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Matt Bunday, Senior Lecturer for BA (Hons) Event Management, argues that events planners must be prepared for politics to intrude on proceedings at any time...
When meeting new people and answering the predictable question of what I do for a living, I often must reassure them that teaching event management in Higher Education is less about ‘party-planning’ and more about serious and complex safety and HR aspects, team management, safety, marketing, business, and – more today than ever before – contemporary issues.
‘Party planners’ – in one context or another – have existed for hundreds of years to organise key community events. The industry has obviously professionalised considerably since then with these ‘party planners’ morphing into ‘event managers’ who, by today’s standards, must understand all the challenges, risks and opportunities that go with organising events in an ever-more political world that is often more unstable.
Running large scale events in today’s world requires common sense, an awareness of security and counter-terrorism, training in legal compliance, a passion for the environment, and – now bear with me – some understanding of the current political landscape in our world. We train our students to be the designated guardians for thousands of people for hours on end, yet many are unaware of potentially disruptive political influences that could affect their events and examples of this happening are becoming more common place.
This is a year of elections with half of the world’s population affected. In addition to the UK’s election, the USA votes in November, the European Parliament elections have concluded, India has just run one of the largest elections in the world for more than a billion people over several weeks, and France narrowly survived a Far-right take over from Macron’s snap election.
If this wasn’t complex enough, the increase in conflict across the world in places like Ukraine and Gaza make the global geo-political landscape even harder to navigate as people seek to use events as a mouthpiece to make statements or push for policy change. There have been summer protests here in the UK, political instability in France and even the first assassination attempt of a US presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan. One might conclude that there has rarely been a more politically unstable world.
So, the University of Winchester events programme team argue that to not prepare our students for working in a highly politically charged world would be missing a trick. We have all seen how well-run political events have taken on a life of their own. The recent obvious example being the ‘Sparkle with Starmer’ moment at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool in September 2023 when a protester ran up to Keir Starmer hurling glitter over him while shouting political messages down the microphone. Sir Keir held his nerve and turned the incident to his advantage but the hearts of many watching probably skipped a beat as they wondered what else could have been in the protester’s pocket. Serious security questions were asked afterwards.
More ‘general’ events must also be ready to respond to becoming the centre of a political row - whether it be the arrival of Jeremy Corbyn at Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage, a comment made by a celebrity at a film premier about their preferred choice for US President, or the Eurovision Song Contest where messaging has become more intense in the wake Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Regardless of whether it is a ‘pure’ political event or one that has become political through no fault of its own, many events will have all the same hallmark traits. Any large gatherings need crowd management considerations, legal compliance, First Aid, staffing considerations and emergency planning. Volunteers, production equipment, signage and communication are all requirements of a large event, whether it be the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham or Bruce Springsteen’s last night at Wembley.
This narrative is one that the University of Winchester event management programme team is starting to make as we attempt to equip our students for organising events in a world that is more politically charged.
We have started to schedule contemporary issue ‘themes’ on some weeks, develop our own ‘passion projects’ on current trends to teach as extra classes, and are actively discussing how world issues can affect our event planning on a regular basis.
We see the benefit this could have for our students. Hopefully, they will leave university with a good social compass which will allow them to understand more about the additional political risks they might face when they plan their events. We feel that this would make them better event managers and better people supporting the University’s values of ‘making a difference’ and working on ‘shared endeavours’.
You never know, a few years from now the manager for one of the big party political conferences - last year Labour’s brought an estimated £29M to Liverpool’s economy through 515 fringe events, a 300 exhibitors and, 18,000 delegates - could be from our event management programme…