A checklist is not a plan. It is what stops a plan from quietly losing three items between the pub where you agreed it and the hall where you need it. This one is arranged by when the job becomes urgent rather than by subject, because that is the order in which things get forgotten.
Print it. Tick it in biro. The pages on this site are set up to print without the navigation and the site furniture, so what comes out of the machine is the list and nothing else.
The four roles, agreed before anything else
Split these on day one, even if two of them fall to the same person. A gathering that depends on one individual dies the first time that individual has a bad month.
- Room and key. Holds the booking, the venue contact, the access arrangements and the key on the night. Arrives first, leaves last.
- Money and door. Owns the budget, takes payment, keeps the float, and is the only person who says yes to spending.
- Programme. Decides what actually happens between the doors opening and closing, and writes the running order to the minute.
- Word of mouth. Owns the one public page, the messages, the reminders and the answers to “is it accessible” and “what time does it finish”.
The countdown
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Eight weeks out
Fix the date and write it down publicly. Agree the format in one sentence. Set a ceiling on what you are willing to lose if nobody comes. Split the four roles above.
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Seven weeks out
Shortlist three rooms and ring all of them. Ask the venue questions below before you fall in love with any of them. Check what else is happening locally that day, including football fixtures and anything that will take the parking.
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Six weeks out
Book the room and get it in writing. Pay the deposit. Settle the licence question with the venue in the same email. Confirm who holds the key and get a mobile number for that person.
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Five weeks out
Publish the one page that everything else will link to: date, address, doors, start, finish, price, step-free access, nearest station, and how to reply. Nothing else you post needs to contain any of that detail, because it can point here.
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Four weeks out
Start telling people, one at a time. Twenty individual messages beat one broadcast to two thousand. Put cards in the library, the community centre and the nearest independent record or book shop.
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Three weeks out
Visit the room if you have not already. Stand at the back and speak at normal volume. Find the sockets, the light switches, the fuse box and the accessible toilet. Photograph the entrance for your access notes.
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Two weeks out
Write the running order to the minute, including doors, welcome, the main event, the break, the finish and the time you must be out. Test every piece of kit together, in one go, plugged into the same extension lead you will actually use.
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The final week, and the day
Send one reminder five days before and one on the morning. Draw the float in coins. Arrive ninety minutes early. Put out fewer chairs than you expect to need. Announce the next date before anybody leaves.
Ask the venue all of these before you pay
- What is the hourly rate, and does it cover setting up and clearing away as well as the event itself?
- Is there a separate charge for the kitchen, the chairs, the tables, the projector or the sound system?
- Do you hold a music licence covering recorded music played to our guests, and will you confirm that in writing?
- Does your public liability insurance extend to hirers, or do we need to arrange our own cover?
- Do you require a written risk assessment from us, and is there a template we should use?
- Is there step-free access from the street, and is there an accessible toilet on the same floor?
- Is there a hearing loop, and does it work?
- What is the capacity, and is that a fire limit or a comfort estimate?
- Where do people park, and what is the last useful bus or train out?
- What time must we be out, and in what condition must the room be left?
- Who holds the key on the night, and what is their mobile number?
- What happens, and what do we get back, if you have to cancel on us?
Write the answers on the booking email and keep it. When the caretaker who took your booking has moved on and the new one has never heard of you, that email is the entire difference between an evening and an argument in a car park.
The kit list
Assume the venue provides nothing that has not been confirmed in writing. Ours travels in one crate: an extension lead longer than you think, a four-way adaptor, gaffer tape, blu tack, a marker pen, blank badges, a printed running order, a printed access note, a float in coins, spare cables for every connection you rely on, a first aid kit, bin bags, and two rolls of kitchen towel.
Add whatever your format needs. For a listening night that is an amplifier good enough for the room, and our advice in the essay on Hounds of Love holds generally: if you can only carry one improvement, bring a better amplifier rather than bigger speakers. Small halls punish volume and reward control.
Afterwards, in the week that follows
Count the money and write down what the evening actually cost, line by line, while you still remember. Send one short thank you to everyone who came, containing the next date. Return the key, settle the invoice, and send the venue a note saying the room worked, because caretakers remember the hirers who bothered.
Then write down the three things that went wrong. Not to punish anybody, but because the second event is where a gathering either becomes a habit or quietly stops, and the difference is usually one fixable annoyance that nobody wrote down.
What usually goes wrong
- The list lives in one head. If it is not written down and shared, it does not exist. A checklist in a private notes app is a checklist nobody can pick up when you get flu.
- The access answer is vague. “Should be fine” is not an answer. Go and look at the front door yourself and write down the number of steps.
- Money moves before the booking is confirmed. Never take payment from attendees until the room is contracted. Refunding fourteen people is a miserable evening.
- Kit is tested separately. Everything works alone. Plug it all in together, in the actual room, with the chairs out and the doors closed.
- Nobody announces the next date. The single highest-return sentence of the entire night, and it costs nothing.
None of this requires talent. It requires somebody willing to hold a clipboard and be slightly boring about details for eight weeks, which is a rarer quality than enthusiasm and worth considerably more.