Oxjam Event at The Regal - 9th April 2008
How it all began
I organised this event alongside Louise. We both work for Oxfam, I am the administrator of the legal team and Louise is the administrator to the UK finance team. We both decided to primarily organise the event to get the employees of Oxfam socialising together outside of work. The event took a long while to organise as we initially planned to hold it at Oxfam House, but found it would cost us more money than holding it elsewhere. Also, we had to consider the impact it would have on the staff of Oxfam who work late hours! Especially since Oxjam was just about to start we thought it’d be a brilliant idea to organise one of our own.
The Planning
After, hearing the news that The Regal was undergoing renovation we arranged to meet with the owners and were able to negotiate how we would receive the money as a donation to Oxfam. They let us have the venue free of charge, we took all the ticket money and money from any tickets sold on the door, along with the money from the cloakroom! The huge room at the back of the building was still undergoing building work so we were unable to use it. So we had the front room and the room upstairs. The rooms were fairly small, but due to the day it was being held on we didn’t expect such a big crowd.
In terms of organising the music, Louise contacted the Oxford University Big Band and arranged for them to play at the event (also, for free!). I organised the DJ (DJ Gurpreet Singh) who came over from London for the evening, he specialised in Asian music (Bhangra and Bollywood). To get an Asian DJ to play at the event was a huge struggle, as most people thought there should not be an Asian DJ. I strongly disagreed with this idea since Oxfam helps to overcome poverty and suffering in Asia in a huge way. I thought I’d get encouragement but I didn’t, all I got was discouragement! I just hope that in the future such ideas are welcomed and encouraged. From going through the Oxjam events listings for 2008, it was evident that this is the only (or one of very very few) Oxjam gigs which contains a cultural element. This made me more eager to include such Asian influenced music into the event. We asked John French to design us some posters, which he did a great job on and these went to print and I organised for some friends to put posters up and hand out flyers at the Brookes campus.
The 2 weeks after the venue and music had been arranged flew by and tickets sales were very bad! I was worried that not many people would come and that we would not raise any money for Oxfam. I seeked advice from the Oxjam team who suggested we try selling tickets online, so I arranged this and within 2 weeks only 1 ticket had been sold. We also requested the Oxfam shops in Oxford to sell tickets for us and they were also unsuccessful! In the last 3 days leading up to the event, there was a mad rush in ticket sales, online and at Oxfam House. We did a lot of walking around Oxfam House bugging people to dig into their pockets and buy a ticket!
On the Night
After a mad rush to get ready and trying to get all my friends who had arrived for the event, into cars we managed to arrive at The Regal just about in time! On my arrival I noticed there were no lights as there had just been a power cut and it was 7.30pm (when the doors were to open!). We had a few guests arrive, and we had to make them wait downstairs and assure them that the problem would be sorted out in due course. Some people brought tickets and went to sit across the road in the pub! When we finally got the power back at around 7.50pm, there was a mad rush to get the band going. I was about to relax at that point and then I realised that no music could be heard in the downstairs room. After much debate with the owners, they were unable to rectify this problem! This did cause some problems in that guests entering through the main entrance downstairs could not get a feel for the music, so it was rather quiet! The bigger problem was that I had envisioned didn’t happen as a direct result of the power cut. Since the room upstairs was quite small, I envisioned that the crowd would be able to spill out into the room downstairs to avoid everyone being squeezed into one room. And this is what didn’t happen! Everyone was upstairs as no music could be heard downstairs. But It was a problem that I could not have catered for and was out of my hands i guess! The guests started pouring in by 9pm and lots of people turned up to buy tickets on the door, which was great! I had also enlisted my friends as volunteers who worked on the doors for me, collecting money. And we had some volunteers from Oxfam House who worked on the cloakroom and others who asked for donations by shaking buckets and we offered guests a band or an Oxjam badge for a small donation to Oxfam!
We also had some interest from BBC Oxford, who came along to film parts of the event and talk to the Big Band. They also interviewed us which was slightly nerve-raking, but we felt so proud after all the hard work we had both put into to making the event work that even the BBC had wanted to know about it! After the interview I just enjoyed the night, talking and catching up with friends. The Big band then packed up and DJ Gurpreet Singh provided a great mix of Western and Eastern sounds. And the atmosphere was very lively at this stage! We were supposed to stop the music by 11.30pm but we eventually stopped an hour later at 00.30am.
The Results
The next day I went to the Oxfam Shops and collected the ticket money and then sat down to count all the money. I was in and out of the bank depositing money for most of the afternoon! Our grand total came to £731.98!!! Which I was over the moon about as I didn’t think we would even make half that amount, but it did turn out to be a huge success! Despite the stress of planning it, it was so much fun and completely worth everything! And I would definitely do it again! And I am so thankful to everyone who helped in every and any way, it is all very much appreciated!
Please visit this link to watch my interview with BBC Oxford!!!
