#ThrowbackMonday – Putting Together an Event 

Back when I was in high school, I was in the International Baccalaureate Organization, which required me to complete a Personal Project during my senior year. 

I decided to do my project on taking on different roles in the music industry, such as concert promoter, and booking and PR agent, and applied those roles to Frankie Z’s career. 

One of the biggest components of my project was putting together an entire concert for Frankie, which took place at my high school, (shoutout to HRHS – I love you guys and will forever be thankful to the entire staff who helped me successfully pull off this event!!!) 

The show took place three years ago exactly today – February 15th 2013 – the day will forever be engraved into my brain due to the number of times I said it to people hahahah. 

For my first ever event, and being only 15 years old at the time, I was pretty excited to have over 230 people in attendance. The months leading up to this show were some of the most stressful of my life, but I wouldn’t change it for the entire world. Seeing the end product all come together was the greatest feeling ever. 

Not only was this show taking place in Montreal but the awesome TVRS crew set up a live broadcast, so that people all over the world could watch the show in real time! We had people in New York and even all the way in the United Kingdom tune in that night. 

Putting on this event was the most incredible learning experience for me, and I will forever be thankful for Frankie’s trust in me, to pull this off. I’m alllll about learning from experience, something I did at 100% putting this event together. 

Here are some things I learnt throughout the course of organizing this event…

• Work with professional people –individuals that you can trust. It will take a huge worry off your back. I was fortunate enough to have a great mentor (shoutout to N. Small) while putting this event together. She put me in touch with Max who did the lighting and J-M who did the sound for the event and having them take care of that made it one thing less for me to think of – you guys were so amazing!!! 
• Don’t expect your “friends” to support you – it was super hard at first to try and get people to buy tickets for an artist they didn’t really know, not going to lie. People I expected to be the first to support me & come to the show either bought their ticket at the last minute or didn’t show up at all.
• A great support system is key! On days when I wanted to throw in the towl because I was too stressed, I had my mentor, Frankie and my family and friends push me to keep going – that made a huge difference. They all believed in me, which forced me to want to believe in myself.
• Be organized – there is a bunchhhh of stuff to think of when putting together a show – from ticket design & printing, analyzing costs & potential revenue, getting opening acts (shoutout to Marie-Lou, Em & Cass who took this worry off my shoulders – it was so appreciated!!!) to setting up time for dress rehearsals, to selling tickets (at the time, online ticketing for a show like this was not an option), to most importantly promoting the event, there was a huge “to-do” list to take care of. 
• Enjoy the show – you have worked weeks, maybe even months leading up to the event, so when the night comes along, try to enjoy it as much as possible (I know, easier said than done – there’s always something that comes up that has to be dealt with the evening of) 

 

 
In closing, I know I didn’t mention everyone in this post who helped me (it would literally take forever to name everyone) but I remember you all, and am beyond grateful that you all helped me make this event a success three years ago! 

I’m looking forward to doing this again many times during my career! ☺️