How to organise a successful community event
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Planning a community event, such as a festival, street party or fun day? This free step-by-step action plan takes you from your first idea to reflecting on what worked, with tips from groups who have done it.
What is this guide and who is it for?
This community action plan from Local Trust walks you through organising an event with your community, from designing it around what local people want to thanking everyone afterwards. It covers the essentials, including who your event is for, how to budget and find funding, how to keep people safe and how to make sure everyone feels welcome. It also shares learning from Sompting Big Local’s summer festival and Pimlico Million’s Eid Party.
This guide will be useful to community groups, community organisations and residents planning any kind of community event, whether that’s a summer festival, cultural celebration, street party, family fun day or community clean-up.
How do you organise a community event?
Start by asking local people what they want, then shape a clear vision, bring partners on board and set a budget. Next, plan your date, venue, activities, food, safety and volunteers, and make sure everyone feels welcome. Promote your event six to eight weeks ahead, gather feedback on the day and hold a debrief afterwards so your next event is even better.
How far in advance should you start planning?
Start six to eight months ahead for events with more than 100 people, or three to four months for smaller events. Book your venue first, then essential suppliers such as caterers.
What will I learn?
- Asking your community what they want and developing your vision
- Getting the right partners on board
- Budgeting and finding funding
- Choosing your date, time and an accessible venue
- Planning activities, catering and volunteer roles
- Safety, safeguarding and photography consent
- Making sure everyone feels welcome
- Promoting your event
- Running the day and gathering feedback
- Reflecting on what worked and building on your success
- And much more, including a planning checklist and links to helpful resources
Attribution
Produced by Local Trust as How to organise a successful community event: a community action plan. Written by Tamsin Curror, with learning from Big Local areas including Sompting Big Local and Pimlico Million. Adapted by Locality for MyCommunity.
Photo credits appear alongside images in the PDF.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
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