Think you could plan the next Glastonbury? Now you can with a new degree

Ever dreamed of organising the next Burning Man? Booking the main acts for Primavera? Or building Boomtown’s fictional city? Well, that’s exactly the kind of exciting career path that awaits the alumni of Bucks New Uni’s BA (Hons) Events, Festivals and Venue Management degree.

The new three-year course merges two degrees – BA (Hons) Event and Festivals Management and BA (Hons) Music and Live Events Management – and promises to equip students with the theoretical and practical nous to work behind-the-scenes for some of the world’s best festivals, run venues across the globe, and even start their own events business.

During his Event and Festivals Management degree, Bucks New Uni graduate James Gibson, 41, was given the enviable opportunity to work in Canada for two months to shadow the operations manager at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Post-degree, he was headhunted to create a new festival from scratch on an island off the Northumberland coast: the now award-winning Lindisfarne Festival.

A mature student at the time, Gibson says he studied at Bucks New Uni in order to build on his 10 years’ experience in the events and music industry.

“Even though I had a wealth of experience, I thought it was important to follow that up with academia because I knew that’s the way the industry was going,” says Gibson, now operations manager at Shindig festival in Somerset. “It fitted in with my career path. I learned all about licensing, planning a major festival from a legal perspective, crowd management, and health and safety.” Gibson, who graduated in 2014, says that the degree also allowed for people in the industry to see how focused he was on his career.

Although Jessie Hall is still at the early stages of her career – she graduates with a first-class honours in Music and Live Events Management this September – she’s already carving out a strong CV. The events professional is currently working as a freelance production assistant at Festival Republic, organiser of Reading and Leeds festival. Bucks New Uni regularly offers its students internships, and although this particular internship was offered to second-year students, Hall managed to secure a place in her first year. “It was a money-can’t-buy opportunity that the course offered to its students and I grabbed it with both hands,” she says. “That summer I managed to spend around nine weeks working on festival sites such as Download, Latitude and Reading and Leeds and found that ‘site life’ was definitely the environment for me.”

The degree offers plenty of hands-on practical experience by throwing students into setting up and running two real-life events: Winterland, a Christmas-style event with fairground rides and a Santa’s grotto; and Bucks Live, a mini community day festival. During the latter event, Hall worked as a production coordinator and event manager, managing more than 3,000 paying customers. “That experience was genuinely something I could never have gained without the course,” she says. “Those modules prepared me the most for real on-site festival work.”

Those graduating with an events degree enter a sector that’s in good shape. According to UK Music, 3.9 million people attended festivals in the UK in 2016, while figures from the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) show that there are currently 975 UK festivals.

“Our 10-year report also confirmed that our members contributed an estimated £1bn in revenue to the UK economy in the three-year period between 2014 and 2017,” says Paul Reed, chief executive of the AIF. He describes the market as: “crowded but not overcrowded”, with “festivals investing in delivering an overall experience the ones thriving in the current climate”.

“Overall, it is healthy, despite a Brexit-shaped cloud of economic uncertainty hanging over the population,” says Reed. “This doesn’t seem to have had a significant impact on sales this season. As ever, some festivals are slightly up or down from last year but, generally, there is stability.”

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Neil Mackey, the course leader of the BA (Hons) Events, Festivals and Venue Management degree at Bucks New Uni, says the degree is “unique [compared with] other courses”, as it provides students with valuable practical experience.

“They will be putting on music events, gigs, club nights and will work closely with the students’ union. Many [of the students who studied for the previous two events degrees that were offered by Bucks New Uni] ended up doing work experience at festivals such as Download and Latitude. Other students might have a degree and have done bar work, but the difference here is [our students] will have the opportunity to run their own festivals, put gigs on and take advantage of work experience opportunities at festivals, events, and theatres.”

For Gibson, who has recently been hired as a tour manager for a BBC travel show, the course has led to his dream career. “I love it,” he says. “I love the build-up to an event and then seeing the end product. That’s what the buzz is about.”

And it’s Bucks New Uni he thanks for getting him there. “I don’t think my career would have been the same if I hadn’t done the course,” he adds.

To find out more about studying Events, Festivals and Venue Management at Bucks New Uni, visit the website or call 0330 123 2023