Rudimental BRIT Master Class

As I’m sure many of you are aware the BRIT awards is happening this month, just around the corner at the O2 Arena. As part of this the British Music Experience (the museum in the O2 Arena) has been holding various BRIT master classes for students. I was lucky enough to get hold of a free ticket for the master class with new band Rudimental. I have to admit I didn’t know exactly who the band where, only really having heard their big hit ‘Feel the Love’.

Source: www. telegraph.co.uk

The session was held in the British Music Experience and lasted for an hour. The band answered questions from the host of the event and then questions were opened to the floor for a Q&A with the audience. The band gave an insight into their background, musical tastes and how they eventually became a band and broke into the music industry. It was a real insight into a band that have worked for many years to get to where they are, and still had a lot more progression to have; it will be interesting to see this over the next year. I would argue that this possibly didn’t have a lot to do with events management but, as someone who is interested in working on music events in the future and has a keen interest in music this was a great experience.

Source: www.ticketmaster.co.uk

As part of my ticket into the master class I got entry into the British Music Experience, again as someone with a keen interest in music this was really interesting seeing the progression of British Music through the years. If you haven’t been its well worth it, sometimes you can get free entry with your ticket for an event at the O2 Arena, have a look at your email before an event and you might be able to get in free, this happened with a ticket I had before and I wish I had taken advantage of it then. 

I am slowly making progression with my dissertation; I am in the progress of revising my literature review and methodology from my tutor’s feedback and analysing my data. Analysing my data is proving for me to be quite difficult, statistics were never my strong point and its taking me double the time I would like it to. But I’m getting there and trying not to stress about the just under 6 weeks I have left to complete it, AHHH! 

Good Luck to everyone who is receiving offers back on UCAS and everyone who is also in the progress of completing their dissertation!! :)

The Retail Trust London Ball 2013

On Monday I was lucky enough to be part of the Retail Trust London Ball 2013. It was an opportunity which was sent through by one of my tutors, for a voluntary position on the evening of the ball. The event took place at the Grosvenor House Hotel, located on Park Lane, which is an amazing venue! The suite which the event was located in was beautifully decorated and ideal for the event taking place. My role on the day was assisting the team in the fundraising efforts. During the reception we were selling various different raffle tickets for various different prizes on the night. Once the Ball begun we were all assigned a number of tables to look after, during the evening various other games were going on as part of the fundraising, here we assisted the guest and collected the donations received. Definitely a worthwhile experience and I was glad that I had the opportunity to be a part of it.

Source: www.givinglots.co.uk  

Source: http://www.retailtrust.org.uk/news/photos/144/1/8/22/Y  

In other news, I have handed in another one of my assignment, that’s one more to ticked off the list And now it’s time to really get down to writing my dissertation. I am currently in the process of going through all of the questionnaires which I collected and putting them into an excel sheet to then analyse…a lengthy process but I’m getting there.

I took a little trip to the cinema this weekend and went to see Les Miserables, spotting all the shots of the Greenwich campus looking lovely! I really loved the film, I found it was very emotional and definitely need to go and see it at the theatre. I've heard mixed reviews from my friends about the film, but if musicals are not your cup of tea you might want to give this one a miss! 

Source: www. imdb.com

Source: www. thegreenwichphantom.co.uk

Happy New Year!!

A slightly belated ‘Happy New Year’ but I hope you all are having a brilliant start to 2013.

Before I head off home for Christmas I got chance to head over to Winter Wonderland to get me into the Christmas spirit. I went last year and can defiantly tell the growth in the event this year, it’s got so much bigger and better. I took some picture of my day; some of them are below for you;

 But now I’m back to chilly London after a lovely Christmas break. I spent Christmas at home with my family, it was lovely to finally get some time to properly spend with all my family and friends back home, I felt like I was on a holiday but got to sleep in my own bed. Of course I ate and drank way more than I should have, but I’m going to keep telling myself it was acceptable to eat chocolate for breakfast as it was Christmas!

I started my new year in a way you probably wouldn’t expect, I was up bright and early to head over to a local charity event in the next town to do my research for my dissertation. The event was a bra run in aid of Breast Cancer Care; it was a really fun event for a great cause. Those that took part were a range of ages and even some people brought their dog along to run.  The only condition was that everyone who took part had to wear a bra on top of their clothes and there was a competition for the best decorated bra, and yes even the dogs had a bra on! As part of my dissertation I was giving out questionnaires to the participants of the race to find out what their motivations were for taking part in the local charity sporting event, as part of this research I have also interviewed the event organiser to further back up my findings. I now have the task of going through all the questionnaires which I collected to analyse the data.

After feeling so ashamed in the amount I consumed over the festive period I have decided to get a little bit more exercise in my life so joined a Zumba class. I have never done Zumba before but have done a lot of dancing in the past so thought this would be fun way to do a bit more exercise. I have to say it was great fun and would recommend it. I’m still getting to grips with the moves, finding myself just jumping and waving my arms around at the sections I didn’t know, but it definitely doesn’t feel like your exercising. So until I can learn the moves I’ll be following the teacher’s advice, ‘if you don’t get the moves at first, don’t just stop, just keep moving and have fun’. 

Source: zumbaforu.com 

Now the assignments are in, time for Band of Horses!

After my stress over recent assignments, finally they are submitted! Its always a bit stressful for everyone on the course when we have 4 different assignments in over the space of 2 weeks but we did it! Some of the weight lifted before starting the next ones.

Also one step further on our event, plans with the venue are looking positive. Hopefully we will have the venue confirmed and booked by next week…yay! Other Uni related goings on are my dissertation, due to the other assignments I feel I have neglected it slightly over the last couple of weeks but getting back on track with it from now, which involves me writing the first draft of my questionnaire. I have found that my Psychology and Sociology A-levels have come in so useful for my dissertation, as well as a couple of other assignments on the course. I never thought they would, but they really have giving me a good background knowledge on topics like motivation and understanding of research methods. Thank you A-levels!   

Its been a while but I managed to get to a gig this week. I went to see Band of Horses at the Hammersmith Apollo. I have unintentionally become a bit of a fan girl as I've seen them quite a few times now, but they are defiantly worth it and if you get the opportunity I would recommend. The support act was a British band called Gold Heart Assembly, quite a similar sound to Band of Horses so I was equally impressed with them. The only let down was it was on a Tuesday night, so energy levels were lagging by the evening. It was the last night of their UK tour so the energy was up and the crowd singing away. The band even threw in a special surprise for the start of the encore, if your not familiar with the Hammersmith Apollo there is two levels, the top level has seating with a balcony overlooking the ground floor and stage. Two of the band appeared on the second tier and played acoustic versions of a couple of their songs. It was an amazing atmosphere and interesting way to use the venue, playing their music acoustically overlooking the majority of the audience, something I've not seen before. J

Source: www.gigwise.com                                                                                                                         Source: http://www.bandofhorses.com/uk/music/mirage-rock                                                                           

Football match and progress with my dissertation

After my worries the last couple of weeks about my dissertation I have finally made some progress and even sorted out conducting my primary research, which I am over the moon about. I will be conducting my research over the Christmas break when I return home. Although this mean I’ll have to get on with some serious work over Christmas it means that I can get my research done nice and early and have plenty of time to analyse and conclude my research and time to work on my dissertation before the submission day, fingers crossed all goes to plan and I receive some good results from my research.

Also, our event is also coming together nicely. Finally getting there with confirming our venue, and also date of the event.  We’ve got a name and confirming several of the elements of the event; it’s all starting to become a little bit more real now.

My other piece of coursework which is due this month turned out to be a bit of a disaster. After starting the essay over a month early I thought I was doing pretty well on it. But after having a one to one meeting with my tutor to discuss any problems or questions I discovered that I was a bit off the mark with my content. But luckily I hadn’t gone completely wrong and just needed to re-jig and be more specific with my content to get me back on track, so all was not lost. A big recommendation I would make to any one is really do ask your tutors if you’re not sure, if I hadn’t for example it would have really affected my grade. But by asking early I have now been able to re-jig the assignment and get back on track, with 3 weeks left till I need to submit.

Source: www.mattmcwilliams.com

As the title of the blog suggests I have been to a football match, the first one I’ve ever been to. Now I may hear you cry…football really you’ve never expressed an interest before. Well you would be correct; I didn’t go for fun I went as part of one of my assignments in the Sporting Events module. I went to see the Charlton Athletic verses Cardiff City game which turned out to be a 5-4 result to Charlton. So it was a pretty exciting match to be sitting with the home fans. I have to admit although I am not the biggest football fan I did enjoy myself and really enjoyed the atmosphere of the game. The only thing I would change would be the temperature, five layers and 2 pairs of socks and I was still freezing. 

Dissertation, dissertation, dissertation

Stressed could be one word to describe how I am feeling about my dissertation at the moment. After writing a plan in year 2 I thought I had nailed down my question and topic. But, after further research I am struggling to get any further with my research and also how I am going to obtain my primary research. So you could say it’s been a bit of a nightmare! But, I’ve had a meeting with my dissertation supervisor and we have made plans of where to go next so that I don’t have to completely change my topic (as I was interested in this) but instead just revise my question. I have contacted a few people about doing my primary research; hopefully they will come back positive, fingers crossed!

 

Source: priyamahida.wordpress.com

On a more positive note, planning is coming along nicely for our 3^rd year event which I and my group are planning. We have decided our concept and have been visiting venues; we think we have found the perfect venue, now we need to look at its availability and negotiation of price. Once we found the venue we all got a little bit excited that it was actually going to happen.  

As I mentioned in my previous blog I went to see Michael McIntyre earlier this month. As expected he was extremely funny, I was cracking up with laughter the whole night, a definite must see if you ever get the chance to see him, or I’m sure the DVD will be out in time for Christmas.

Now I had best get back to doing this research and enjoying the lovely fog outside…..!

 

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6200209.stm

Start of the year 3…

The beginning of my final year and already I am already feeling overwhelmed with the amount I have to do. But I’m desperately trying to get myself in order so that I can get a start on everything.

One of the main stresses I’m having is the dissertation! Is my topic good enough, how I’m going to do my research, how to write it all and what I need to do before March. But this is why it’s so important to have meetings with your dissertation tutor, mine is great and she is helping me to refine my ideas down and make it into realistic research.

 source: hopkins.typepad.com

This year we also have to plan and execute a live event. Myself and my group are in the idea generating stages at the moment for the event, so I’ll keep you posted on what direction we decide to go! But for now are ideas are in a mass of brain storming diagrams.

 source: sageperformance.com

As well as being back in lectures/tutorials I have also been doing some work experience with a company who I have worked with a few times before. They have been great in letting me assist in the final stages of preparation for their festival, giving me even more insight into the exciting, high pace environment of the events world! As well as some more vital skills which I've been itching to learn.

source: http://www.theo2.co.uk/event/michael-mcintyre-2012-20120926.html

  

Something I’m really excited about, and which will defiantly take my mind off the dissertation is that I’m going to see Michael McIntyre this weekend!! Having brought the tickets about the year ago I almost forgot that I even had them. I’ll try not to embarrass myself with embarrassing laughing fits!