Claire Viola, County Administrator at the Bedfordshire and Luton Pre-school Learning 麻花影视office, spoke to us about her experiences planning the fantastic annual Picnic in the Park event in Luton, and shared her top tips for new event planners on running a successful event. to read more about the background of the Picnic in the Park event, as well as Claire's tips on where to start when planning an early years event.
we talked about advertising on a limited budget.
Is there anything you think is worth spending money on, or is an essential cost?
A lot of what we spend money on for Picnic in the Park is essential and often a legal requirement of holding the event, such as first aid cover, toilets and traffic management. The funding provided for the event has drastically reduced over the years, so we have needed to introduce a charge for stall fees in recent years, thankfully without any complaints from our 鈥渞egulars鈥. We also charge 拢2 per vehicle for the car park, stall holders can receive a maximum of 5 free car park permits, but this revenue is a welcome income, as entry to the event is free and a lot of the activities are too.
Volunteers are a great help with saving costs, for example, the car park is manned by some of the traffic management team, but if we needed them to take money for car parking then there would be an additional charge to do so. We have been extremely lucky to have volunteers supporting us who are also happy to take money for car parking.
Sometimes a knowledge of what relatives or friends of your co-workers can contribute is useful, so maybe sending out a request to them to see if anyone can offer services at a reduced rate or even for free is worthwhile. Our PA announcer Graham came to us out of a suggestion by his wife who attended the event