The Mother’s Smile Experience was… a lot. A lot of people. A lot of resources. A lot of juggling. I had no idea what I was doing, I just knew I wanted it all. But after that event, I realised it didn’t have to be that way. It’s curious that I never thought to approach event organisation from first principles. “Okay, so what does this event fundamentally need?” Once that’s sorted, you have an event, with far less money spent. The rest can come later.
The Mother’s Smile Listening Party was organised just like that. First of all, it was an exclusive event so I could properly control the number of attendees (close to 50) and plan accordingly. The purpose was for listening to my album. Okay, then we need a speaker. Except I’m all for radio frequency headphones for full immersion, so I implemented that technology again. I’d have preferred the event be free, but I needed a way to pay for the headphones so I just made the ticket price the cost of headphones per head. Now we need a location. I was recommended a beautiful little library space with just the aesthetics I was searching for. Cool. Seating? I borrowed some floor mats and pillows and created cozy seating environment. Snacks? Drinks? I asked my mum to bake some cakes while my cousin and his girl made and sold the best ginger shakes of all time, Bolosips.
In the end, it cost me just about £55 to pull off the entire event (and that was for renting the library space). A huge difference from the roughly £1,500 spent on the Mother’s Smile Experience.
Again, we live to learn…