. In order to recruit new musicians and volunteers we often order up a bunch of food at a local coffee shop and invite he public to come talk to us in person to see if their involvement would be a good fit.
12) RECRUIT!: You can’t have an event without people. We go all-in on finding people to fill certain spots in our programming such as ukulele instructors, guitar instructors, drum instructors, and harmonica instructors in addition to our performers.
13) Determine needs: Some bands want electricity while others don’t. Some may need a sound engineer and proper stage. It is important to inventory the needs of your musicians to keep them happy now and in years to come.
14) Complete, submit, and pick up permits: This includes park permits and sounds permits generally, but could also include liquor licenses as well.
15) Meet with volunteers to go over roles and responsibilities: No one wants to show up and not know what to do. This meeting lets people know which park to report to and what their responsibilities for the day will look like. They also get a pretty neat t-shirt.
16) Monitor/approve performances and requests: Within a a week of the big day, every musician should know what venue they will be performing at and what time slot they have been assigned.
17) Create printable Make Music Day schedule: Many people stumble into our event not knowing about it beforehand. Having a printed schedule allows folks the opportunity to check out some of the other event and shows taking places in other areas of the city.
18) Have fun!: So, the day is here, your car is packed with supplies and you’ve got an extra large coffee in hand. Don’t let the stress of such a large undertaking stop you from taking some time to sit on the grass and seeing what the local talent has to offer.
19) Send “Thank You” email to participants: A little ‘thank you’ goes a long way. People want to feel appreciated and we want them to know what their time means to us.
20) Relax for about four weeks, but then get back to work: Planning a day-long event doesn’t happen in a month or even two. As soon as we have decompressed from the event, its time to dive back in and get to work to make next year’s bigger and better.