Testimonials

Greenbelt Festival is an annual arts festival centred around art, faith and social justice. It happens every year over the UK August Bank Holiday weekend. Some 21,000 people, over four days, enjoy a vast programme of music, talks, literature, film, theatre, dance, worship, comedy, art installations, campaigning, youth events, workshops, and an entire Children's Festival within the main event.

For years the Festival has used a plethora of different, over complicated, over full, Excel spreadsheets and Word documents to try to book in the hundreds of contributing artists that come each year. With so many different documents for each different programme area we've at times been embarrassed about having the wrong information in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that wrong time quite often being onsite when its even harder to deal with the issues the mistakes have thrown up. Plus the huge workload for our Programme Coordinator of compiling 400+ contributors and 670 events' information, logistics and marketing pieces for the website and guide, has meant that they've often been stretched to near breaking point.

To plan the Festival's schedule, we used Adobe Illustrator, which whilst being great for our printed Daily Diary and Festival Guide, is not easy to use, doesn't allow easy playing around with running times, ad is not constantly accessible to all who need to see it - approximately another 300 volunteers who book the programme, run the site and manage the programmed venues.

This year for our 2009 Festival we asked Festival Systems to provide us with their database solution. And it really has been a godsend. We can put all of the information, on all of our artists, in one place. Our Programme Coordinator can easily upload and run a report on who has been booked into which accommodation. Our Box Office Manager can easily run a report on what tickets to send out and to who. Our copy writers can easily access the marketing information they need, and upload their subbed versions for our website and printed Guide. And as the Head of Content I can easily play around with the schedule, which everyone can access to view via the internet and provide me with their feedback.

The system is easy to use, intuitive, and excellently laid out. In our first year of using it it has saved our staff and volunteers immeasurable time, and I think we've only just started to scratch the surface of using it to its fullest capacity. They have also provided excellent support and are always available to answer any question, no matter how small or obvious. Quite frankly I simply can not work out how we managed without it before.

Rachel Stringer, Head of Content at  Greenbelt Festival

To whom it may concern,

In 2002 we realised that we needed a better system for managing the vast amount of information required to run our festival - more than 250 artists performing on nine stages over four days. We were convinced that a single source of artist financials, technical requirements, contact details and performance stage times would make a huge difference to how effectively and efficiently we worked. If anything, we underestimated how vital this system would become to the management of our festival.

We contracted midtempo to produce a bespoke system, building it online so that our key staff will always have access to the most recent snapshot of the festival, wherever they are.

Over the subsequent years it has been developed, refined and altered to ensure that it always meets our evolving needs. It has had to become flexible enough to deal with changes in our approach, yet stay simple to use.

The system is now an integral part of our operation, and used by production, box office, technical, press, artist liaison and accounts.

Everything is tracked and everyone knows exactly what has been done, when and by whom. It allows us to get on and do what we do best - run a great event.

I trust midtempo implicitly. I believe that you will too.

Katrina Larkin, Founding Director of  The Big Chill

We've been working with the festival system since 2007 and, while we were convinced of its benefit from the outset, we have subsequently seen yet more improvement in its capabilities. It now covers every purpose we need, in a structure that will significantly help with the organisation of our award-winning event.

The manner of the system's development has illustrated Midtempo's understanding of the complexities that lie within the festival industry.

Their quick response to feedback is what you need from a small, focused and very capable company.

They're a great outfit to work with and I don't hesitate to recommend them to you.

Julian Butterfield, Operations Manager at  Lovebox (Winner, Best Medium Sized Festival, UK Festival Awards 2008)

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