And that's a wrap!

The 2015 Perth Garden Festival

What a whirlwind the past two weeks have been! The event I have been working on since I started my internship with Corporate Sports Australia was held over the weekend and there are so many experiences to share.

In my last post I introduced you to my internship and the event I would be primarily working on; The Perth Garden Festival. It was interesting to see how the event came together over time and how the different professions in the workplace contributed to the planning and execution of the event itself.

As an intern I am working underneath the media coordinator but also alongside the event operations team so my role so far has been a mix of event management, public relations, sales and marketing.

As I mentioned in my first blog post, my responsibility for the duration of the event was to organise and manage the Children’s Education Playground, supported by Lotterywest. My role up until the event commenced was revolved around social media but I was also responsible for booking primary school excursions for the Thursday and Friday of the event which was a daunting task.

With only two weeks until the event commenced, it was a challenge to book schools into the remaining sessions due to the short notice and time restraints of organising transport. As the area was sponsored by Lotterywest, it was very important that all the sessions were booked to comply with the requirements of the Lotterywest grant. Finally, after several discussions with a Principal I was able to secure a local primary school into all remaining excursion sessions - a huge relief to the event director and a great triumph for me!

Photo of the Lotterywest Children's Educational Playground

All that was left to organise for the Children’s area was the timetable and confirm the facilitators for the activities that the schools would be working through. By this time I was well trained to speaking professionally on the phone. During the school excursions, the primary school kids were working through workshops with the Water Corporation, Earthwise and Joy of Wood while Kindergarten kids had a presentation by Scitech and activities with Remida. On the weekend we had gnome painting, the Swan Valley Cuddly Animal Farm, Scitech, Remida and Eco Faeries to entertain the children. 

Gnome Painting (Photo courtesy from Perth Garden Festival Facebook) 

Cuddly Animal Farm (Photo courtesy from Perth Garden Festival Facebook) 

School Excursion Earthwise Workshop (Photo courtesy from Perth Garden Festival Facebook) 

The day before the event started the office was chaos as I was taken to site to assist the event operations team with set up and to ensure that everything was prepared ahead of the opening day. The not-so-glamorous side of event management that everyone has been telling us about was evident with manual labour required to make sure everything was ready for the next day!

The next four days of the event flew past with early mornings and late finishes as I worked through many challenges with the schools on the Thursday and Friday of the event, and the general public over the weekend.

After the company received disappointing feedback after the 2014 festival, it was great to hear that patrons really enjoyed the 2015 festival and responded positively to the changes that were made. I felt so proud to have been a part of creating the experiences that people had while they were at the festival. It helped me understand that this is the industry I want to work in, knowing that it was an accomplishment to me because I was a small part of that process.

After five full on days working the event I am exhausted but really happy and proud of the work we achieved!

I’m planning another post centralised around the media at the event and the role public relations played so stay posted!

Until next time,
Megan

xxx